Customer experience
If you google the bank title, EVP-Director of Customer Experience, you will find many references to the customer journey and how customers engage with a bank and make purchasing decisions.
Pelache leads her team using the Roadmap as part of her departmental planning and execution processes. The customer experience within an in-store location, like a supermarket, is very different from a traditional bank lobby. With its easy accessibility, customers may stop by the in-store branch whenever they are grocery shopping, making it easier to have direct customer conversations. By using the Roadmap questions as part of her department’s process, she never worries about forgetting her focus on the customer and what they want or need from the bank.
In her role, Pelache heads up a team of bankers whose job is to listen to the customer, then develop products, provide service, build relationships, collect business intelligence and communicate and engage effectively.
5 tips from Jessica Pelache on how a department can use the Roadmap
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Cross checking
Pelache guides her team using two sections of the TBA Community Bank Strategic Roadmap to cross check their actions.
Section A: Current State of the BankThis is pre-work that is simple and high level. It covers questions focusing on the customers’ wants and needs from the bank, financial risks and opportunities, technology, information security, talent and how to achieve success with any new initiative.
Section F: Putting the Plan in ActionEveryone knows that poor execution and lack of accountability will sink even the best of plans. This section asks how will you achieve goals, how will you plan for success?
Pelache noted, “My team always begins with the impact to the customers. We constantly ask, ‘who are our customers, and how will they experience our bank? When will they come in, why are they there, what will they do?”
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Customer feedback
Pelache uses formal/informal assessment tools such as surveys of both customers and internal staff. The questions are informal to evoke responses following the five aspects of customer experience — who, what, where, why and how.
“These are simple surveys with limited questions to evoke participation and we use multiple channels to obtain customer feedback. We stand in the lobby with clipboards or tablets to capture intelligence, we seek feedback while assisting customers with routine requests and we utilize our technology applications to engage customers’ feedback,” said Pelache.
“The collection of our customer feedback is paramount and it is the task of the team to carefully analyze the information so that we build the right strategies to support how they want and when they want to bank.”
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Educating customers on bank products
Many times customers ask for things that we have already developed in the app — we just need to find better ways to educate and demonstrate how to find the answers they seek. Our team will review our education tools that promote the app, testing customer responses and relaunch a product information tool when necessary.
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Internal pilot groups
When rolling out a product — enterprise wide — we leverage a pilot group: our own employees.
As we collect information from the pilot group, we may redesign the menu options to improve ease of use in our digital solutions. As we work through a product rollout, we partner across departments to support a comprehensive and collaborative approach to ensure we collectively address critical project components — should we buy or build it, how should we price it, when and where do we make it available. Most importantly, never lose our focus on delivering the best value to our customer.
Then we track the adoption of the user experience (both the internal staff and external customer) and respond accordingly. We set timelines and, if needed, allow for a Plan B to provide more education and communication.
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Roadmap Section F: Putting the Plan into Action
Pelache is mindful that the Roadmap stresses regular reporting and communication and are keys to successful project management. Her team provides daily, monthly and six-month reassessments.
“We focus on deliverables — this is ingrained inside our strategy,” said Pelache. “Internally, we may have multiple projects in play at any one time, so discussions on what takes priority are key. We use a project tracker to allow for tracking programs. These reports allow us to see project status and where additional resources are needed.
As Pelache reflects on her team and its work with the Roadmap, she noted, “From a bank’s perspective, we have a strong relationship with our compliance teams to ensure we are monitoring the regulatory landscape, meaning, how can we comply and minimize the impact of regulations, and delivery on customer needs. The Roadmap reminds me to review the risks and the opportunities.
“By using the questions included in the Roadmap, we are able to crosscheck our processes. It is all part of the life of a community banker.”