Customer Experience with Ryan Brogan

Hey, GonzoBankers. Tony DeSanctis back in my Hawaiian shirt.

I had the opportunity to actually spend a little time in Hawaii this last month and got a chance to stay at the Ritz-Carlton. It reminded me of the customer experience and how important the customer experience is. Everybody who knows Ritz-Carlton knows they’re famous for delivering on customer experience.

So I thought, let’s bring our customer experience ninja in here. I asked Ryan Brogan to join us to talk about customer experience on the bank side and a couple of the key factors, especially going into 2025, for success in customer experience.

The first thing I’d say, Tony, is I think you’re the only person who would compare going into a Ritz and staying at a Ritz with interacting with a bank or credit union.

Oh, we’ve got to set the bar somewhere high, right?

I like it. It’s aspirational. And there’s some good stuff to talk about, even if maybe that is aspirational.

Okay. So, all right, let’s jump in.

So yeah, we’ve got to talk AI, right? It’s everywhere. I think my take on AI is it’s largely undershot expectations, at least in banking CX thus far.

Service delivery.

Okay. So we could pile on for the next 10 minutes about all the ways that that’s happened. But in the spirit of optimism, I think there are two use cases that I would pick out that are illustrative.

Okay.

That are getting traction.

Yeah.

So one, agent assist, right? The idea of natural language processing, large language models, to deliver timely, accurate knowledge.

Make my call center rep more effective.

Exactly. Yeah. And we’re seeing Hudson Valley Credit Union, Magnifi Financial, two institutions that are getting real traction with their respective partners.

So that gives me a lot of optimism about that use case.

Nice.

Quality assurance is another one.

Okay.

So really augmenting that frontline QA process using AI sentiment analysis, looking for policy deviations, coaching opportunities...

Rogue actors.

Yeah, exactly. Synovus Bank is one of those institutions that’s made some great strides. They’ve been recognized for their work there.

Nice.

What I like about those two use cases in particular is they’re narrowly defined, right? They’re measurable in terms of the impact. And again, those aren’t the only two, but they’re representative of a playbook to really navigate AI and CX.

What else have we got?

So let’s talk branches.

And Chase is opening up 45 in Alabama as of this morning.

That’s right. Tripling their presence.

Yeah. So, not as sexy as AI as a topic, but I think very relevant.

As we look at benchmarking year over year, 85% plus of accounts that are originated come through the branch channel. So you can’t ignore this delivery channel.

I think two areas of focus in 2025. One is just a very intentional approach to branching.

I think there were some across the industry who really got caught up in, “Hey, we’re going to chase the latest technology fad, and then we’ll figure out strategy after the fact.”

Cash recyclers, ITMs, all the...

Right. Yep.

Video, et cetera, right? And it’s not to say there aren’t places for those technologies, but it was really the ready, fire, aim sort of approach.

So I think there’s a reaction to that.

I think there’s also this perspective that we can’t just replicate the traditional model of like, “Hey, we’ll just keep building the same thing. Tellers, two personal bankers, blah, blah, blah,” right?

Yeah. You’ve got to redesign.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I think that really ties into, how do we measure success? We’ve talked to a ton of clients that are really looking at that legacy model of assigning or reassigning accounts and thinking about value in terms of, “Hey, geographically, where does someone live?” or “Where was the last time they transacted?”

It just doesn’t sufficiently capture the value.

How consumers bank and the value that’s generated.

So I think that’s a big area of focus and kind of a to-do item in 2025.

Nice. You’ve got one more for me?

I’ve got one more. Onboarding. This is my campaign policy I’m going to run for.

This is the hill you’re dying on.

That’s right. I think if you put anything on the CX list for 2025, it should be looking at onboarding, specifically from day zero to day 90 of a new customer journey.

Where is the process inconsistent across channels? Are those inconsistencies by design, by default? Where are we using data? How can we better use data to make outreach more relevant in terms of the message, the medium, email versus text...

Channels.

Absolutely. Versus call.

Yeah.

And timing, right? Just the cadence of that outreach.

And you can automate that too, so that it doesn’t have to be, “My branch people need to call everyone who opened an account in the last 90 days to be successful.” There are completely automated strategies where it just happens. It’s a part of the built-in infrastructure.

Right. Yeah. Complemented by personal outreach.

Sure.

But it doesn’t have to be entirely...

It doesn’t have to be exclusively.

Exactly. Yeah. And I think it’s really about looking at those key moments of truth.

So in particular, digital enrollment and engagement.

Yeah.

And then a topic near and dear to your heart, card activation, usage, getting...

That’s right.

Getting in digital wallets.

Yep.

I think 100% of financial institutions that looked at onboarding, broke it down and made incremental improvements would see a real impact to engagement, reducing churn, offsetting usage and revenue impacts.

Yeah. So absolutely, that’s my hill that I’m going to...

That’s the hill to die on.

Yep. All right. So not after 90 days. You’re wasting your time anyway because they’ve already moved on to something else.

Yeah, you have a very limited timeframe there.

So that’s how we’re going to deliver Ritz-level customer experience. We’ve got to improve that onboarding experience. We’ve got to leverage AI where it makes sense, and we also need to make sure we’re designing our branches around that customer experience.

All right. Till next time.