The Experience Strategy Podcast: Niche Segments and Omni-Channel in FinTech

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In today’s episode, we are joined by Rilla Delorier. Rilla has over 30 years of experience as an executive leader within the financial services industry, serving as a trusted advisor to the CEOs of PNC, SunTrust, and Umpqua Bank. Tune in as we uncover how niche customer segments have completely upended the traditional way of thinking about banking, why it’s important to go after unmet customer needs, and the power of FinTech's approach to agile innovation. 

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the experience strategy podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts experienced nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas. Savis

Aransas: welcome to the experience strategy podcast. I'm Miranda Savvis, Dave Norton.

And today we are joined by Rilla Doloria, who has over 30 years of experience as an executive within financial services, a trusted advisor to the CEOs of PNC SunTrust, Umpqua bank, among many others. She's led technology, marketing, digital innovation, analytics, and call centers, and is come through at all with.

Passion for experience strategy today, we'll talk to her about the importance of going after unmet needs, whether you're in banking or pretty much any other category, how niche sets of [00:01:00] customers have completely up ended the traditional way of thinking about banking and the. Uh, the Fentac approach to agile innovation.

Finally, we'll dig into realize insights around how we can use both human and digital support to maximum effect to really support our customers in meaningful and much needed. Relative. Thank you so much for joining us.

Rilla: Welcome. Um, it's great to be here virtually. I wish I was together with you in person, but this'll have to do.

It's

Aransas: a, it is an interesting shift. Isn't it? Back in the old days where we sat in a room together with the engineer on the other side of a glass, and now here we are spread all over the country and, uh, finding ways to connect, which, uh, I feel deeply grateful for. So really, I know I shared a little bit [00:02:00] about where you are now and where you've been.

Um, but just to kick things off, I'd love to hear your story from you.

Rilla: Well, first of all, my name reala means babbling Brook. So if I talk for too long, you guys just interrupt me. Um, I have been, uh, kind of an accidental banker for about 35 years. Uh, from undergrad. I started. Bain consulting and was put in their financial services practice.

And, uh, back then actually we came up with the very first loyalty credit card, which was a us air and nations bank at the time. And I was also part of the team that created net promoter score. And I share that because. Bane and the way they approach strategy is really based on the customer. And so throughout my career, as I've gone from consulting to, to banking and leading kind of a retail bank, leading marketing, digital analytics, Strategy.

I've [00:03:00] always brought that kind of customer orientation to everything that I've done. Um, so I'm super passionate about experience design because I think experience design is about uncovering unmet customer needs and finding new and innovative and creative ways to meet those needs and unlock value for organizations and actually value for the customer.

Dave: You were involved in the original NPS work. That's amazing. I did not know that about your relapse.

Rilla: Well, it, it dates me. Um, and I, I can't, I can't take credit. I was part of the, the work that led to NPS. But if you look at the copyright, I don't get any other royalties. So I was like, I don't know, one month to two early in my departure from Bain, but the work is great and I have.

Really, um, been impressed by how it has really changed people's perspective on getting customer feedback at multiple touch points and then using it to improve customer experience. [00:04:00] Facet.

Dave: Fascinating. That's so fascinating. We had the opportunity. I met you actually through working for you at SunTrust when you're the chief marketing officer and, uh, we loved working with your team.

You had a great team, very intelligent, uh, group of people that were doing great work and. We really enjoyed working alongside of you. I think Centrust did some really fantastic things and it was post 2008, post 2009 time period. So there was a lot of change that was happening in banking at that time.

Rilla: That is for sure. And I have a lot of gray hair that started at that time. Um, you know, as bankers kind of bond together over what we were doing in 2008, but I was so. Impressed by the leadership team at SunTrust, because we [00:05:00] saw an opportunity. Um, Maccabia was purchased by Wells Fargo. Wacovia had been really the top and customer loyalty for decades.

And when we saw that there was going to be disruption there, we said, we are going to own that top spot for customer loyalty and. Hired a lot of the Wacovia original team to your point. We had great talent. We invested significantly in, um, improve well doing research to see where we had gaps and then doing the work to really improve the customer experience.

And in a very short period of time, we went from, I won't say worse. We're in the lower quadrant, uh, two best. And we became the top loyalty scoring organization in the industry, which, and we did it in 18 months, um, which was pretty fantastic. And you are a part of that. So thank you for that part.

Dave: That was, that was an amazing time and [00:06:00] still continue to have good friends.

Um, people like Jeff van div LD and others who, uh, we worked really closely with and, and just really enjoyed. And you're right. There was a huge opportunity. Wacovia had the best customer service and then. Didn't really didn't really do much with it after that and what a great opportunity for SunTrust and we're excited for what they're doing with truest as well.

And then for there, you move to Umpqua. In the banking world, you know, is like one of the top boutique banking stories of all time. I mean, they're, they're just known for, for innovation and for customer experience, what a great opportunity to work with that organization as well.

Rilla: Yeah. And that was an interesting time because, you know, as you said, uncle was famous for the experience that they delivered in what they called [00:07:00] stores.

They didn't even call branches branches because they want it to feel more like a retail experience. So they were pioneers and customer experience design in their brick and mortar channel. And what attracted me to the opportunity is that they were looking. How do you take that distinct experience and how do you actually modernize it for the digital channels and for new ways of serving customers?

And so that was part of my charge. When I went there, I was chief strategy officer and I was asked to really transform the organization from being very physical, to being digital. Um, and that was, uh, it was a pretty fun time. And I can, I can tell you a little bit about how we did that. If you want to hear it.

Yes.

Dave: We do. And I think, well, that's one of the topics we definitely want to touch on as we jump in there and go a little deeper. One of the things that you are known for and you've talked about for years is the [00:08:00] importance of going after unmet needs. Can you describe why that's so important and why that philosophy has been part of your approach for.

Rilla: No, I think it goes back to a lot of the clay Christianson work, a lot of the, um, you know, good early strategy work. Um, that's been done around the way you create or identify market opportunities. You see where there are unmet needs. And if you can find a way to. Serve that need, you can compete and win. Um, it's pretty basic strategy stuff.

I'm a Harvard grad and you know, it really kind of boils down to just that if you know who your customers are, you know what they're looking, the job they're trying to get done. You see where there's friction in that or inefficiency or. Where they can't actually really achieve the goal that they're going after as a company, if you can find a way to provide them with those services, you have found a, a market niche that you can [00:09:00] serve.

Uh, and then of course you need to protect that niche over time. So that's part two, but it is a. You know, right now, there are so many unmet customer needs when it comes to financial services. So we're watching FinTech organizations who are, in my opinion, very customer obsessed, finding ways to kind of understand very niche customer second.

Where they might have a need that banks aren't serving and then finding ways to serve those customer needs and little by little they're eroding kind of the market share and opportunities that banks have to serve customers. Um, we as bankers we've left it there for them because we haven't been hyper-focused on customer needs.

Yeah. Why is that?

Dave: Yeah. Why is that? Why don't, why don't banks go after unmet? You know,

Rilla: uh, I would say as bankers, we think we do. Um, but historically you've [00:10:00] had to play the scale game. You know, and that's another thing we learned in business school that I think needs to be unlearned because historically you had to have big market segments that could cover the high fixed costs of developing capabilities.

I mean, if, um, you know, we used to segment based on wealth, Uh, a mass market of fluent high net worth, because those were big chunky segments. And if you invested in technology or you invested in a branch, are you invested in new product development? That was such a large expense. You had to spread it over a big population.

And so you just need. You know it to be kind of an, a product that a whole bunch of people might like a little bit, and I call it the McKinsey math of, if you just got 1% of the massive fluent segment, it would cover your expenses. And so we were kind of, you know, banker mathematicians, where you went for the, you went for scale.[00:11:00]

Whereas now. We have the opportunity with digital and the way technology has really changed the economics of business, we can find multiple segments and rather than go broad and be kind of average, you can go deep in a niche segment and actually kind of own that segment and you can do it pretty affordably and you can do multiples of them.

You can be serving multiple segments simultaneously. And doing it more profitably than you could in the past. And you know, I also think that bankers tend to have. You know, business cases that are based on what's been done before, you know, prove to me it works by show me somebody else who's done it, which is not where innovation needs to focus.

Innovation needs to be willing to try things, you know, bite-size, um, test them. And as you get positive, you know, response from customers, then, you know, increase your investment over time, kind of that whole agile method versus a. [00:12:00] Big, you know, a big bet and a one release. So it's a whole new way of thinking.

Tech companies are all over it and the bankers are still trying to figure it out.

Dave: It's kind of like the GE mentality. Own a particular category versus the Silicon valley mentality where it's like, just find something and do it in such a way that, uh, nobody else has really thought about doing it. I don't think Venmo, for example, could have ever been invented by GE, right?

It just wouldn't have had.

Rilla: Right. I mean, for, for a number of reasons, I think Venmo is a great example of disruption. They realized there needs to be a P2P solution. Nobody was offering it other than writing checks to each other, and that's not going to happen, you know, in today's day and age. And not only did they make it easy, they also make.

Somewhat entertaining. I love that you have a little emoji that goes with your payment to your friend, you know, or a picture that can [00:13:00] remind you of the experience that you had with them. They, they thought about the experience design as well as what's the customer need. And how do we, how do we serve at simply yeah.

Talk

Aransas: about jobs to be done. The fact that they lead with a social job to be done. For something that is ultimately as social need. Right. I think the, the more. I don't know the, the, the more intuitive choice might've been. All right, let's make this super simple. Just let people pay each other, but they add in all of these social components to differentiate so that you can see what your friends are spending money on, which who would have thought people wanted it.

The visibility like that. And yet it was a social job to be done. And so they prioritize functionality. That was social. And I just think it was, that was a really smart move from an innovation standpoint.

Rilla: Absolutely. And that would have been cut out of a busy, [00:14:00] uh, you know, traditional business case immediately.

That doesn't make sense. Why would we spend money on that? Oh, because it brings people joy. And

Aransas: if you're done the insights and ask people, Hey, you want everybody to see what you're spending money on? People would have said no. So traditional insights don't work for innovation. And, and I just think that's, it's such a good example of, of working on jobs to be done versus what customers are asking for specifically, because they don't know necessarily.

That's

Rilla: right.

Dave: So are there certain, uh, ways that FinTech is behaving or certain companies in FinTech that you're particularly excited about?

Rilla: Uh, you know, I could, I could go on, this is a babbling moment, so we'll try to, I'll try to re um, you know, be careful there. I mean, there are obviously some really basics.

I think Venmo's a great example, but PayPal also making it really easy to do your online [00:15:00] purchases lending, you know, you can now buy a Peloton and getting a affirm loan at point of checkout. Um, you know, we can argue over pay now by our, um, by now paleo. Models and where that's going to go. But, um, but there are organizations that are stepping into that, um, into that breach, but then there are some more specific ones that I really am excited about.

So for example, Sable is an organization that focuses on immigrant workers and, um, international students. So, you know, Amazon and Google are hiring all these people from other countries. They come to the U S and if they don't have a social security number, they can't. A checking account. And without a checking account, you often can't get a cell phone or you can't get known apartment, or you can't get a credit card.

You can't deposit your paycheck. And so Sable is saying, you know what, that's crazy. These people are incredibly credit worthy for a checking account and have found a way to create systems, to still do background [00:16:00] checks, but to be able to give international students and workers access to banking.

Fantastic. Um, there's another company called hitched and this is board newly married couples. And back actually, when I was at SunTrust, we did research that said financial feuds between couples was actually one of the number one stressors for relationships and causes of divorce. But hitched helps newlyweds figure out how to combine their money, but also keeps them separate how to set goals, how to manage their progress, visualize their budget, reward them for making progress.

It's a great, great, um, service. And then just one of my favorites. Absolute favorite is propel and propel is, do you guys know propel for automating the food stamp process? Um, 42 million Americans are getting food stamps and. Historically, the only way they could check their balance was [00:17:00] to call an 800 number.

And it was the number one most frequently called 800 number in the world because they would check frequently every day, just to see where did they stand with their balance? And Jimmy Chen, who started the company said, Hey, this is just like mobile banking. Why can't we create an app where people can check their balance.

They can see where their money is going. And not only that. We can talk to those folks and provide them other services, like access to jobs or discounts for internet or for their, um, heat bill or help finding housing or getting their stimulus check. Um, if they didn't have an address to send the stimulus check to, and that organization now they're dealing with they're working with, well, this is probably dated now, but 4 million customers per month, and really helping those customers.

What had been an unmet. So there are lots of them I could go on and on. It's

Dave: fantastic. Uh, [00:18:00] you know, one of the ones that, uh, we hear come up a lot in consumer research that we're doing is acorn. They're focused on helping people to manage their finances in a very simple. And positive way. Uh, so there's, you're right.

There's so much exciting stuff that is going on with FinTech today. How do you think FinTech is, is going to reshape the banking landscape, the financial. Landscape what's going to happen. Do you have any ideas?

Rilla: Uh, well, I wish I did. Cause that would be, you know, I'd be making a lot of money in the stock market.

Um, the, I do think what is happening is a convergence between banking and FinTech. Um, first of all, fintechs need charters. So one of the organizations I work with coastal community bank is a banking as a service provider to 25 plus fintechs. So they do all of the backend processing. [00:19:00] For the FinTech. So the FinTech is great at the customer acquisition, identifying the value proposition and, um, you know, providing that customer experience.

But all of the backend processing is done by coastal or other banks that are doing banking as a service for FinTech. So there's a partnership there. Then there are banks that are buying fintechs and are actually adding that capability to their offering. And then there are fintechs that are buying banks, um, so that they can also own.

The backend processing themselves and maybe even offer additional, um, lending products or kind of mat manage a balance sheet. So they're all different strategies going on, but at the core of it is really understanding who's the customer you're trying to serve. What are their needs, what's the offering that you want to offer.

And then what's the best way to do that. Is it develop the capability internally? Is it partner with a FinTech? Is it Baya, FinTech? Um, And I think all of those different models are happening [00:20:00] right now.

Dave: So it it's there. They're going to start to really morph and, and fuse together in very different ways.

And some of the online only banks behave a little bit like a FinTech in some ways that's probably going to impact things as well. I don't know the story of Zen. And yet it's. Do you know the story of Zelle? How did it become the standard for, um, money transactions amongst banks?

Rilla: Primarily security. Um, it's differentiator as security and, you know, banks are extremely risk averse as we should be.

We're P you know, it's, you, you have people's money going through your, through your system. Um, and so that was really, and it, and it connected with our core systems better than other options. So that is how it became kind of the standard for banks. But I don't think it has the same experience that Venmo.[00:21:00]

Aransas: It has this kind of cheeky name that makes me expect that it's going to lead with some warmth and personality. And yet it behaves very much like a traditional bank

Rilla: rent, you know, and that's part of traditional banking, you know, unfortunately, You know, for banks, there are a lot of regulations that you have to work through that do limit risk-taking or, you know, partnering with maybe organizations who haven't been built under that same level of regulation and have been able to try things that banks would be hesitant to do.

Dave: One of the things that you've talked a lot about is the connection between niche customer sets and. For example, uh, you talked about people coming to the United States for [00:22:00] different reasons, niche customers, and FinTech or technologies and the importance of understanding those niche opportunities. Can you describe that a little bit more for us?

What's your thing?

Rilla: You know, community banks used to be focused on, um, who lives near your branch. And the, the marketing was, you know, marketing to the five mile radius of folks who, who live near a bank or a bank branch. And that just because you live in the same neighborhood, doesn't mean you have the same financial needs or, you know, nuances to your inflows and outflows of cash.

Um, but again, it goes back to. Market and get as many of those people in the neighborhood nearby because they were, you were tethered to a physical location and with, with digital and with FinTech, it is more about, you can identify a unique need in a niche segment, but because you're able to go nationally or sometimes even [00:23:00] internationally, if you total up all the people in that niche across the nation.

It is pretty significant opportunity and you can develop capabilities that are very specifically hyper-relevant for those customers. And what happens is when you're speaking into a niche segment, let's say you're talking to these international employees. They know each other, they talk to each other.

And so your branding is actually word of mouth because niche segments tend to get really excited when they find somebody who gets them and is serving them in a unique way. And then they talk about it to the other people they know in that segment and all of a sudden. Word of mouth takes over and it's amazing how quickly you can penetrate a niche segment versus what you need to do to, I call it spray and pray, you know, to kind of tell your, tell your message to the world and hope somebody listens, you know, through.

General advertising or Superbowl [00:24:00] ads versus it's such a relevant message to such a unique audience that you can touch that audience through word of mouth or through very direct targeting and digital marketing. Now at a much more efficient.

Dave: It's interesting. I think about eight corn, for example, which started as a, after a very niche group of people that were struggling with their finances, maybe having a difficulty with payday loans or something along that line.

And, uh, acorn goes after them provides something that almost feels like. Uh, there is a non-profit component to it. And now we find students using acorn. We find, uh, Family's using the acorn. It's grown outside of the niche. I there's another payment tool. I don't really know the name, but I've heard about it.

Uh, that started for helping [00:25:00] prisoners to manage transactions between other prisoners. Do you know that? Do you know the name of the, of the group by chance? It's called

Rilla: stretch, I believe.

Dave: Yeah. Right. And now there are six. Teams that are handling their transactions, using the exact same technology. It it's almost like.

You can see starting in one particular niche area, really understanding that job to be done for them, and then begin to expand outside of that niche, just because you're so much better at getting that particular, maybe microtransaction job done than anyone else. And before you know, it, you're a Venmo, right.

Everybody's used to.

Rilla: Yeah, I think there, you know, gosh, I have a few things I want to say there. Um, what I loved about that acorn story is you start by helping a customer with something that you actually don't make money. Right? But the [00:26:00] customer needs help with it. And by doing that, you engender trust, you build a relationship, you build a brand that people want to learn more about and engage with.

And through that trust and, and word of mouth, you're then able to expand your offering to folks. Outside of that side when we're, when they graduate out of that in debts, um, situation. And there are very few brands that are willing to really kind of lean in to something that's not profitable in the beginning because they know it's the right thing to do.

And they believe that by doing the right thing, it'll open up future opportunity. The other thing though, I will say is I'm on, I'm on the board now of. Bank coastal who's banking as a service provider, but also a traditional bank. And I'm on the board of a FinTech company. And the way they manage the organizations is dramatically different.

Traditional public companies are managed to earnings this quarter. So doing something that's a loss leader [00:27:00] is really hard to pull off unless you're just making a ton of money in the rest of your organization. But in tech companies, they're actually not as worried about quarterly profits, even if they are public.

They're the conversations there around customer acquisition rates, organic growth, total addressable market retention rates, depth of customer relationships, the organic drivers of top line growth and their. Tech companies just by nature are focused on how are we serving our customers and how can we continue to expand that value we're providing for them because that will create revenue and in the future, we'll be profitable.

Um, whereas you know, many, many organizations are worried about profitability first and therefore become much more shorts.

Dave: It's fascinating that those are actually the companies that have the highest stock prices, because they're not focused at quarterly. Uh, you [00:28:00] know, the, the quarterly

Rilla: results. I think the market's learning to buy the vision.

Um, they're different investors by the way, who invest in banks, typically they're dividend investors, fixed income type folks, versus those who invest in, in technology. The market and those, those analysts that cover technology are focused on the vision and the potential, not the here and the now as much.

Um, and that's why, you know, fintechs are being valued at billions of dollars and banks that have been around for a long time are being valued at significantly. Less than that, you know, their multiples are significantly lower because I think the market's buying the vision and buying the top line growth story.

And I think we all need to get better at focusing on top line growth.

Aransas: Absolutely. It's a whole new way of working. And we just did an episode, um, very recently about the reasons that most innovation incubators fail. And this just feels like such a wonderful companion piece to [00:29:00] it because it gives us such a specific story about where innovation can falter within large organizations and how taking a.

Uh, startup mindset and using agile practices in particular can really help organizations, um, meaningfully compete against these laser focused competitors. It's, uh, it's an interesting time. And, and certainly there are, to your point, a lot of advantages to these big banks. We S we know that for consumers, when it comes to their money, there's, there's a lot of things they like.

About these new players. And there are a lot of questions about trust and safety and when it comes to your money, that's the most important thing. And so it does feel like there's a really powerful moment for some of these banks to look at how they leverage their strengths uniquely [00:30:00] to both meet. Strong targeted needs while being leaders in safety and trust and by being parts of communities.

And, and that's something, as you said, that, that a digital bank isn't going to be able to do in the same way to be a part of a, a geographic community. So I know you've, you've done a lot of exploration and thought leadership in the space of omni-channel and leveraging. Human and digital support in meaningful ways.

So what's your latest thinking on that? Hmm,

Rilla: I just want to go back a quick second to what you were just talking about, about the difficulty of needing to manage your near term performance as an organization, then it's your safety, soundness, security earnings, et cetera. At the same time that you're really transforming.

And I think that's the hardest job of a CEO and on a board is how to strike that balance of, I call it perform and transform. [00:31:00] And one of the things I do talk a lot about is needing to manage those teams separately, um, because the talent, even the metrics, the kind of culture of a transformational effort has to be pretty different than the culture of operating in a safe and sound and steady state.

And often those are different talents and. Yeah, unless you are very purposeful about doing both, the urgent will always get in the way of important. And so the here and the, now the short term will always outweigh the investment in the future, unless you protect against that. So that's just kind of my point around, right?

Absolutely.

Aransas: And these, these companies are led by human beings who have the same fears as every other human it's it's. I think we, we underestimate so often. How much these giant machines really come back to human instinct.

Rilla: What [00:32:00] leadership and culture are critical, but to your point around omni-channel and, and kind of the role of digital and humans on the combination of the two, I, I do think this is a really fun space to be watching right now because there's so much innovation here.

Um, you know, in banking, typically you have a call center run by somebody and then you have branches run by somebody else, and then you have your digital channels run somewhere else. And, um, You know, you often outsource your bill pay and, uh, your online capabilities and. Typically they're managed separately.

They're thought of separately. And then there was a movement to say, gosh, we need consistency across all of our channels. All of our channels need to be consistent. And how did they get

Aransas: so fragmented?

Rilla: That's just the way, you know, like operations runs the call center because it's about being efficient, efficient, and taught, managing talk time.

And you know, there's a head of the branches because they're really good at [00:33:00] managing people and processes. And then you have, you know, tech people who are. The digital piece, when really you need a customer owner, who's looking at all of it together and not looking at just having it digitized banking or be consistent.

And you can do the same things in every channel, but really understanding what's the role of each channel for how customers are banking or managing their money. Yeah. Call a call center necessarily to get advice around, you know, what kind of loan to use. Um, you know, you use your mobile app to check your balances and move money, but you're not necessarily gonna go to your mobile app to really fix a problem, you know, or if you see fraud on your account, you want to talk to somebody who's gonna help you out.

And when you go into a branch, typically, you know, fewer and fewer, but when people go into a branch because. Talk to a human being who can help guide them through a complicated decision or a problem. And that insight of what is the role of each [00:34:00] channel becomes really important in how you prioritize, where you spend your money, how you manage it, the metrics you measure each channel, and also how you watch the customer journey across the channels.

Um, and I think there's really interesting work going on now in COVID accelerated it with, how do you take those physical interactions where humans are involved and how do you create that same sort of personalization human interaction, but through digital channels, And at Umpqua, we, we actually, I think we're pioneers in this, um, the, the idea of how do you take an innovative branch experience and put it into the digital channel?

Um, we said, gosh, we need to have that human connection in the digital channel. And we developed a product that was called go-to and the idea was we wanted to democratize private bank. Give every customer access to their own personal banker. Somebody who knows them, somebody who's [00:35:00] smart, somebody who's available to them when needed, but in order to make the economics work, we had to do it through digital, through an app where you could ask that you could select your banker and connect with your banker, but you could.

Digitally. Um, so it took the benefit of, you know, the person, you know, in the branch, but making them accessible to you wherever you are, um, not 24 hours, but, but pretty, pretty long hours. And if they weren't available, there was a backup person available. And so it kind of. The human element and embedded it into the digital experience.

And that was pre COVID. Um, so thank God that was in place going into COVID as has shut down. People still had access to the hair banker, somebody who could help guide them. And it was pretty, pretty innovative at the time. Now you look at telemedicine and you know, other other organizations are taking that kind of advisory experience and digitizing it.

Um, but I was pretty proud of I'm going for, for doing that.

Dave: That is a [00:36:00] classic story of Umpqua. Uh, I love the brand. I love the company because you have always been so innovative and right on with the innovative. We love this idea that it's really the combination of digital and human that creates the multiplier effect, the better experience.

And like you said, allows for scale, which I think is really important. And I also liked the way that you redefined Omnipod. Omni channel was first defined as kind of a seamless experience across channels. That was 15 years ago. Maybe not quite that long, but at least 10 years ago. And what you said is that each one of those channels plays a role.

And we need to understand what that role is and make them supportive of each other, which is a totally different thing because I'm not completely convinced that consumers care that they can start a [00:37:00] conversation on one tool and end it with a person that, and have that state that that's the only job that they want to get done, I guess, is what I'm saying.

I think they have lots of other things that they're trying to accomplish, and I love the way that you described.

Rilla: Yeah. I mean, I don't want to sit in front of a banker and fill out a bunch of forms and then look up at them and say, okay, can you help me? So it would be great if you could fill out the forms online ahead of time and then use the bankers time and your time, you know, physically there to do the work that human interaction requires, whether it's in person or digitally or however, however we do it these days.

Um, but yeah, you're right. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't always have to be, um, just a seamless interaction across town. Yeah,

Aransas: no, it's much more about meaning in the experience and, and really it, I love what you said about having a chief customer officer who looks at the role of each channel and how [00:38:00] they are uniquely positioned to meet each need.

And I think to these, these competing metrics that you mentioned that. Come from traditional ways of doing business are as problematic as anything. If all we're going after is efficiency and any of our channels, there's a good chance that we're not actually meeting needs. And, um, efficiency is a part of it.

Sure. And important to scale and service. And it's not ultimately going to drive loyalty. And that's really the game here. So I want us to, to move beyond the super interesting topic of banking for a minute now and sort of take a more expansive view of things. And so I'm going to ask both of you to, to share your main thoughts around what you really hope that [00:39:00] experienced strategist.

Across all types of businesses we'll take from this conversation and apply to the work that they do. Let's start with you.

Dave: Okay. You know,

Aransas: well,

Dave: I've had admired realist work for many years now. One of the things that you said that has really struck me is that experienced strategy actually goes a lot better in organizations.

I don't think you said these words, but experienced strategy actually goes better in organizations. Focused on organic growth, vision, understanding unmet needs. That's an important thing for, uh, for companies to, to think about. If you're going to have a great experience strategy, there seems to be a connection to the way that your, your business model works and what it is that your culture is trying to do and your leadership [00:40:00] and so forth and so on.

So I think that that's, that's, uh, a takeaway that any company. Um, could pay attention to, and it kind of connects to what we've been saying, uh, on previous podcasts, which is if you're really focused on experienced strategy, it's going to be at the highest levels. You need to treat it like the other strategic.

Parts of your organization. It's going to impact the way that you think about resourcing. It's going to impact the way that you think about channel strategy. It's going to impact the way that your business model works. And so I love this. I love that connection.

Rilla: Yeah, I, you know, Dave is, you know, I am a big, um, purpose oriented person.

I think organizations need to be really clear on what's their purpose. Why do they exist? What is the role that they're playing in society? And I think if you're clear on your purpose and it's, it really is something that [00:41:00] your customers need or your communities need, then your experience design.

Constantly checking in and saying, are we designing to achieve that purpose? Is it is what we're doing, going to help our customers get there. So for example, financial wellbeing. If an organization is focused on providing financial wellbeing is their experience that they're designing truly, truly helping people achieve financial well-being.

And I would love all of the experienced designers and strategists out there to constantly be using purpose as due north for the work that they do. And then the second piece of that is I think we each in our industries need to look at. Who were the underserved populations? Who are those customers that fall, you know, outside the radar of your company?

There's probably a story of why you're not focusing on them. Probably there's too [00:42:00] much risk or not enough profitability, or they're not, it's not a big enough segment. And I'd ask experienced designers to really rethink. Those stories, is it true? Can we change our policy? Can we change the way we think about risk?

Can we offer this in a more efficient way? Can we reach that population more broadly so we can get every, you know, everyone in that segment nationally rather than locally, and really rethink the reasons why you've limited helping those underserved customers and then find new ways to meet those needs and, and create a whole new opportunity for your organism.

So true,

Dave: totally so true

Aransas: and so important and so well validated.

Rilla: Right,

Aransas: right. This is not some left field idea. You're having, we've seen businesses be successful over and over again, and yet it is still not the prevailing view. [00:43:00] And so yes, preach, let's keep challenging these limited mindsets around what it means to succeed and who we serve.

And, um, you know, I think. The word we have alluded to most here in this conversation is target. And that's this idea of having a very strong, clear, true north, just continuously bring our arrows back toward our mission toward our purpose. And to start out with a purpose that's, that's compelling and needed that the world is missing instead of just continually going after.

Um, The, the old targets and, um, those that were, were well valued for centuries in some cases. So Rella, this is a rich and, uh, inspiring conversation. And we're so grateful for your voice here today

Rilla: [00:44:00] and great to be here. Thanks for the invite. You bring

Aransas: so much experience and. And a truly practical way and, uh, so many great stories too, about how, how companies, whether in banking or out well outside of it can really rethink how to meet the needs of customers.

And, uh, We thank you for being here. We thank all of you who are listening for joining us today. Please continue to share your thoughts and feedback on what you want more of so that we can continue to, uh, re anchor our true north and. Bring you the shows that serve you, Dave. Thank you for being my co-host and come back soon.

Have a

Rilla: wonderful day. Take care. Thank

Aransas: you

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