How does your organization keep its “special sauce” as it grows? This is the challenge that Daniel Brousseau, senior vice president and head of client experience at City National Bank, experienced while leading the bank’s new CX transformation.
In this episode, Daniel shares that City National was acquired by a bigger bank and was therefore expected to grow. He was stepping into a role that hadn’t previously existed, but also into a company that was extremely client-focused and supportive of improving the customer journey. So as he’s grown into the role, he’s had to essentially build the internal customer experience from scratch, leveraging the company’s culture and top-down support.
UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU ARE IN THE JOURNEY AND HOW YOU CAN MOVE FORWARD
A common struggle among new CX leaders is galvanizing employees and leadership to be on board. Daniel expresses that he’s still working to get everybody on board with what customer experience means and how it’s integrated into day-to-day activities. “Even terminology like ‘what is the customer journey’, ‘what does likelihood to recommend mean’ and ‘what is quiet loyalty’? Even the notion of loyalty behavior, a fairly new concept, is not well understood,” says Daniel.
Daniel also mentions the importance of understanding where the bank is currently falling short on customer experience in certain areas. He wants to extend from where the company currently is, to where they want to be by “bringing clarity on which client journeys and which areas are our areas for opportunity that would make a real difference in how clients perceive the experience.”
EMBED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE THROUGH OPERATIONS
According to Daniel, what’s important for the growth and implementation of customer experience is being able to quantify the results so you can invest in it and make it a part of your growth model. We discussed how internal rigor and discipline are instrumental in helping the CX take off. There needs to be certain elements that are a part of the operating strategy to help the business flourish.
Daniel tells that the first steps to improving the client experience were taken during a particularly difficult client journey that his bank encountered. With the help of his new CEO, he was able to bring together leaders from across the bank to solve this client journey that affected everybody. He shares that they started using a human-centric approach design while letting the data inform their journey mapping. With this new process, they were able to improve the experience for something that the company has been struggling with for years.
What's important for the growth and implementation of customer experience is being able to quantify the results so you can invest in it and make it a part of your growth model. - Daniel Brousseau, SVP @citynational Share on X
CHOOSE THE RIGHT TEAM
Not only is methodology important when it comes to transforming CX, but so is having the right team and leadership to usher it all in. Daniel shares that as they build out the work, they’re able to see which type of skills are needed for their teams to be successful. Over this journey, he has learned that he needs people who can manage projects, conduct analytics, and those who can uncover what clients really mean in order to get the right answers which will impact deliverables.
Daniel has found people with backgrounds in operations and technology, and others in the different lines of business at City National Bank who were passionate about wanting to share their expertise, and had a really strong point of view about the right thing to do with customers. He was able to look at some of the banks problem areas and opportunity areas, and set up an execution model for going forward.
Not only is methodology important when it comes to transforming CX, but so is having the right team and leadership to usher it all in. - Daniel Brousseau, SVP @citynational Share on X
WHAT DO YOU KNOW NOW THAT YOU WISH YOU KNEW THEN?
Daniel says:
“It’s interesting when you get here and you sort of live it for real. You know, each line of business really sees themselves differently. And they want to think about their customer experience for their line of business, even though it’s very similar to the next line of business, they don’t necessarily see it the same way where they are. They think that there are clients who might see it differently, so, understanding how to craft customer experience strategy in a way to help the entire organization. And doing this while also meeting the needs of individual lines of business, which is a constant balancing act.”
ABOUT DANIEL BROUSSEAU
Dan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organizational Development from California State University and a Master of Business Administration degree from San Francisco State University.
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