Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Mark McCormick, Senior VP of Customer Experience, Internet Services Group at Wells Fargo (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: So people can transfer money to others regardless of whether the recipient is on the Wells Fargo system?

Mark McCormick:  Yes, exactly.

SM: All right. Is there anything else that you want to talk about?

MM: The last thing I would say is that we’re always working on ways to humanize our channels. We realize this is a technology. People interact with us, and they expect us to be able to optimize the qualities of each channel that the channel does best. But we always want to look for ways to convey to our customers that there are real humans behind the technology. And we always look for ways to leverage the wisdom our bankers, and recognize customers and personalize their experiences as much as we can.

SM: What do you do in that respect? From my point of view, personalization is one the territories of the Web or mobile that has not yet been truly explored. I have a model for Web 3.0, which I express through a geeky little formula: 4C + P + VS. Those four C’s are content, community, and commerce in context. “VS” is vertical search and “P” is personalization. All of the variables of the equation have been developed nicely over the last five or six years since I came up with the formula, except personalization. Personalization is still scratching the surface.

MM: Yes, it’s elusive, isn’t it? I like your formula, by the way. It sounds smart. I like the way you put that. Personalization is elusive, but we try to do a couple simple things, such as recognizing our customers’ birthdays when they go to the ATM. More important, we’re aware, again with the philosophy that we want to help our customers to succeed financially, of what products and services customers currently hold and how we might help them with other products and services that are tailored for them, and, moreover, how we might help them do things like avoid overdraft fees. We’re always looking for ways to personalize and make more human the experience with a channel.

SM: Considering the history of the Internet, one thing I expected we would have gotten by now is that all these banks would have personalized advisory services that are better enabled by technology. That we haven’t seen yet. It’s a very complex problem, but I thought that by now we would be there.  You need expert systems to be able to do that, and I don’t see those systems [in use] yet.

MM: Yes. I think that, obviously, it can get a lot smarter. I think another big trend will be – and we’re looking for ways to harvest this – is big data, data brilliance. That will help us with smart decisions. Our research shows us  – and our business model is based on this idea – that we have a wide distribution network, which is our stores and the Internet. There will always be a room for human interaction. Many of our customers choose to start transactions through our online channel and finish them in the store channel. Sometimes, with the deeper decisions about which investment product, which insurance product, which kind of mortgage, we can help facilitate that entire decision-making process online. But sometimes, our customers might choose to engage a banker in one of our stores to help with that decision. We have a lot of investment in financial education and guidance. We believe there’s opportunity to help our customers succeed financially by nudging them with everything from small tips on how to manage their money, how to avoid fees and that sort of thing, all the way through their financial life cycles by helping them make smart investment decisions. Some of those things are completely high tech and low touch, and some are high touch and low tech.

SM: All right. Thank you, Mark, for taking the time.

MM: Thanks so much, Sramana. It was nice to meet you.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Mark McCormick, Senior VP of Customer Experience, Internet Services Group at Wells Fargo
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