Eyes on the prize

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and get started. I have the pleasure of being here to talk to y'all today about customer centricity. When asked to speak with you all, I asked what’s top of mind, what’s most critical for everyone right now. What I heard loud and clear was our ability to keep the customer at the center—not just philosophically, because I think we all know that’s important—but how we can do that tactically.

As such, I’ve named this talk "Keeping Your Eyes on the Prize", with the prize being our relationship with our customers. One of the things I assume we all understand is how critical this is, but I’ll feel better saying it out loud. Jim Moroz has said that having a customer-centered culture is more than just a good thing at this point; it’s actually become a matter of our survival.

While we understand this, what might it look like in a very practical, day-to-day way? How does it show up in our employees' behaviors and in the strategy behind how we make decisions as an organization?

Before I share some ideas with you, I want to acknowledge that you are already doing a lot in this area. From what I can tell, looking in from the outside, you’ve already invested a great deal in your agile transformation. Your focus and energy on becoming an agile organization means you are already doing something critical for true customer centricity—becoming more nimble so that you can react faster to customer needs and shifting expectations.

In addition, I see that you are leveraging data to personalize and increase the relevancy of your offerings, which ultimately saves time and builds trust with customers. You are assembling cross-functional teams, breaking down silos, and moving with more speed. I understand some of the work you've done in Chile and other markets to simplify internal processes and make it easier to support customers.

Because of this, I’m not going to talk about those foundational elements. You are already doing a great job in those areas. Instead, I want to focus on capitalizing on the momentum you’ve built and taking it even further. I always feel like I could be doing more, so let’s talk about how you can do even more. I’ll do this by asking three questions and hopefully planting a seed in three different areas.

1. Setting Clear Expectations

When we think about creating expectations within our organization, we are talking about expectations on how people will make decisions every single day. It doesn’t help us to have shared alignment only at the executive level. Of course, we need that, but to truly move with speed and harness the collective power of our organization, we must scale these expectations. The only way to scale is if people share a north star and can make small and big decisions daily within the context of our shared expectation—meeting customer needs.

No matter how many rock stars we hire, how much training we do, how many process improvements we implement, or how many tools we introduce, at the end of the day, having a customer-centered culture comes down to behavior change. The best way we know to change behavior is through how we incentivize, recognize, and elevate success.

So, I ask: Do we incentivize our teams primarily through traditional financial KPIs like revenue increase and cost reduction, or do we also celebrate wins in customer-focused KPIs? Do we reward people—through promotions, career advancements, or bonuses—based on how effectively they uncover and resolve customer pain points?

For example, I’ve implemented an award at a quarterly town hall where we recognized a team for uncovering 25 customer pain points in the past quarter. Just by identifying them, we keep customers at the center because we can prioritize and address those issues.

2. Creating Space for Customer Engagement

Once we have established shared expectations, we must create space for customer-centric work to happen easily. Right now, if I show up at work on Monday, my calendar is filled with meetings. It’s easy—I just show up. But is it just as easy to connect with customers? Have we invested energy in making customer interactions effortless?

One thing I’ve implemented is operationalizing customer interviews. Every Monday, there’s already an appointment scheduled for a customer interview on Wednesday at 2 PM. Anyone with burning questions can join, listen, or submit questions. It makes it simple rather than requiring months of planning and bureaucracy.

We should also provide easy access to customer data—regular listening sessions for contact center calls, open dashboards for survey data, and analytics on web and app interactions. Understanding where customers drop off or experience friction helps inform decision-making.

3. Putting Money Where Our Mouth Is

As a bank, this should resonate: how we allocate our financial resources says a lot about our priorities. Are we prioritizing features and functionality, or are we prioritizing problems and opportunities? This small but critical distinction helps us keep the customer at the center.

For example, if we want to decrease the time it takes to refinance a home, should we invest equally in both web and mobile experiences? No—because customers aren’t likely to complete a complex mortgage refinancing process on a mobile app. That’s an experience best optimized for the web.

Conversely, if we want to optimize money transfers, investing in mobile makes more sense since customers often need to send money on the go.

We should also rethink how we fund projects. Many organizations fund long-term projects with multi-year budgets, but we could take a page from venture capitalists—giving teams smaller budgets to validate hypotheses and demonstrate impact before receiving more funding. This agile funding model encourages teams to deliver value iteratively.

Conclusion

You are already doing so much. Your focus on agility and nimbleness has laid the groundwork for keeping the customer at the center. I hope I’ve given you tangible tactics—some small, some big—that you can implement to capitalize on that momentum and elevate your customer-centricity even further.