Citizens has a new way with words

As banks work toward deeper and longer-lasting connections with their customers, their choice of language matters.

Beth Johnson, chief experience officer at Citizens, is our guest to talk about how her bank is rethinking how it uses words.

A few takeaways from the conversation:

• A key reason for the changes in language being used is that banks are trying to shift strategy by prioritizing lasting customer relationships over selling products.
• Citizens’ new vocabulary to connect with customers reflects generational differences in reaching millennials and Gen Z, as well as variations based on geography.
• The bank is taking steps to keep up with changing technology by embracing data, exerting more control over the creative process and testing messages faster.

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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Beth Johnson, chief experience officer at Citizens Bank. Welcome to the BAI Banking Strategies podcast.

Great to be here.

Beth, today we are going to be talking about the language that banks use to speak to their customers and how that language is evolving. So, start out if you could, with a level set for listeners. How would you describe the language that banking institutions have historically used with their customers?

When I think about banks, our product is money. And when you think about that, money’s really a commodity. But we’ve used a lot of terms in banking that are short hands to make sure that we understand what we’re talking about that aren’t always customer friendly. And I like to refer to it as “bank speak.” And some good examples of that, my mom recently got a direct mail offering for a HELOC, a home equity line of credit. It never said what it was. She didn’t know what that was. Or my nephew in his first job was asked to send an ACH. He doesn’t know what an ACH is, and it’s just a way of moving money. So I think for bankers, sometimes we get caught up in this bank speak versus just plainly describing what it is that we’re selling or offering to our customers.

This “bank speak” that you’re mentioning here, it’s been the standard for years and it wouldn’t have lasted this long if it didn’t work in some fashion. So, why is it changing now? Why does banks speak no longer get the job done?

I think, because when you think about historically we were very people-centric in our selling, in our information for our customers over time as a bank. So, if you walked into a branch and you had a question on what an ACH meant, you could ask that question and how to accomplish what you needed to accomplish. In today’s world where content is coming at you from all sorts of different channels, where you’re learning on your own and you’re able to try to self-serve more and more through digital or through self-service in a contact center in an ATM, it’s more important than ever that we actually talk to our customers in a way that they understand us.

How much of this is being driven by a change in banks having a communication strategy focused on pushing products to a less salesy communication approach, centered more on customer needs, and with the goal of building and nurturing a long-term relationship?

I think it has everything to do with it. I think that was well said. When we think about our customers and our promise to them, we want to be their trusted advisor over their lifetime. We want to be the primary way they get their financial advice and therefore how they buy their financial products. So, we’ve realized with the tools we have today to measure more and more how customers interact with us, that we need to play that role and be that role of an advisor and a primary banking relationship versus just thinking of a product sale one off. And we’re able to do that I think more and more given the tools that we have available to us.

And what tools are those? Can you give us a little more detail on what’s in your toolbox?

If you think about the world today, we can see how our customers are interacting with us digitally. Where do they go for information? What’s resonating with them, what may not be resonating with them? We use the word rage clicking when you can’t find what you’re looking for. We have immediate feedback loops from our contact center where we’re able to know very quickly through surveying techniques, did we communicate with you in a way that worked? So, more and more we’re able to use these omnichannels, use what we’re doing digitally with in-person feedback to make sure what we say and what we promise is what we’re delivering to our customers.

Bringing it back to language, can you give us a few examples of how language is changing, be it something that you’re doing at Citizens or new language trends that you’re seeing in the industry more broadly? And can you include in your answer what makes this newer way more effective?

In the industry right now, what we’re looking to do is use the language of the moment, which tends to change over time, but of what resonates with our customers and what they’re looking for. And one of the more interesting ones is around the word wealth. So, when I think about the word wealth, we have a wealth management division, we have wealth competitors out there, but our customers don’t ask us about their wealth. They ask us about their investment and their retirement and how do I plan for that? How do I send my child to school? They typically don’t refer to themselves as wealthy. So, we’ve learned that we needed to adjust our language so that we could fulfill the need of the customer versus focusing on how we approach the business of wealth.

I understand that deep-seated self-identification thing for Americans when it comes to wealth. I’d venture a guess that even Elon Musk probably refers to himself as being upper middle class. But I’m not sure what’s in it for a bank to change how it speaks to a person who is objectively wealthy but averse to being thought of as such. So, is this just a style thing or is there some substance behind it as well?

I think it’s a combination of style and substance. So, we want to make sure as we fulfill that brand promise around trusted advisor that we’re talking to you and advising you on the things that matter. So, I may be thinking about, “Did I just buy my second home and a vacation home? And how do I think about renting that out and what does that mean for me over time?” We want to have that conversation with you and how we can support you, or how to think about my child’s college education. I have two kids in college right now, so that’s near and dear to me. Citizens just purchased a startup called College Raptor, and that’s all about being able to match a student to the right college for them and then tie that into how do you pay for school and how do you feel good for that as a parent and you plan for the future. So, what we’re really thinking about is get the language right, but the language supports the substance of the need to be that trusted advisor for our clients.

Wealth is one area where language is changing. Tell us another old way of communicating that is becoming a new way of communicating.

Yeah. One of the things that’s most interesting to me is how this changes and evolves over time. And there is a concept called information scent. So, how do you, like a dog uses smell to try to find out what’s in the yard? How do we as individuals start to think about information to find out the question that we’re trying to answer? And about five years ago, we started to think about this concept and we were thinking about the mortgage business. And the mortgage business, as you know, is a major purchasing decision for our customer, but also quite a profitable product for banks. And what we learned is back then five years ago, people didn’t want to search for a mortgage. They wanted to come to our site and say, “How do I buy a home?” Or, “How do I build a home?” And we would give them that information. Today that’s really changed. People typically don’t go to their bank to look for, “How do I buy a home?” They go to Google, and they have already searched how to buy a home, and they may actually by the way, end up on one of our articles, but by the time they get to our site, they want to know, “How do I find a mortgage?” Or, “How do I find a construction loan?” So, we almost had to go back from a need-based set of language back to a product-based set of language because that information sent of our customers has evolved and we got to make it easy for them to get what they want when they need it.

A large percentage of home buyers these days are in the millennial generation, and maybe some of them are even in Gen Z though, given that the front edge of that group is still in their mid-twenties, I wouldn’t think there would be too many of those. But still it brings to mind that in so many aspects of banking, there’s a difference between what works for an old timer like me and what works for my kids and your kids. So, how much of this “get the language right” thing is essentially generational in nature?

I think what’s critical is these different groups have different ways of searching for information, different ways of understanding information, different ways of interpreting language that we think about what’s right for them. And we do that through a mix of the content we’re creating in the language we use in that content, but also in the channels in which we display the content or even the formats. So, as I was thinking about your question as you asked it, you talked about Gen Z there. They are not going to Google to look at how to buy a home. They’re going to TikTok to look at how to buy a home, and they’re not reading about how to buy a home, they’re watching a shorthand video about how to buy a home and what a mortgage is. So, we’ve even found that we have to think about written language differently sometimes than a video where you’re actually watching someone explain something and actually link all of that together. So it’s the language, it’s the content, and then it’s the form in which we’re delivering it to make sure we’re meeting the needs of those different segments that a bank serves and needs to serve over time in their life.

Getting that language part right, especially with those younger generations, they will know automatically if the language is inauthentic, if the language seems like it’s trying too hard or that maybe an old timer is trying to sound young. Do you have a lot of young people on your staff or within your agencies that are of that generation, that are native to that and that are helping you out on this?

We try to look for a variety, to your point, of different individuals to have involved in how we work on our teams, our language, and how we communicate to our customers. I’ve even taken that to the extreme on my leadership team at Citizens, where I ensure that I have representatives across all the different segments sitting at the leadership table so that we are getting that fresh, real true perspective of that generation we’re trying to tap into in a really authentic way, versus to your point, I may think I know how Gen Z talks because I have two daughters at home in that generation, but I don’t really, I’m a little bit more pretending or I have to ask them questions.

Yeah, I know what you mean about that. We’ve been talking about how banking institutions communicate with their retail customers. Of course, Citizens and other banks have plenty of business customers as well. So, perceptions of wealth and home loans aren’t priority issues for, say, a small to mid-size business. Is bank language evolving for them as well? And if it is, in what ways?

I really think about all our customer segments when we try to think about how we speak to them. And we really look at small businesses. We tend to serve the middle market. Those can be family owned middle-market companies or private equity-owned, middle-market companies, and then some larger corporates. And when we think about them, we try to break it down to the humans that we’re serving within those businesses. And it’s a concept called human-centered design, but it’s really still even within our corporate clients, we are serving people and we are serving people that are influenced by the world around them and how they experience it. So, we want to make sure we’re talking to them accordingly. And we’ve got some pretty innovative things we’re doing there. We’ve launched recently a tool called a Digital Butler, that can engage with our middle-market clients to really make sure we’re making it easy for them to get information, but information that’s relevant and some of our language will vary if we’re talking to someone in a treasury department versus if you’re talking to a CFO or versus you’re talking to the owner of a business. So, these tools allow us to be tailored for our business clients as well as for our retail clients.

Are there other ways, Beth, that you segment your retail audience in terms of changing up the language that you use to speak with them? This would be beyond age, beyond wealth level, which we’ve already discussed. I’m thinking about gender, I’m thinking about the various social identities that people have, I’m thinking about different parts of the country and really any other sort of slicing and dicing that you might be doing with the language that you create.

One of my favorite ways that we’ve been thinking about language and messaging has been at a geographic level. And so, we entered the New York market in a major way over the last year. For example, we bought the retail branches of HSBC in New York and we also acquired Investors Bank shares. We started going into New York and understanding how did people talk about being a New Yorker, how did that vary by the different neighborhoods in New York? And I have a couple of examples for you that I can give on how that translated, and this is in a marketing sense, to our launch and our campaign there, but it was having signs that said, “Spa Day” or “Rockaway,” (or) “Track your spending so you can have better R and R.” Rockaway as a local beach in New York.” Or, “Planning for preschool or college? Citizens is there to help you.” Well, in most of our markets, you’re not actually thinking about how do you have to plan for preschool, but in New York City, you are because that’s unique to that market. And we’ve seen our awareness and our consideration scores go up very quickly, and frankly, faster than we had expected with this real local approach to language.

Yeah, you’re certainly right about that preschool thing – you’ve got to get that right or no shot at all at Harvard. But Beth, let’s finish up our conversation by looking ahead. So, technology is changing how we communicate and that includes the language that we use. Technology isn’t going to stop changing, it isn’t going to stop evolving. So, I’m curious about how you at Citizens are thinking about developing an approach regarding the language that you use that will be able to adapt as technology changes and as other conditions change.

As we’ve thought about these, unbelievable, as you mentioned, changes in technology, we’ve really taken an approach that we want to build platforms that we can then learn from and rapidly adjust how we communicate with our customers. And three key things that we’ve been working on over the last five years and continue to evolve. And the first was really customer communications as a platform. So, how do we build the foundation in data intelligence that then links to all our channels so that we can have really relevant communications with the right language to our customers. The second piece I think you need to be really responsive here is a great design studio. We call ours Green Pixel Studio. Citizens’ brand color is green. So, we built that and we have a design studio in the office I’m in today to be able to quickly put things in front of customers and learn from them. And then the third component of being responsive is what we call marketing transformation. But what we really did was build the ability to rapidly test and learn and take a very nimble but data-driven approach to understanding how things resonate with our customers. We are doing 8 to 10 tests a week with our customers on various messages going out. Five years ago that would’ve been a test to every six to eight weeks. So, that ability to rapidly use technology to test, to learn, to change, to try, to maximize our impact, I think that all comes together so that you can be very responsive to how technology’s changing, how our customers are changing over time.

Beth Johnson, Chief Experience Officer at Citizens Bank, many thanks again for joining us on the BAI Banking Strategies podcast.

Thanks so much, Terry. That was a fun conversation.