Finding the right words

How would you describe the language that banks have historically used with their customers?

Beth Johnson, Citizens Bank: I like to refer to it as “bank speak.” Some good examples: My mom recently got a direct mail offering for a HELOC, a home equity line of credit. 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, which is just a way of moving money. Bankers sometimes get caught up in this “bank speak” versus just plainly describing what it is that we’re selling or offering to our customers.

“Bank speak” has been the standard for years. Why is it changing now?

Historically, we were very people-centric in our selling and in our customer information. If you walked into a branch and had a question on what an ACH was, you would get an answer. Today, when content is coming at you from all different channels, you’re learning on your own and self-serving through digital channels or a contact center. It’s more important than ever that we actually talk to our customers in a way they understand.

How much of this is being driven by banks’ shift from having a communication strategy focused on pushing products to a less “salesy” communication approach, centered on customer needs, to build and nurture a long-term relationship?

It has everything to do with it. 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. We need to be their primary banking relationship versus just a one-off product sale. We’re able to do that thanks to the tools that measure how customers interact with us.

Can you give us more details on what’s in your toolbox?

If we 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 customers can’t find what they’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 in a way that worked? Were we able to use these omnichannels with in-person feedback to make sure what we say and what we promise is what we’re delivering to our customers?

A large percentage of home buyers are in the millennial generation and even in Gen Z. How important is it to get the generational appeals and language correct?

Different generational groups have different ways of searching for information, different ways of understanding information and different ways of interpreting language. We have to determine what’s right for them. We do that through creating a mix of content, but also in the channels and formats in which we display the content. For example, Gen Z is not going to Google how to buy a home. They’re going to TikTok to look at how to buy a home. They’re not reading about how to buy a home; they’re watching a short video about how to buy a home and learn what a mortgage is. It’s the language, it’s the content and it’s the form in which we’re delivering it to make sure we’re meeting the needs of those different segments.

Citizens has plenty of business customers. Is bank language evolving for them as well?

I think about all our customer segments and how we speak to them. We really look at small businesses and the middle market. Those can be family-owned, middle-market companies or private-equity-owned, middle-market companies. And when we think about them, we try to break it down to the humans that we’re serving within those businesses. It’s a concept called human-centered design—we’re serving people influenced by the world around them and how they experience it. We want to make sure we’re talking to them accordingly. We recently launched a tool called a Digital Butler, which can engage with our middle market clients to make sure we’re making it easy for them to get information. The language will vary if we’re talking to someone in a treasury department versus talking to a CFO or the owner of a small business. These tools allow us to tailor to our business clients as well as our retail clients.

How is Citizens developing language that adapts as technology changes?

We want to build platforms that we can learn from and rapidly adjust how we communicate with our customers. There are three key things we’ve been working on over the last five years that continue to evolve. The first is customer communications as a platform. We are building the foundation in data intelligence that then links to all our channels so we can have relevant customer communications with the right language. The second piece is a great design studio. We call ours Green Pixel Studio. Citizens’ brand color is green. It allows us to quickly put things in front of customers and learn from them. The third component is what we call marketing transformation. We built 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. Five years ago, it would have been every six to eight weeks. The ability to rapidly use technology to test, to learn, to change, to try and to maximize our impact all comes together to let us respond to how technology is changing and how it’s changing the lives of our customers.

The BAI Editorial Team

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