Connect with customers
Your customers, just like your employees, have questions and concerns. Just as with your employees, you need to assure them that you’re able to serve their needs as the company moves forward. And just as with your employees, that revolves around solid communication.
“You have to feel like your customer is your most important friend, your customer is your most important asset,” Geiger says. “So we believe that regular, often and friendly communication is key.”
Because PNC is in a heavily regulated industry, there were mandatory pieces of information that had to be communicated at certain times. But you don’t want your message to feel forced. You want to deliberately reach your customers through multiple types of communication — phone calls, e-mails, visits — and each time you want it to feel like you’re talking directly to them.
“We had hundreds of thousands of customers who we touched during this merger, and we tried to make it as personal as possible,” Geiger says. “To make sure that they were informed so that they felt they were in control themselves, as customers, of any changes that would occur.”
Making that personal connection and sharing up-to-date information is directly linked to your staff conveying a united message and true concern for the customers’ well-being.
“Any organization collectively — and wherever you are in the organization, whether you’re the president or a business banker or you’re the first person you see when you walk into a branch — they need to see that you care,” Geiger says. “They need to know that you’re listening and that you care about what they have to say about their experience. They have expectations that they’re going to be serviced well. They have expectations that you’re going to be there for them. (It’s) the ability to give them the confidence that that is what you stand for.”
While the message is being communicated throughout the organization, you need to make sure that the customer is actually hearing the right message.
“Just like the avenues of communication are diverse, the avenues to know if we’re making the mark, those are diverse,” Geiger says.
PNC looks at multiple sources of data, including third-party customer surveys, monthly Gallup polls and information provided by leaders of each line of business on where their division stands.
By reviewing feedback on whether your communication has effectively cascaded through the organization, you get a better grasp on whether your message needs to be modified and what questions you need to better answer as you continue to move forward.
“That’s usually the biggest challenge of organizations coming together of whatever context they came together,” Geiger says. “Is it going to be the same going forward for me as a customer, me as an employee, that it was in the past? And the fact of the matter is that it never is. But you hope that you take what it was and give yourself an opportunity, when you have such dramatic change at your doorstep, that you look out far enough and you prepare to make yourself better.”
How to reach: The PNC Financial Services Group Inc., (888) 762- 2265 or http://www.pnc.com/