interactions magazine | The Business of Customer Experience: Lessons Learned at Wells Fargo

The Business of Customer Experience: Lessons Learned at Wells Fargo
Secil Watson

I joined Wells Fargo five years ago in the online strategy team, with a background in management consulting, marketing, servicing and e-learning. My first assignment was to evaluate consulting companies that could help us leverage the Internet as a sales channel for the bank. I sat through many presentations that focused on traditional tools of marketing: lots of segmentation work, with personalization as a must-have capability, and a dominant outbound mentality that centered around knowing what to offer the customer. At the same time, our homepage needed work. Marketing banners took up much of the page (and you can imagine the space left for content in a 2002 screen resolution); and while our web traffic consisted predominantly of consumers, we rotated banners advertising commercial banking products together with small business and consumer products. Customer service links took several click-throughs to reach, and the ability to sign in to view accounts - which represented 80% all site traffic at the time - was stashed away in the corner, visible only as a small button. The option to enroll in online banking was overshadowed by allowing customers to “personalize” the site, which meant, among other things, being able to receive stock quotes, weather news and horoscopes…

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Posted by Indi Young on January 25th, 2008 at 3:58 pm:

I have also written a blog post about this article, available here.

For more information...
By Richard Anderson on December 27th, 2007.

In the print magazine, I introduce this article in this way:

"Of the many executives I've come to know who oversee corporate experience research and design personnel and activities, Secil Watson of Wells Fargo is one of the most insightful and inspirational. Members of her staff agree, praising 'her leadership and vision -- she has the brain of a businesswoman, heart of a designer, and soul of a researcher.' In this article, Secil answers questions that many struggle with: What role should 'customer experience' personnel and leadership play in a large business? Who should 'own' customer experience, and where should it be positioned in a company? How should customer experience impact the work of managers and executives? What does it take to move customer experience into a position of strategic influence?"

These questions have been addressed in past issues of interactions magazine, frequently by the most recent Editors-in-Chief in various Rants and Raves (see, for example, "It's mine..." in the May+June 2005 issue), by Susan Dray and David Siegel when Susan was the Contributing Business Editor of the magazine (see, for example, "User-centered Design and the 'Vision Thing'," in the March+April 1998 issue), and more recently in a Special Section of the magazine entitled, "Business Leadership and the UX Manager" (see the May+June 2007 issue).

However, I'm particularly impressed by the perspective and approach of Secil Watson, whom I've referenced and quoted on multiple occasions in my own blog. Hence, you can read more about Secil's perspective and approach there, including in "Breaking silos," "Secret agent (wo)man?," "Hail to the Chief!," "Moving UX into a position of corporate influence: Whose advice really works?," and "Developing user-centered tools for strategic business planning."

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