Banks have beenbuilt on trust for more than six centuries. Bank relationship managers, a specialized type of banker, are vital in maintaining lasting relationships between their respective institutions and their consumers. As frontline officers, they are responsible for growing the business volume by selling various lending and funding products. Traditional approaches in trust-building put too much value in physical interaction above everything else—with modern technology only acting as an aid in supporting the exchange in order to be perceived as more genuine. This obsession with “I only trust what I can see with my own eyes” on both parties is not unfounded as bankers are handling very valuable assets.
Digitalization has presented a new challenge for banks as it changed how customers interact. Digitally savvy millennials for example are expecting
seamless omni-channel interactions with instantaneous service delivery akin to the ones offered by tech giants like Google or Netflix. Media consumption has also shifted to social media dominating the landscape. Even information gathering has also changed, with Gen-Z preferring to learn by their own rather than under the company’s sales personnel. These changes were further normalized with the pandemic in the 2020s, which discouraged physical interactions.
Recent developments have prompted banks to invest in more robust information technology (IT) architecture, which has led to the high demand for top tech talent.Smaller banks adopted partial digitalization through mobile banking applications, while larger banks created entirely new digital banks as subsidiaries. The allure of scalability, efficiency, and centralized operation is also driven by profit as digital banks do not need to operate multiple physical branches, which means they can employ fewer frontline staff, including bank relationship managers. As traditional banks plan to close more branches in 2024, there is a need for their relationship managers to leverage technology in building trust and loyalty with their consumers.
Building trust through technology
To create genuine interactions with customers, relationship managers mustshift their role from sales and marketing, to a more consultative-driven approach as the former has been taken over by digital media. Bank relationship managers must focus their effort in helping customers make the right decision amidst the abundance of available information. This role is beneficial across multiple generations as it helps the older generation navigate the digital ecosystem and helps younger customers take their first step in their financial journey. These interactions may also be implemented in social media by offering helpful banking guidance without pushing products.
Synergizing customer-facing and technology talents is also crucial in bridging the gap between customer needs and their digital banking solutions. Relationship managers in digital banks must be able to leverage the data offered by various digital platforms. By triangulating information acquired in the field and available from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, relationship managers are able to identify the most effective interaction channels. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as # Customer engagement and % Customer satisfaction must be considered another piece of the puzzle in decision-making. This triangulation of data will also enable personalized interactions through digital platforms to generate closeness and trust with customers. In addition, this digital record would also facilitate seamless transitions from one relationship manager to the next.
Bank relationship managers must also take a proactive role in improving their bank’s various digital platforms as these are essentially their organization’s extension in the digital landscape. They should move forward with the development of technology and work in a more horizontal and inter-functional structure. Their consultative role will be involved in introducing the human aspect of mobile applications and digital marketing to tech developers. Thus, modern relationship managers must also understand the digital design of the ecosystem. While this does not mean that banks should hire tech talents as relationship managers anytime soon, the talent they acquire should at least have a strong ownership towards digital applications so that they can help guide their consumers in navigating this new technology.
Digitalization has been both a blessing and a challenge for traditional banks. On one hand, it has allowed them to revolutionize their offerings to a wider range of consumers through mobile banking services and digital marketing campaigns. On the other hand, it has also forced them to adapt their approach in relationship-building. While these changes may put traditional banks into obsolescence, it has also created a new opportunity for them to synergize with the new digital ecosystem.
Empathy has started to become one of the most essential skills that management should foster amongst their leaders. The Center for Creative Leadership conducted a study that included 6,732 managers in 38 countries and concluded that empathy has a positive impact on job performance. Namely, bosses perceive their subordinates (managers) who practice empathetic leadership as better performers in their jobs and it has proved to have a vital role across the business functions, such as Marketing, Customer Service, and Human Resources. Ultimately, it showed that embracing empathy within the culture of the workplace can positively influence the employees’ job satisfaction.
Empathy and Marketing/Product Development
In marketing, trying to understand your customers and putting yourself in their shoes, will definitely help you to better understand their needs. Consequently, this would help in creating and promoting the right products and services for the right customers. Empathizing is actually the first step in the design thinking process, which includes understanding the customers before you start to design your product. According to Stanford, empathy is an integral aspect when designing a human-centered process, and it further explains that the “Empathize mode is the work you do to understand people, within the context of your design challenge.”
Empathizing means observing, engaging, and listening to your customers; it does not focus only on talking with your customers and getting insights from interviewing them. It is about putting yourself in the customers’ shoes to try and figure out their pain points and thoughts concerning their attitude and behavior with a specific product/service while still having the perspective of a marketer or product developer. Marketers or product developers might even reach conclusions that could lead them to a whole new product that would actually create a need that their target market has not thought of.
An example that could illustrate this is IKEA’s marketing strategy involving products of flat packs and self-assembly furniture. One of the company’s frontline workers found difficulty in trying to get a table into his car, so he took the legs off to make the table fit. This led to an empathetic insight that consumers might be facing the same problem. To address the issue, IKEA initiated flat packs and self-assembly furniture. This example highlights empathetic reasoning in which employees are keen to put themselves in the shoes of customers, resulting in higher market performance.
If you want to better serve your customers and solve their problems, empathy is the main key to a better customer experience and should be embraced in a customer service function’s strategy and culture. When customer service agents answer their clients, whether it is over the phone or face-to-face, they should show that they care about solving their clients’ issues and offer better alternatives. This is one way of keeping their customers and turning them from one-time purchase customers to loyal ones.
Talking and listening to your customers in an empathetic way is one of the strategies that will enable customer service functions to handle difficult customers while gathering more data and insights. This could help other departments in improving their products and services, such as adding more features or even coming up with new solutions. Empathetic behavior in customer service also helps organizations in maintaining good relationships with their customers, especially for industries that rely on the customers to create their image of the organization through their customer service agents.
Empathy and Human Resources
Dealing with your employees in an empathetic manner will definitely have a positive impact on their job satisfaction and performance. Empathy should be involved across the different HR areas and not just in communicating with employees, such as feedback meetings or training and development programs. Having an empathetic attitude will enable HR people to gather more data for developing better rewards, benefits systems, and training and development programs. Moreover, embracing an empathetic attitude will enable HR functions to foster inclusion and diversity in the workplace, which is one of the top priorities for HR leaders and managers.
Empathy in HR has never been more important than today as people and businesses around the world are trying to recover from the effects of COVID-19. Encouraging and supporting managers and leaders to practice empathetic listening with employees is not a waste of time. While leaders and managers do not have to agree with everything being said by their employees, it is imperative for them to show their employees that they care about their opinions, ideas, and thoughts. With the challenges of remote working amongst others, empathy has become vital as it increases the employees’ sense of belonging and appreciation in the workplace.
However, some business owners might think that empathy is overrated and can have a negative impact. For instance, some managers or leaders may think empathy could cause emotional and psychological burdens that could lead to burnout. Moreover, it might even lead to poor decision-making as it encourages managers and leaders to be emotionally involved which may push them to make wrong decisions rather than focus on data and facts. Furthermore, some organizations might be worried that empathy may create a messy or chaotic environment to work in; structured and professional feedback meetings, for instance, may turn into informal chats.
Everything has its pros and cons, but it depends on how the organization embraces empathy in the workplace and to what extent. It is essential that organizations differentiate between empathy and sympathy as the two concepts are completely different. It is the responsibility of HR people to highlight the difference between the two concepts starting from the top management to the most junior person in the workplace. Moreover, setting the limits of practicing empathy in the workplace is essential; it is not about agreeing to everything being said by the employees or giving false promises, but it is about listening and making an effort to understand what the other person is trying to explain to reach a decision that can benefit both employer and employee.
Like any skill, empathy is good up to a certain extent. Organizations need to understand how they want to involve it in their culture and in what sense. HR functions should provide sessions/workshops or training sessions that explain the definition of empathy and the methods of practicing it. HR functions also should monitor how leaders and managers are practicing empathy within their functions and how their employees are perceiving it.
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Strategy execution is jeopardized when the progress of employees curbs. When teams lose their edge, their contribution to fueling the execution of strategy fades. Progress may slow down and affect the process of achieving corporate objectives.
Among the many existing solutions, the focus will be on overhauling theinternal communication strategiesto convince employees of the relevance of their company’s strategic approach. Internal communication empowers companies to engage their people’s creativity, energy, and commitment to produce value. Through communication strategies, management starts a process of conversion in which employees’ tasks are put into context and become the brush that helps paint the bigger picture.
What is a communication strategy? A communication strategy is a clearly formulated plan that is brought to light through various techniques so that everyone can row in the same direction with the same effort. Hearing and listening are two different things. One can hear the manager talking about the departmental objectives so that all team members can contribute to the organizational strategy. But it is harder to listen and keep the focus on the direction that should be followed. So, the question is, how does the leadership manage to do that?
Before thecommunication strategy is finally on the cusp of being released, leadership assures that the corporate vision, values, and objectives are absorbed. Then, through personalized internal communication techniques, they deliver the outcome that points the employees in the right direction to cross the desired finish line. In fact, the bond between organizational and communication objectives is vital. Suppose one of the main organizational objectives is to train the customer service team to work effectively with the clients. In that case, the communication objective linked is to ensure that all team members are aware and enforce the standards of care expected.
Guiding Principles for Developing an Internal Communication Strategy
Depending on the company, the internal communication techniques will address distinct needs. For example, in big consultancy and audit corporations, the challenge brought is to make the employees aware of the client’s problems and, at the same time, to appropriate the domain’s knowledge and capabilities that could help solve them.
The ability to shield strategies from disasters cannot be translated through a single communication technique. Rarely is the journey paved. The variable that changes the game is how companies want to navigate the set aims. Some of them like tobegin with the end, to make the outcome clear from the beginning, and if possible, to paint a picture of it and display it everywhere in the company, as Thomas Butta from Splunk reveals. They find it vital for everyone to be clear about the commitment that should be taken in order to achieve the outcome planned.
In a conversation with Costel Alexe, the former member of the Chamber of Deputies of Romania who now occupies the position of president of the Iași County Council, he revealed the emphasis placed on the bilateral communication set to create a close relationship between the management and the employees and make sure that they understand how important their role is. They prefer to rely on face-to-face meetings between the management and the coordinators of each department of the institution.
“Every week, the management has meetings with the coordinators, where they discuss the status of each project, the opportunities of implementing new projects and each department’s needs and challenges. Through the coordinator’s voices, the administration keeps in touch with all the employees, ensuring the communication flow. Also, as a public institution, the County Council has to comply with the national legislation, besides its internal procedures, when informing the employees about a particular situation. There are certain types of documents and means of communication used in the process of internal communication such as circulars and official forms,” Alexe told The KPI Institute.
The focus of the institution is on implementing a new internal communication strategy based on digitalization. “This is necessary in order to make the activity more efficient and reduce bureaucracy, but also considering the pandemic context and the need to comply with the social distancing measures. We have already explored the financing opportunities for such a project,” Alexe added.
It is often good to find a response as it will position you on the right track. In these fast-paced times, the clearer and visual the message is, the faster the essence is absorbed.
Here are just a few communication approaches advanced by researchers and intended to encourage behaviors that advance the strategy and promote improved result
By not sticking the puzzle pieces together, the picture will result as distorted. This applies to organizations as well. Even if good things are effectuated individually, they lose value if not linked together. In order to have a fruitful result from internal communication, organizations need to link seven components: strategy, leadership, planning and prioritization, channel management and content development, role of the internal communication function, face-to-face communication, and impact measurement.
The first element is achieved by having organizations clearly define the strategy, values and behaviors, and their means of communication towards reaching attitudes. By communication, the management makes sure that every factor that blocks the value is being eliminated.
Leadership implies adding commitment to the actions. When conveying a message, it should have a clear purpose, consistency, and focus.
Planning and prioritization mean having a representative team of internal communication involved in strategy planning. Being in touch with those directing the organizational changes, the representative team can reveal through their message the “why” behind the “what.” Each initiative should have a communication plan, and while conveying the message, monitoring the employees reactions is vital. By having the communicators focus on corporate objectives and not only on communication objectives, they will be explicit about what people need to do differently.
Channel management and content development are critical for employees to spot the connection among the changes and prioritize what they need to get done. Therefore, communicators need to add meaning to the message and highlight the important points. Therefore, choosing the right channel for communicating a piece of information is gold.
The role ofinternal communication function is impactful if the communicators have access to decision makers and the overall objectives set. In some companies, the narrow focus of messengers blocks the value that could be added, and that is because the department is not as close as it should be to the heart of the organization. They should not only master the art of communication but should also present skills for business strategy understanding. To conclude, in order to translate a sentence into action, one needs to understand what that action is about, and they do not serve as an ideas production department.
Face-to-face communication is important in information distribution. Eventually, communication happens between the ears, while the information can happen over wires. Interaction is key to building trust and collaboration. The availability of technology does not substitute a direct conversation.
The last element, which is impact measurement, can be achieved by measuring results against intentions. Organizations can use key performance indicators to ensure that what was planned has been achieved. Tracking the communication efforts provides an overview of the outcome of the communication. Another option is to conduct regular surveys and to include communication capabilities in appraisals.
By applying this method, senior leadership understands what motivates different employees and learns how to speak to each one’s motivation. There are two key words designed to help: by and for. Everyone is motivated by things and for things. People get motivated by ethos, emotion, or logic, while the same audience gets motivated for achievement, recognition, or power.
Once the people’s natural desire to perform stands out, one will understand what pushes people. If they are motivated by ethos, the leadership will figure out what authority should ask for the task to be accomplished depending on the degree of credibility. If some are motivated by emotion, leadership will be sure to add emotion to the project. And finally, if some are motivated by logic, leadership will make sure to mention the reasoning behind the task.
Through the motivation matrix, managers will have a sense of what pulls team members. If they are motivated for achievement, they would want to get the work done without hearing what a good job they did. What matters most is to perform the work to the standards set. Those motivated by recognition will look for pats on the back in front of their colleagues, calling their names at a public meeting and giving them recognition when deserved is their way of charging the batteries. And if they are motivated by power, they crave for authority, control, and the ability to make decisions. People who are motivated by power want the award only if it comes with a new title or a new set of tasks to be completed.
Therefore, the leaders that racked up a strong sense of where their teams are coming from can spot what urges them to produce.
This is the technique that identifies itself as the brightest spot on a painting and catches the viewer’s eye. Applying this technique will make the manager a master of communication as he adds color to his words. Depending on the internal communication channel, the employees might only hear the words without assigning a face to the message. By selecting one of the four categories, the manager chooses how to emphasize words and engage the audience.
Speed– The two components, rate and pace, bring value to the message and allow listeners to follow the speaker. Rate is the speed at which the words are assembled, while pace is the speed at which the thoughts are stuck together. If the manager has to transmit an important message, it would help to build up a bit of speed before arriving at the central thing and then slow down while saying the main information that he wants people to bear in mind. Variate, and people will hang on to the words.
Volume– By alternating the loudness of the speech, one can gain attention and confidence, depending on the situation. In a big room, speaking at loud implies no fear and draws attention to the message. On the other hand, whispering forces the audience to focus and listen.
Stress– It does not refer to the stress faced when trying to meet a deadline, but the one that is applied to a word in order to emphasize something. By changing the stress, a word can be either lengthened or shortened. Applying this third pawn, the author holds the power over the importance of his sayings.
Inflection– Inflection measures the pitch of the message, attaching authority to the one who delivers it. For instance, when asking a question, the pitch goes up at the end of the phrase. Continuing so gives the impression of multiple questions asked. Lowering the pitch in a sentence provides authority and expresses confidence.
In conclusion, business objectives need to be clearly translated for all organizational layers. Internal communication serves as a bridge, connecting those who know what needs to be changed to those who have the power to make it happen. Once the bridge is built, everyone has been provided with a shared understanding of the company’s issues as well as of the “whys” behind the “whats.” The essential assets of an integrated communication are management credibility and trust.
Nowadays, organizations need to learn more than ever to confront difficult situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and economic risks. Thus, they need to learn how to quickly adapt to the unpredictable in order to remain competitive.
Continuous improvement is based on learning and transferring knowledge to modify behaviors and achieve great results.
This concept of “learning organizations” was introduced in the 90s. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, described learning organizations as “organizations that encourage adaptive and generative learning, encouraging their employees to think outside the box and work in conjunction with other employees to find the best answer to any problem.”
In this context, “Lessons Learned” is an important tool for learning organizations. It consists of knowledge obtained during a project and should be considered in future actions to improve performance.
This knowledge should be stored in a database, such as Lessons Learned Register or via wiki. Using this tool, the project manager benefits from a great opportunity to learn from the experience of others and help them improve the profitability of the business.
Lessons Learned reflects both the positive and negative experiences of a project and can be categorized as:
Informational (e.g., how employees’ duties could change during times of emergencies)
Successful (e.g., capture effective responses to a crisis)
Problem (e.g., describe examples of actions that failed and potential ways to resolve them).
Capturing Lessons Learned should be a continuous effort throughout the life of any project and should be initiated from the beginning of the project.
Capture: It refers to bringing together information or knowledge from different sources that could be valuable for future projects. Lessons learned can be captured through text, audio, video, or image.
Store: It implies defining and deciding on the environment where Lessons Learned will be stored.
Verify: It consists of validating Lessons Learned for correctness, consistency, redundancy, and relevancy.
Distribute or Disseminate: It means spreading the knowledge in the Lessons Learned to a team, department, or organization.
Apply or Reuse: It refers to making the Lessons Learned useful to current and further projects.
Withdraw: It means recognizing when a Lesson Learned is no longer useful to current and further projects.
One option to identify Lessons Learned, is to organize Lessons Learned Sessions with the project team. During these sessions, the team members will be asked to respond to a survey which includes questions related to activities that go well, activities that do not go according to the plan, and recommended improvements.
Lessons Learned are documented in the Lessons Learned Register, which is intended to assist an organization in identifying better opportunities for improving their management practices and promote the Lessons Learned and evidence of better practices observed from a project.
Some important fields that should be included in the Lessons Learned Register are:
Category
Description of the situation
Problem/Success
Impact
Action Taken
Recommendation
The Lessons Learned Register may also include other fields considered relevant by each organization.
The knowledge gained and recorded in the Lessons Learned Register should be shared and used by project managers, team members, and leadership to decide on further projects’ activities.
Once the Lessons Learned are identified and documented, the organization should release the necessary resources to apply them. These can also include a change in culture.
Thus, organizations should strive to build a culture that recognizes when things go right and when things don’t go as planned. They can benefit from each experience and improve performance by using Lessons Learned.
