KQ Article

Fulton Financial Corporation management didn’t know it, but the timing could not have been better.

The year was 2006. The economy looked strong, and public faith in the financial industry remained high. Yet, the bank knew it could do better, and its leadership team set out to identify strategies for sustaining growth. Almost every strategy identified involved customer service in some way.

“A few months after we began researching ways to improve service, Deluxe invited us to a workshop focused on enhancing the customer experience,” said Kimberly Shirker, senior vice president and retail development manager for Fulton Financial Corporation. “When we attended the workshop, it dawned on us. You can’t improve service without also improving the customer experience. The two are inextricably tied.”

The workshop focused on the Deluxe Welcome Home Tool Kit: a complete offering of training materials that covers every proven best practice for increasing customer loyalty (see below).

“We looked at a lot of things, but we kept coming back to the Deluxe solution,” Shirker said. “Deluxe had clearly done its research on improving the customer experience, and the methodology seemed logical. But what really convinced us was the potential for customization.”

Getting personal
Deluxe helped Fulton Financial Corporation take a thorough, objective look at itself as an organization, in an effort to decide how it wanted to present its organization to the marketplace.

“The meetings with Deluxe helped us define who we wanted to be from a customer experience perspective,” Shirker said. “We left these meetings with a clear strategy for not just saying we’re relationship bankers, but for actually becoming relationship bankers through our actions.”

The meetings ultimately led to the creation of a new brand promise for Fulton Financial Corporation: We will care, listen, understand and deliver. The bank also customized the Deluxe Welcome Home Tool Kit, renaming it Our Promise Tool Kit. Every employee was required to complete training on these materials, regardless of his or her particular role within the organization.

“The training made it clear that it’s all about personal connections here, and our people were delighted,” Shirker said.

A series of subtle touches now helps the bank live its promise on a daily basis. Managers greet customers at the door and take their coats. Employees orient their personal photos toward customers, as a means of engaging conversation. People are encouraged to be themselves and take the time necessary to individually assist every customer.

Progress through praise
According to Shirker, peer recognition is also a big part of the Fulton Financial culture, so the company used the Our Promise Tool Kit to launch a program for employees to recognize each other’s efforts to improve the customer experience. Staff members send one another thank-you cards, and a communication gets sent to the entire organization each quarter listing who received each card and why they received it.

“Our employee recognition program has been a runaway hit,” Shirker said. “We now get more than 300 nominations per quarter across our organization, and it has created a positive, customer-focused energy that is palpable.”

Shirker cites senior management support from the earliest stages forward as critical to the success of the new customer experience.

“We set up an entire communication structure around rolling out our new promise, with our leaders playing a highly visible role in urging every employee to embrace it,” she said. “Now it has become an inseparable part of our culture. Every decision we make is based on how it migh impact the customer experience.”

Perfect timing
In late 2008, just as the new customer experience hit full stride for Fulton Financial Corporation, the global economic crisis arrived. Many financial institutions contracted. Others closed. But not Fulton Financial.

During 2009, the company has achieved healthy increases in accounts, retention rates, deposits and shopping scores. Shirker directly attributes this performance to lessons learned through the Deluxe Welcome Home Tool Kit.

“Our enhanced culture has done much to instill consumer confidence in our bank, which has been especially beneficial at a time like this,” Shirker said. “Customers like coming here because they know our people personally, and they sense that our employees enjoy what they do. All of this translates to loyalty.”

_{© 2012 Deluxe Enterprise Operations, Inc.}