An Insider on Top-Down Support to Boost Digital Banking Satisfaction

PYMNTS talks with Michael Tischer, senior vice president and director of innovation and design at Associated Bank, about how the bank’s approach to digital innovation is improving customer satisfaction.

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Associated Bank was already achieving high marks for customer satisfaction when the Green Bay, Wisconsin-based institution named Andrew J. Harmening as its president and CEO in 2021. At about the same time, the bank tied for highest ranking in the J.D. Power 2021 U.S. Retail Banking Satisfaction Study for the Upper Midwest Region, as it had long been known for creating a winning customer experience in branches.

Harmening, though, came with a record of driving growth and spearheading innovative digital products, most recently leading digital and omnichannel at Huntington Bank, where he helped earn industrywide recognition for customer satisfaction. Harmening’s hiring would foretell Associated Bank’s top-down executive support for digital transformation.

“Our CEO has been incredibly clear about his focus on relentless improvements as well as an extreme focus on the customer,” said Tischer. “We’ve consistently excelled at satisfaction in the branches, and that team has done a phenomenal job. We’re very eager and have been on a path to extend that to digital banking.”

Since Harmening came on board, Tischer has played an increased role in creating new digital products for Associated Bank, helping to establish a framework for continuous innovation. The company’s wide-ranging digital strategy has helped it recently earn a spot on Newsweek’s “Most Trustworthy Companies in America” list.

Tischer also noted that Associated Bank’s customer satisfaction scores have trended up since it migrated to its new core banking platform more than a year ago. With the NCR D3 platform, Associated Bank can be flexible in its digital development, whether by partnering with NCR, working with other FinTechs or building solutions internally.

Harmening and Tischer are part of a monthly digital leadership meeting that also includes the company’s chief information and marketing officers, who help drive strategy and adjustments to Associated Bank’s digital transformation roadmap. The bank’s customer-centric approach plays a critical role in digital as well as bolstering core features that customers must have by layering on new improvements.

“I think it’s easy within the digital world to kind of cut and paste other experiences that you may have seen, but we want it to really serve as an extension of the great service that we have offered our customers in branches,” Tischer said.

Tischer brings a design background to his role, with experience working on technology initiatives with design agencies. About a year ago, he began assembling his own team of digital designers, in partnership with NCR, and has grown it methodically as it has demonstrated successes.

Part of the team’s winning approach is its testing program, which includes a number of effective tools to gain granular insights that lead to better decisions. These tools include a human insight platform, a collaborative interface design tool and a user-space testing framework that enables subjects to work their way through scenarios to see how they organically navigate the solution.

Tischer said the alignment of executive support with digital initiatives at Associated Bank has created an environment that fosters constant product evolution. This involves the product and marketing teams as key parts of a triangle that, along with leadership, help ensure that digital investments are hitting the right note with customers.

“We talk about recurring enhancement and recurring expansion,” said Tischer. “This really allows us the flexibility to stand up and stand down solutions.”