In 2014, Citizens Bank was quickly approaching lending season, so it needed something that could be in market within days. Relay designed a solution that accommodated every applicant connected to Citizens Bank at the moment an application is initially credit approved online, and tapped into its existing automated email system to trigger messages to applicants at critical moments during the application lifecycle. As a result, the solution vastly enhanced the customer experience at Citizens Bank.
Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is an American bank headquartered in Providence, R.I. which operates in the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Loyalty360 caught up with Mary K. Fiorille, Head of Consumer Unsecured Lending Business at Citizens Bank, to find out more about this new solution and its impact on the customer experience.
What factors prompted CB to partner with Relay and how has the partnership impacted CB’s private student loan program from a customer engagement perspective?
The Student Loan division of Citizens Bank was looking for a digital solution that would accelerate new customer acquisition and improve the onboarding experience in time for the peak student lending season (July-September).
The student loan application process has many steps so drop off rates were high. Citizens Bank needed to increase loan completion rates and re-engage those who had fallen out of the process. With peak season six weeks away, Citizens Bank needed a solution that it could launch quickly and flawlessly.
Citizens Bank WireTM by Relay (www.relaynetwork.com) emerged as the solution that would address several objectives for the business. It’s a new web-based messaging solution built just for Citizens Bank that delivers a persistent stream of highly-targeted, actionable, and PCI-compliant mobile communications that makes it easier for customers to get things done at critical moments. Citizens Bank Wire provides two other notable benefits: First, it gives Citizens Bank a simple and effective path to digital by rapidly establishing mobile adoption on the new secure channel; second, once the application is complete, Citizens Bank Wire lives on as a lifelong customer relationship management tool that can establish a broader banking relationship.
What were the results?
Citizens Bank Wire has met and exceeded all core business objectives:
Rapid and massive adoption: 85% of all applicants Wired; 88% of all primary applicants Wired.
Extremely high engagement with Citizens Bank Wire: Over 40% of Wired applicants engage with Citizens Bank Wire to address items that are missing from their applications
More loan completions, faster: Wired applicants are 10% more likely to reach completion vs. non-Wired applicants, and do so 40% faster. This translates to millions in booked loans and lifetime net income
Established a lifelong customer relationship management tool: With digital connectivity with 88% of primary applicants, Citizens Bank now has an unprecedented ability to communicate “mobilly” with its customers. This paves the way for Citizens Bank to have an ongoing dialogue on all future banking decisions.
How important is digital customer engagement to CB and this program?
The customer experience is always at the center of what we do and directly influences our business decisions. Recent Student Lending customer satisfaction results demonstrated an opportunity to improve the customer application experience by streamlining the process. Those survey results are what led us to Relay. 
What we learned through the survey was that the application process was too hard. Letters and emails weren’t always seen, and it was at times unclear to the applicant what needed to be done in order to advance his or her application status. It became obvious to us that the ways we’ve always reached our customers aren’t as effective as they once were or need to be, nor do they meet customers' needs for immediate and contextual communications.
Technology today provides a new ability to make things easier for our applicants. Knowing that mobile has changed the way people get and consume information, we took the approach of proactively engaging our applicants through mobile to inform them of critical next steps and direct them to the fastest way to take action.
Relay brings the same easy accessibility to information we’re used to in our personal lives to the customer relationship through a unique messaging application. It’s the only solution that gives us our own secure, digital space to communicate 1-to-1 with every customer. The possibilities that kind of direct connection provides are endless.
When did this solution launch and what has been the feedback from participants?
Citizens Bank Wire launched in July 2014, just in time for our peak application season. Feedback has been incredibly positive. We’ve increased application pull-through by 10%, and decreased time to completion by 40%. Even greater, we’ve established a digital connection with 88% of our applicants. That means we can now have a lifelong dialogue with those customers about their future banking needs on a channel they prefer.
What does CX mean to CB and has that definition changed or evolved in recent years when the Digital Era has almost seized power in the brand communications world?
We understand customer experience is personal and can vary by individual. That is why we take great pride in fostering a service philosophy committed to delivering a frictionless process that enables customers to engage with us on their time through their channel of choice.
Digital Technology has set the tone of immediacy. Our customers expect real time service and want to engage with us digitally online and via mobile device. We have made material investments to ensure our products and services continue to meet these changing needs through online applications with real time credit decisions, interactive online chat and through the integration of the Relay Wire.
How do you define customer loyalty and has that definition changed or evolved in recent years?
We believe that customer loyalty is instilled by providing a consistently positive experience with every interaction. Mistakes can happen but it is how you support the customer through resolution that will make or break the experience and therefore their sense of loyalty to Citizens. We do not believe the definition of loyalty has changed but know that the bar has been raised in recent years making it imperative to maintain a culture centered on putting the customer first in everything we do from developing products to delivering a seamless application and servicing experience.
How much of a challenge is it to stay on top of rapidly changing technologies, particularly digital ones, and knowing when to pull the trigger on any of them?
The benefit of working with a company like Relay is that we can leverage their digital expertise while we maintain focus on our core business functions. With Relay, we had the benefit of partnering with experts in digital customer experience and it was incredibly easy to get started with minimal time and resources. We were live and seeing benefit within 30 days with little to no impact to our existing processes.