The Price of Everything

Microsoft is famous for “dogfooding” their software - they use their own software internally.  This demonstrates Microsoft’s confidence in their own products.  Even more important, dogfooding makes sure the software teams experience the same pain as real customers. 

We dogfood here.  And banks are starting to do the same - or at least the hedge funds that own them.  Tom Brown and the rest of Second Curve Capital recently explored all of the bank branches in their Manhattan neighborhood.  From the NYT:

After the hunt, the teams returned to headquarters and described what they saw, from stories about horrible or remarkable service, to reports on flat-screen televisions that were meant for customers’ viewing but were occasionally found in truly bizarre places where the public could not see them.

Mr. Brown’s favorite experience came at a Chase branch, where he opened a checking account. When a Chase employee asked where he currently did business, he said he was a Citibank customer. “I’m surprised you want to switch,” she replied, matter of factly. “I have my account at Citibank.”

One team’s photos showed a sign in the window of a North Fork Bank branch, complete with a skull and crossbones and a message that read, “Closed: Poison.” When the team arrived at the next North Fork branch, the employees there had no idea what was happening nearby.

Dogfooding (and empowering employees to suggest change) can be very powerful for a bank. 

Bankers:

1. Make change less painful - you’re about to get a flood of suggestions to improve the bank.  Is the bank ready?
2. Encourage employees to use the bank - any common customer fears (bad service, privacy, etc.) are magnified for employees.  Incentivize them to use the bank (extra matching funds in their IRAs, additional interest in regular accounts, random cash bonuses for employees with active accounts, etc.). 
3. Make employee accounts appear normal - you want employees to get normal service.  There’s no getting around special treatment for CEO Smith at Smith Bank.  But even EVPs should be uncoded (exception: if you have high net-worth accounts, use your execs to test these programs). 
4. Reward good suggestions - it can be politically difficult to suggest changes across silos in the bank.  Award bonuses for the best suggestions - and the team that implemented them.

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