“Every Time We Had a Meeting with a Client at Our Institution with Our Executives, I Always Sat on the Same Side of the Table as the Client”

Silo Busting 50: Frank Sorrentino and Alex Jimenez on Customer-Centric Banking

“When I meet with executives at banks, every single one of them tells me that they compete by how customer-centric” they are, says Alex Jimenez, Managing Principal, Financial Services Consulting at EPAM. “They can't really verbalize what that means.”

By contrast, Frank Sorrentino, Chairman and CEO of ConnectOne Bank, our guest on this #TakeItToTheBank conversation, is quite articulate indeed.

Listen as Sorrentino and Jimenez journey into the heart of customer-centric banking.

“When we have a meeting with clients, it's not about what products and services that we have,” says Sorrentino. “It's trying to understand ‘What are they trying to do?’ before we even talk about any particular product or service.”

This kind of customer understanding will be crucial in the upcoming year. Until recently, Sorrentino, says the economy was like a “small town, Little League where everybody gets a trophy…. everybody does well and everybody's rewarded and every decision you make happens to be the right one.” He adds: “We're now moving into an economy where I believe discipline is gonna matter. Intelligent choices are gonna matter. And I think there will be winners and losers.”

They go on to discuss important subjects such as the impact of digital technology and humanizing the digital experience, the role of the branch, how companies can optimize their activities in an uncertain economy, and more.

This episode, it must be added, features only winners.

Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon