Customer service, Wachovia-style

Former hotel executive runs the show

To find the person charged with keeping its customers happy, Wachovia went to the Four Seasons.

Michael Sherck, who became the Charlotte bank's first "customer experience executive" last fall, spent the first 22 years of his career in the hotel industry. He took the job after a couple of years in a similar position for the bank's central region. Before that he had no experience in retail banking.

But Sherck says good service is a universal language

Wachovia, while struggling this year with financial and regulatory miscues, continues to tout its reputation for good customer service. That includes a seven-year streak as No. 1 among big banks in the University of Michigan's highly regarded American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Sherck, who turns 48 today, talked to The Charlotte Observer's Christina Rexrode. Questions and answers were edited for clarity and length.

Q: What is your job?

A: My job is to stand in the shoes of the customer, to make sure that every employee at the line level is doing the right thing for the customer. How do we do that? We take great care of the employees. That's the first step.

Q: How?

A: One, providing them the tools, the training -- making sure they have everything they need to be successful. And two, providing them the leadership so that they want to be successful. We do about 2,000 customer surveys a night with Gallup, and we recently launched a new incentive program that focuses on making sure employees stay consistent with their service. If they maintain great scores, they get a higher payment than if they just had one month at great and the next month wasn't as good.

Q: What's another new thing that you're doing?

A: It sounds like a simple idea, but we've started a program to call over a million customers in the next four months, just to thank them for their business. About 55 percent of the customers say, "Wow, that's great, thank you very much." The other 45 percent have a variety of responses. Probably the next biggest [response] is, "Wow, I appreciate your call, and I had something I want to discuss with you."

Q: As investment banking has taken some big hits, you all keep talking about the strength of retail banking. Do you attribute that strength to customer service?

A: It is certainly foundational. I believe we'd be far less successful without the great service that we have.

Q: Can you speak about why consumer complaints with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are increasing?

A: They're on the rise for virtually everybody. I think the economy is driving a lot of the activity we see; folks have $100 [charges] at the gas station and other effects of the real estate market.

Q: So people are more apt to complain in a bad economy?

A: I think they feel a little bit out of control with their finances, because there are things impacting them that they can't control.

Q: Why switch from hotels?

A: I was really happy at Four Seasons, but then Wachovia began a westward expansion into Texas and asked if I'd be interested in joining the bank. I couldn't balance a checkbook, so I said "no thanks." They called back and said: "We're not necessarily interested in finding a banker for this position. We want somebody who's great at service." I was still a little skeptical, but as I met more and more people at the bank, I was extremely impressed by their talent and their dedication to service. Probably what sealed the deal was I found out that they weren't bringing me in to fix something that was broken.

Q: Can you compare the culture of the two industries?

A: In the hotel industry, there is an expectation that you are constantly on call. [I got calls] at 2 o'clock in the morning letting me know that a guest was really upset that their toilet was backed up and there's a flood in their bathroom and they want the general manager. And of course not working on Christmas is a nice bonus.

Q: You spent five years working at hotels in Asia. Can you compare service expectations in Asia and the U.S.?

A: In most of the locations I was in, international tourism was foundational to their existence, and the staff was just extremely warm and service-oriented. Training and expertise was at the other end of the spectrum. I had an employee who wrecked a golf cart in the Maldives, and I was so shocked that he could possibly make such a silly mistake -- until I found out that he had never driven anything other than a bicycle. His island didn't have cars.