Corey Lee, Chief Operating Officer, Capital One Commercial Banking
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TechTranscript
00:00How about everybody stand up for a second.
00:02Everybody stand up for a second.
00:05All right, you've been sitting down for a while.
00:07Give us a big stretch.
00:10Give me a round of applause.
00:12There you go.
00:14You can sit back down now.
00:16I really appreciate that.
00:19Hey, I really appreciate your time here today.
00:22I just want to talk about some of the work we've been doing at Capital One.
00:26I can only talk for five or six minutes, and at the end I've got a request for you.
00:32One of the things I like doing most in my job as a COO is going out to branches and call centers
00:40and meeting frontline associates, associates that take care of our customers.
00:46We call them associates, employees, that take care of our customers, that solve their problems day in and day out.
00:53They show up for our customers.
00:55They know our products.
00:56They know our services.
00:58They're real folks talking to real customers.
01:02They don't go to conferences, for example, but they are real nice folks.
01:09But every now and then what I find, I find something super interesting.
01:15Every now and then I'd find an associate that didn't quite fit.
01:21In 2018, I was in New York City, walked into a branch there, and I met a lady named Kendra.
01:29Kendra was a super nice lady, been working there for a while.
01:32But she asked me a question.
01:34She said something with regards to something like, hey, help me understand why we get so many false positives
01:44on our debit card fraud policy with this specific type of transaction.
01:49And I was like, whoa, whoa.
01:51I actually don't know.
01:53I'm just here to shake hands.
01:55I'm just here to just get to know people.
01:57I don't know.
01:59But I rallied, you know, as we do.
02:02I rallied a bit.
02:04And I said, hey, send me an email with the question that you have, and I'll get it to the right person.
02:10So that was fine.
02:11I was fine.
02:12But I kept talking to her, and I got to know her a little bit more.
02:15You know, she'd been at the branch for years.
02:18She had done well, would love to do more, but the applications that she submits don't actually go anywhere.
02:26She went to college but didn't quite finish.
02:31This is a story I heard all over the place, at branches and in call centers and back office operation shops.
02:42The question that was on me was, is there something we can do for Kendra, something I can do?
02:48And I tried on a person-by-person basis for years to try to find ways to break this logjam.
02:57Because I know intuitive, customer-focused people are the kind of folks that we need, even in our corporate jobs.
03:08But, hey, I'm a COO, like many of the folks here, right?
03:11This isn't my focus.
03:13You know, I focus on automation.
03:16I focus on streamlining, process improvement, AI.
03:22You know, natural language processing alone is going to be the end of many of these types of roles.
03:31She's going to be in trouble if that branch is going to close.
03:35It feels hopeless.
03:40But there was a solution.
03:42In 2020, when we were all in the midst of our national reckoning and companies were open to asking the question, what else should we be doing?
03:52What else could we be doing to live our mission, to live our values in a really different kind of way?
04:04I champion a program called the Customer-Facing Associate Mobility Program, or CFAM.
04:11What this was, was by application, our customer-facing associates could apply to one of these corporate roles.
04:26They would get five weeks of training that we created in partnership with our HR learning and development teams.
04:35They got assigned to an 18-month on-the-job opportunity.
04:43And they got a shot at really making a transition that is just so difficult to make.
04:53And it was a huge success.
04:56We had, to date, 341 people, including Kendra, who have made that move across the lines.
05:05They're 90% successful, as defined as performing at or above the level of the incumbents in those roles.
05:15It has been life-changing for the associates that have participated.
05:21Absolutely life-changing, career trajectory-changing.
05:25It has been eye-opening for hiring managers who didn't know the value of a pool of associates that knew the company, knew the products, knew the services.
05:41Highly diverse group of associates that are ready now, ready to work.
05:45And it has been a boon for the culture of the company overall.
05:50It's trying to demonstrate with proof points how we're going to change banking for good.
05:58I'm unbelievably proud of what the company did here.
06:04I am really proud of my role in it and what we were able to do.
06:13But there's more.
06:14There really is more that can be done.
06:17A few hundred associates are great, but we live in a really big world.
06:21There's so much to be done.
06:24And why I wanted to come here today and talk about this with each of you was because the COO role is perfect.
06:32It is a perfect place to try to find ways to do different things at your company.
06:39Somebody earlier called it the center of the matrix.
06:43Uniquely positioned senior leaders who worked horizontally across the company.
06:52Understand the technology.
06:54Understand the people elements.
06:57You know how to get things done.
07:01And I would challenge each of you, encourage each of you to take your unique positioning in your companies and try to find a way to get people from where we put them to where we need them.
07:17And how to be a part of that in a really proactive way.
07:22I think it works great for shareholders.
07:27I think it works great for customers.
07:31And it is absolutely life changing for our associates.