Regional banks solved for efficiency, now comes understanding customer context

When Pope Leo XIV called his hometown bank in Chicago to update the phone number and address on his account, the interaction reportedly went nowhere. At one point, he even asked whether it would help if the customer service representative knew they were speaking to the Pope. It didn’t, and the call ended. 

Eventually, the issue was escalated and resolved through the bank’s senior leadership. The story circulated far beyond banking circles not only because it involved the Pope, but also because it struck a chord with a familiar customer pain point.

Most people have experienced some version of being trapped in a process that works exactly as designed yet somehow fails to solve the actual problem. This has less to do with customer verification and more with recognition.

Banking’s biggest success story created a new problem

The issue is taking on greater importance across the regional banking industry. Financial institutions have spent the last two decades becoming sophisticated at recognizing transactions; many are now discovering that understanding customers is a very different challenge.

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For Jeannie Fanning, Director of Consumer Relationship Growth at KeyBank, the answer is not as straightforward as saying that efficiency, automation, and scale have stripped away contextual understanding in banking. “If financial institutions weren’t optimizing around efficiency, automation and scale, they wouldn’t earn the right to build personal relationships with customers,” she argues.

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