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Bank of America®: Innovation, Strategic Partnerships, and Personalization Demonstrate Value to Rewards Program Members Untitled Episode · Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360

• 0:05
  Mark Johnson: Good afternoon, good morning.
• 0:06
  Mark Johnson: This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty.
• 0:07
  Mark Johnson: I hope everyone's happy, safe and well.
• 0:09
  Mark Johnson: I want to welcome you back to another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series.
• 0:12
  Mark Johnson: In this series, we have the privilege of speaking with you in brands about what you're seeing and hearing on the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty.
• 0:19
  Mark Johnson: Today we have the pleasure of speaking with John Sellers.
• 0:22
  Mark Johnson: He's the head of rewards at Bank of America.
• 0:24
  Mark Johnson: John, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today.
• 0:28
  John Sellers: Thanks, Mark.
• 0:29
  John Sellers: Thanks for having me.
• 0:29
  John Sellers: It's great to be here.
• 0:31
  Mark Johnson: Absolutely.
• 0:31
  Mark Johnson: Let's start these on a personal level.
• 0:33
  Mark Johnson: I get to know the person we were speaking with.
• 0:35
  Mark Johnson: I've spoken with you a number of times, but I would love to get a refresher on you, your background a little bit, maybe pre-Bank of America and what do you do at Bank of America.
• 0:46
  Mark Johnson: What's your role?
• 0:47
  John Sellers: Sure, sure.
• 0:48
  John Sellers: Well, I've been at Bank of America for a long time.
• 0:52
  John Sellers: I'm not going to tell you how many years, but let's put it over half my life.
• 0:56
  John Sellers: Let's put it that way.
• 0:57
  John Sellers: Before Bank of America, I went to the University of Delaware.
• 1:04
  John Sellers: I also went to Penn State for my MBA.
• 1:07
  John Sellers: At Bank of America, I would really put my career into two chunks.
• 1:14
  John Sellers: The first chunk I was in risk strategy.
• 1:18
  John Sellers: I used to manage a team of folks analytical folks that drove all the strategies around, mainly credit card line up, line down, authorizations, those type of things.
• 1:29
  John Sellers: Then the second half of my career has really been in product.
• 1:32
  John Sellers: I've worked in credit card, auto lending, investments, et cetera.
• 1:38
  John Sellers: For the last eight or nine years I've really focused on rewards.
• 1:42
  John Sellers: On the personal side, I am now, as of this year, an empty nester.
• 1:50
  John Sellers: I have three kids.
• 1:51
  John Sellers: One actually has a job, he's graduated.
• 1:55
  John Sellers: He's working in Manhattan.
• 1:56
  John Sellers: Then I have two that are in college, one at Miami of Ohio and one at St.
• 2:03
  John Sellers: Andrews in Scotland.
• 2:05
  Mark Johnson: That's great.
• 2:05
  Mark Johnson: Miami of Ohio, great school, obviously, St.
• 2:09
  Mark Johnson: Andrews as well.
• 2:09
  Mark Johnson: Is there something you enjoy now that you're an empty nester, a fun fact or a passion you may have?
• 2:18
  John Sellers: No, I spend more time at the beach.
• 2:21
  John Sellers: Now I'm not on the lacrosse field or whatever field.
• 2:25
  John Sellers: More time at the beach, which means more tennis and more concerts.
• 2:31
  John Sellers: I just saw Darius Rucker.
• 2:34
  Mark Johnson: Darius Rucker is good.
• 2:36
  John Sellers: A couple of days ago.
• 2:36
  John Sellers: Great entertainer.
• 2:39
  Mark Johnson: That's good, Jason Aldean, in your plans for the summer.
• 2:43
  John Sellers: I wish, I wish he's a good guy.
• 2:49
  Mark Johnson: Yeah, big fan.
• 2:49
  Mark Johnson: So, Bank of America everyone's familiar with the brand, iconic Brand.
• 2:50
  Mark Johnson: Can you give us a brief history of Bank of America, what you guys do and how you do it?
• 2:58
  John Sellers: Yeah Well, the company's been around for a long time.
• 2:59
  John Sellers: It started over 240 years ago.
• 3:01
  John Sellers: Since then, we've come together through many different sources to become what we are today.
• 3:07
  John Sellers: We're one of the world's leading financial institutions.
• 3:10
  John Sellers: We have over 70 million clients who have over 3.2 trillion in assets.
• 3:18
  John Sellers: We serve consumers, small businesses, middle market businesses, large corporations, as well as governments.
• 3:27
  Mark Johnson: Excellent.
• 3:27
  Mark Johnson: Okay, when you look at your loyalty program very successful, award-winning loyalty program, the Bank of America preferred awards.
• 3:35
  Mark Johnson: How does the program work?
• 3:37
  Mark Johnson: How do members engage with it?
• 3:38
  Mark Johnson: What are the benefits of the program?
• 3:44
  John Sellers: Yeah Well, it's an award-winning program that's really built around our clients.
• 3:48
  John Sellers: It all came out of client research where clients told us they wanted to be rewarded for their everyday banking, but they also wanted us to recognize their banking and investing businesses.
• 4:01
  John Sellers: So all the different products, fee waivers, et cetera, discounts off investments very simple requirements you have to have a Bank of America checking account and you have to at least have $20,000 in assets with us that can be across your banking Bank of America, banking products, Merrill Lynch or private bank.
• 4:21
  John Sellers: We have five tiers in the program Start at $20,000, go all the way up to $10 million.
• 4:28
  John Sellers: So we continue to incentivize clients to bring more business to us and, as they do, they get rewarded more and more for doing that.
• 4:39
  John Sellers: You know, from a sort of the way we manage the program is you know, it's easy to enroll.
• 4:45
  John Sellers: We make it really easy to enroll, whether it's through our digital sources, mobile or online banking, through our financial centers, through our contact centers, et cetera.
• 4:55
  John Sellers: We also continue to up to your clients.
• 4:59
  John Sellers: You know, every month, as their assets grow, we move them up so they get better and better benefits, you know, and we have a full life cycle of engagement around the program.
• 5:11
  John Sellers: So not only does it start with sort of your you know as you become eligible to enroll, but we, you know as we onboard you as you, you know as you become a member and you know as you log into our digital sources.
• 5:26
  John Sellers: We're recognizing your membership.
• 5:28
  John Sellers: We continue to give you communication quarterly, we continue to update and innovate the program around the benefits that we offer you and you know our members just have really responded well to it.
• 5:42
  John Sellers: Right, we've had a huge success with the program.
• 5:44
  John Sellers: It's grown from, you know, a membership and asset perspective roughly at a KGIRV around 20% year over year, and we continue to be recognized from an industry perspective too.
• 5:56
  Mark Johnson: So Absolutely so.
• 5:58
  Mark Johnson: When you look at the, you know program partnerships are a big part of your program, big part of a number of programs right now for customer loyalty.
• 6:09
  Mark Johnson: It's a way to have dual benefits to two more brands.
• 6:12
  Mark Johnson: You know, when you look at partnerships they can either work very well or they can be somewhat challenged or struggle, depending on how they're constructed.
• 6:19
  Mark Johnson: You know how has Bank of America traditionally looked at partnerships and you know what works in a partnership from your perspective.
• 6:28
  John Sellers: Yeah, well, I think you know, historically we've looked at, we've approached partnerships in the reward space from more of an aggregator perspective.
• 6:38
  John Sellers: So we've done a lot of partnerships with aggregators around card link offers and those have worked well because, quite frankly, becoming a sort of a strategic partner with Bank of America it's a pretty rigorous process.
• 6:49
  John Sellers: You know there's lots involved in terms of compliance and GIS security requirements etc.
• 6:56
  John Sellers: So that's sort of has led us to that aggregator route.
• 7:01
  John Sellers: But recently I think we're much more open to more strategic one-on-one types of partnerships.
• 7:08
  John Sellers: We recently had a partnership with Grubhub that's out there where we're offering members and clients free delivery service for up to a year.
• 7:17
  John Sellers: We recently launched experiential rewards for our high net worth and ultra high net worth clients in our diamond and diamond honors tiers at a million dollars and ten million dollars in assets and those have brought on some new partnerships with some very, very premium brands and bestowed travel agencies.
• 7:37
  John Sellers: So I think you know, to answer your question, we're very open to different types of partnerships and I think the extent of the partnership would really determine which is the proper model, for the best model for us to pursue.
• 7:52
  Mark Johnson: Okay, another area.
• 7:55
  Mark Johnson: It's very important to brands and I think you guys do an amazing job employee engagement, employee loyalty.
• 8:00
  Mark Johnson: You guys Win awards in that as well.
• 8:04
  Mark Johnson: I know you won an award last year and you did a lot to promote internally in the call centers into talking about how employees are our focus.
• 8:12
  Mark Johnson: So when you look at emotional loyalty, our social employee Loyalty, employee engagement, you know how do you put that first, how do you train employees or engage them a little differently and how do you see the impacts going forward.
• 8:25
  John Sellers: Yeah, yeah, great question.
• 8:27
  John Sellers: Certainly it helps any loyalty program if your employees are on the bus, right, and they understand the program and they can, you know, speak, you know, in an articulate way to your customers about it.
• 8:39
  John Sellers: I actually used to manage our employee financial services, right, so that was part of my responsibilities and what we did was we took the core value prop for employees and we made that preferred rewards.
• 8:52
  John Sellers: So what we do is, as an employee of Bank of America, as long as you have a checking account, we'll waive the $50,000 asset requirement to give you platinum benefits, right, so you'll get a 50% card bonus.
• 9:05
  John Sellers: Who get auto discounts, mortgage discounts, home equity discounts, fee waivers, etc.
• 9:10
  John Sellers: And Actually 97% of our eligible employees are enrolled in the program.
• 9:17
  John Sellers: Yeah, right, so that makes a huge difference.
• 9:21
  John Sellers: When you know our clients are interacting with clients face-to-face in the financial center, over the phone or what have you, through chat, etc.
• 9:28
  John Sellers: They can really relate to the program.
• 9:30
  John Sellers: They can, they understand the benefits because they're getting the benefits themselves.
• 9:34
  John Sellers: So that, you know, has been one of One of the you know the secrets to our success, right, and we continue to train on the program as well, of course, you know we have all the trainings that you would imagine Around the program, especially for our frontline associates, whether it's web-based trainings or huddles and things like that.
• 9:54
  John Sellers: But we're also continue to innovate around the training and making making it fresh for our associates.
• 10:00
  John Sellers: So we're doing things like I coach, which is really a Conversation simulator that people can practice on.
• 10:08
  John Sellers: We're also doing virtual reality right, where you can actually practice Client interactions right with the goggles on and doing all that kind of stuff.
• 10:15
  John Sellers: We're certain the first or second inning of that stuff, but that's really sort of cool stuff and I think our employees really get a lot out of it.
• 10:22
  Mark Johnson: Okay your culture organizations.
• 10:26
  Mark Johnson: Culture Is very important and I know a number of people that work for you or with you or for you, should I say they think you do an amazing job and building that culture right.
• 10:38
  Mark Johnson: The passion you have, not only for the brand, the program but the employees, is quite exemplary.
• 10:41
  Mark Johnson: You know how do you build the culture and what does the culture mean to your customer experience and customer loyalty efforts.
• 10:49
  John Sellers: Yeah well, our culture definitely Shapes our loyalty efforts, right.
• 10:56
  John Sellers: I mean, the purpose of Bank of America is really to make the financial lives our clients financial lives, our clients financial lives, better through responsible growth.
• 11:03
  John Sellers: And you know we have a culture of innovation when relationships matter, right.
• 11:09
  John Sellers: So you know, back to aligning to prefer rewards you know we recognize clients relationships, right, we drive value to our members through all the rewards that we give them and we remind them of those value and we continue to innovate, right, so that, and and quite quite frankly, the innovation I think is is the funnest thing about our culture, right, working, developing, you know, smart videos, or you know, working with AI technology and Erica to sort of fast forward our agenda.
• 11:41
  John Sellers: You know, working in the digital environment, creating a my rewards hub, all those kind of things really, you know, aligned to that innovative culture.
• 11:50
  John Sellers: And then I think we also, bank of America, stands for a culture of inclusion, right, we care about all employees as well as we care about all clients and all members, and you'll see that shaping, you know, the direction of our program even further in the coming years.
• 12:08
  Mark Johnson: Okay, excellent.
• 12:09
  Mark Johnson: Looking forward to hearing more on that.
• 12:12
  Mark Johnson: Personalization is another area that Bank of America excels, win awards in the personalization parts of customer loyalty.
• 12:21
  Mark Johnson: You have a unique process where you customize videos very important.
• 12:25
  Mark Johnson: You know how have you been able to, you know, capitalize on personalization in your branding and in your approach.
• 12:31
  Mark Johnson: You know how are you using to enhance some of the communication strategies that you have.
• 12:36
  John Sellers: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:37
  John Sellers: Well, it's all.
• 12:38
  John Sellers: You know.
• 12:38
  John Sellers: Personalization is all about the client, but it's also about the results, right.
• 12:42
  John Sellers: We want it from a client perspective, we want their experience to be relevant, we want it to be engaging, we want it to be satisfying For the result perspective.
• 12:53
  John Sellers: We see that when we do that, we make it more personalized, we get better performance right, higher engagement rates, higher sales rates, etc.
• 13:01
  John Sellers: And I would say the customers expect it, right.
• 13:05
  John Sellers: You know, they want to know that the brands are listening to them.
• 13:09
  John Sellers: They want to know that the brands understand them.
• 13:12
  John Sellers: They want us to pay attention to their specifics, specific needs and wants, right.
• 13:18
  John Sellers: So I think personalization all fits into that right.
• 13:22
  John Sellers: And, as you mentioned, you know we do a lot of things.
• 13:25
  John Sellers: We do hyper-personalized videos, we do personalized dashboards, we do personalized quarterly emails, we do a bunch of new tricks.
• 13:37
  John Sellers: You know we have a ton of triggers.
• 13:38
  John Sellers: You know, based upon the information that we know about Mark Johnson, we'll tee up, hopefully, the appropriate benefit.
• 13:45
  John Sellers: One of the triggers we're working on right now is, you know, if Mark is a member of our program and we see he's purchased you know, international travel he's flying abroad Then we're going to tee up our FX currency benefit for him, to let him know that he can get up to a 2% discount on foreign currency and we'll deliver it and ship it free to his home before he leaves.
• 14:10
  Mark Johnson: That's great.
• 14:10
  Mark Johnson: Okay, good, that's a great thing to have.
• 14:12
  Mark Johnson: I would like to have that last week before my kids went to Europe.
• 14:17
  Mark Johnson: That have been more timely.
• 14:18
  Mark Johnson: But yeah, I'm just kidding, that's great.
• 14:22
  Mark Johnson: So when you look at customer loyalty, the data can be very impactful if it's leverage right, especially when you talk about personalization, some of your efforts.
• 14:30
  Mark Johnson: But in the time of economic uncertainty strong job growth right now inflation is still high come down a little bit.
• 14:36
  Mark Johnson: But you know how can customer loyalty in the programs be a hedge against that uncertainty?
• 14:42
  Mark Johnson: How do you think your program steps up to that challenge?
• 14:47
  John Sellers: Yeah, well, I don't think I've ever met somebody who doesn't like to save money, right.
• 14:52
  John Sellers: So you know, and I think that's I really love this about our program it really does offer clients meaningful value, right.
• 15:00
  John Sellers: And the best thing is we can measure that value and we can make clients aware of that value, right?
• 15:08
  John Sellers: So we're giving away, as a program, over $4 billion in rewards value annually, and that equates to about $550 per member, and there are members out there Mark making tens of thousands of dollars or getting rewards value in the tens of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars.
• 15:28
  John Sellers: So, you know, I think that's that's how I think of it as sort of a hedge against the uncertainty.
• 15:32
  John Sellers: People want to save money.
• 15:37
  John Sellers: This is a really good value.
• 15:38
  John Sellers: So it, you know, behooves them to join the program.
• 15:43
  John Sellers: It, you know, behooves them to to join us, be a member, do more business with Bank of America, because the more they do, the more they'll save.
• 15:52
  Mark Johnson: Excellent when you look at your customers different, different tiers, different segments, different interests but everyone changed.
• 16:03
  Mark Johnson: Going into COVID changed, going out of COVID, expectations are changing.
• 16:07
  Mark Johnson: How do you think your customers have changed, have evolved, and you know how are you addressing that as an organization at Bank of America.
• 16:17
  John Sellers: Yeah, well, you know, I think it's pretty, pretty commonplace in the industry and the marketplace.
• 16:24
  John Sellers: You know folks stayed at home during COVID.
• 16:27
  John Sellers: People were more digitally active.
• 16:29
  John Sellers: We had historically experienced most of our program enrollments in the financial center channel right, that changed during COVID and the digital channels, whether it was mobile or online banking, were our highest enrollment channels and I think you know our digital engagement soared right.
• 16:53
  John Sellers: So we, over 80% of our members, are digitally engaged with us right on a regular basis.
• 16:59
  John Sellers: So as we've come out of COVID, you know some of those numbers have backed down a little bit, meaning, you know, we're seeing more people walking into the financial centers, more traffic, we're seeing more spend, you know, especially on the travel front.
• 17:15
  John Sellers: But I think that digital engagement, you know we sort of fast forwarded a little bit.
• 17:22
  John Sellers: You know COVID helped fast forward our clients and we're seeing that digital engagement continue to be high.
• 17:30
  Mark Johnson: Okay.
• 17:31
  John Sellers: Right.
• 17:31
  John Sellers: So that's a good thing right.
• 17:33
  John Sellers: And you know we pride ourselves on our digital experience, our sort of high tech, high touch strategy, and you know our app and digital experience is really award winning in the industry.
• 17:47
  John Sellers: And I think we do a lot of focus in that experience around rewards whether it's my rewards, one single destination for everything, rewards related the way we greet you, the way we tee up the opportunities with rewards in our digital experience.
• 18:03
  John Sellers: So I think that's a benefit for our program and a benefit for our members as well.
• 18:08
  Mark Johnson: Okay, when you look at other programs, that customer loyalty programs or even just drive unique customer loyalty to you, you know, are there some brands that you think do a good job, that you're loyal to and you know what do you like about their offerings.
• 18:23
  Mark Johnson: Why are you loyal?
• 18:24
  John Sellers: Well, first, there's a ton of brands out there.
• 18:26
  John Sellers: I try to take a little bit from everybody, but if I had to sort of boil it down to two Marriott and Amazon, I think, are two that I, you know, respect a lot from the fact that they've been able to sort of.
• 18:39
  John Sellers: They've developed this simplified, unified sort of naming structure right under Bonvoy and Prime.
• 18:46
  John Sellers: They brought a lot under that and it's really sort of, you know, they're not a fragmented model, so I take a lot of inspiration from that.
• 18:55
  John Sellers: I also think they have a diverse both of them have a diverse set of chassis, or a diverse chassis with a lot of different benefits, and really their rewards are almost available to all right.
• 19:08
  John Sellers: So, as I think about the direction that we went ahead, that's very compelling and I like that inclusive, streamlined model that both of them have.
• 19:20
  Mark Johnson: Okay, excellent Two.
• 19:22
  Mark Johnson: You know venerable programs for sure, kind of some of the stall works in the industry, so it's great to hear that.
• 19:28
  Mark Johnson: And then the last question, somewhat self-serving you know, what can Loyalty 360 do to help you and your team and their customer loyalty journey?
• 19:37
  John Sellers: Yeah, I think, well, one is just you know inspiration, right, I think you know it's inspiring, sort of, you know, having a form to connect with other.
• 19:47
  John Sellers: You know loyalty professionals throughout the, throughout the marketplace, and see what others are doing and learn from others and figure out you know how you know something in a completely different industry might make sense in the financial industry.
• 20:03
  John Sellers: So I think you know that inspiration and sort of learning best demonstrated practices and then just you know, building our network, making us, you know, developing the connections in the, in the loyalty industry that help us further our business.
• 20:20
  John Sellers: You know you guys do a great job in in terms of your, your conferences and your numerous sort of digital forums and meeting invites, et cetera, around various topics that you know make it interesting and something you know, there's always something to learn out there, right?
• 20:37
  John Sellers: So I appreciate that.
• 20:39
  Mark Johnson: I appreciate that feedback as well and thank you, Ben, to find that you find value and I appreciate all of you to see all your participation.
• 20:47
  Mark Johnson: Okay, so thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today, john.
• 20:50
  Mark Johnson: It's always great to catch up and hear about a little more about you.
• 20:53
  Mark Johnson: But to the program and how you're focusing on adding value to the program and also the passion you have for not only the brand but the employees and just the whole process.
• 21:02
  Mark Johnson: It kind of you exude confidence and passion, which is you don't always have in some of these interviews, but with you it's always front and center.
• 21:09
  Mark Johnson: It's always great to hear.
• 21:11
  John Sellers: I appreciate that.
• 21:12
  John Sellers: Thank you very much.
• 21:14
  Mark Johnson: Absolutely, and thank you everyone for taking the time to listen today.
• 21:16
  Mark Johnson: Make sure you join us back for another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty Series soon.
• 21:19
  Mark Johnson: Have a wonderful day.