I was recently sitting on an United Airlines flight reading a customer letter from the United CEO about how "Actions speak louder than words." How ironic. By now, we have all probably seen the video. It showed a customer being drug off an United flight because a crew member needed to get to a destination for another flight.
The CEO writes how corporate policies were placed ahead of values. In my mind, an unfortunate aspect of this story is the United employees were just following rigid procedures, which had been put in place by United's management.
The CEO, Board of Directors, and senior management are ultimately responsible for the culture, policies and procedures of any company. United's management team should never have put these employees in a situation where company policies required them to do something that didn't put the customer's interests first. United announced they are putting in place new policies to prevent this situation from happening again.
I've thought a lot about what we can learn from this customer service failure at United and how to make sure nothing like this ever happens at Heartland Bank. I think it's rather simple. Our organization should always say, "Do the right thing for the customer." This might be harder to put into practice in a large company, which is why Heartland Bank is not a large company. We never want to be so large policies and procedures get in the way of our associates' ability to serve our customers.
As a bank we are heavily regulated, but we do everything we can to empower our associates to do the right thing for the customer. We call it our Leadership Pathway. We work to hire the best people we can, provide them with good leadership and direction and get out of their way so they can take great care of our customers.
I couldn't be more proud of the tremendous team we have assembled to serve you, and I hope you think we are doing a good job of "getting out of their way" as a management team. You may receive a call asking about your experience at the bank, and we are always asking our associates what we can do to make the bank an even better place to work. You have our commitment to do everything we can to deliver an outstanding customer experience each time we interact with you. Please let us know when we do a great job, and also let us know if there is something we could have done better. We will listen. We know actions speak louder than words.
Our valued customers are the reason we exist as a company, and we strive to remember this each and every day. I know I can speak for our entire team in saying we appreciate your confidence and trust in us, and we very much appreciate the business you do with us.
Thanks so much for banking with us!
John is the Chairman and CEO of Heartland Bank. He is the third generation of the Wilkins family to lead the bank. John has 40 years of banking experience in various lending, wealth management, and branch leadership roles. In his free time, he enjoys traveling and spending time with his family.
