Maybe it’s because Tim Huval moved from a senior human resources role to become CIO of Bank of America’s wealth management business, but he has a keen appreciation for the importance of employees, or associates in BofA parlance. His emphasis on the importance of a great employee experience to produce an excellent customer experience echoes Microsoft’s 18-month old experience Banking campaign.

“To serve the customer, you have to be able to look across the segments of the business, even if it is complex. And all that information has to be resident on a single system so you don’t have to log out of one system and into another,” said Huval.

“As we think about what we're doing at Bank of America, and in particular in the global wealth and investment management business, every interaction has to start with driving the ultimate customer experience,” said Huval, who appeared on stage with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the People-Ready launch in New York (see Microsoft is People-Ready, p. 24). “There is no way to drive the ultimate customer experience without driving the ultimate associate experience, and there's actually no way to do that without driving or enabling associates to absolutely realize their full potential. We get that, and we're driving and striving towards that every single day.”

Technology is the key to making this happen, added Huval.

“Our partnership with Microsoft is absolutely critical to us achieving that vision in wealth and investment management right now,” he said.

Bank of America is launching a new program called Client Connections, which provides associates with a total view of a client relationship. So if a wealth and investment management advisor receives a call from a client who wants to place a trade, he can quickly call up a full profile of that customer, including the checking account, mortgage, or other relationships the customer has with the bank. That information sits within each line of business, but Client Connections pulls it together and presents it to the advisor. Client Connections provides a 360-degree view of the customer, Huval explained.

“That enables us to offer a wide array of products and services to our customers. We enable our associates to provide that ultimate end-to-end seamless experience which customers ask for day-in and day-out, and that they deserve. Through the SharePoint work that we're doing with Microsoft and through our partnerships we will deliver that throughout the course of this year,” Huval said.

So when that customer calls an advisor for a trade, for example, if he has a question about his mortgage, the advisor can answer it or find the appropriate person and transfer the call.

Advisors can become frustrated if they can’t help a customer, and Client Connections will make them more effective. If an advisor cannot answer a question immediately, Client Connections provides information on the best person to take the call.

“To serve the customer, you have to be able to look across the segments of the business, even if it is complex. And all that information has to be resident on a single system so you don’t have to log out of one system and into another,” said Huval.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Bank of America’s Client Connections is an example of how People-Ready software can provide the information to customer-facing workers that make a business more effective.

“I think it's really important to take the kind of stuff that BofA is doing as a proxy for the broad discussion. Somebody calls, you want a full record, it's the person who's going to decide can I sell this person something else, can I serve him or her in a better way, can I extend our relationship. Information really is the empowering tool for that person to do his or her best job growing revenue, improving customer satisfaction just every day, absolutely every day,” Ballmer said.

For Bank of America, said Huval, creating a great customer experience also keeps customers loyal.

“When you enable your associates with world class tools, you hope to drive retention. This is all about people with technology as the enabler,” he said.

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