Wells Fargo 2007 Annual Report Download - page 11

9
One Wells Fargo: Our Progress
For the past two years, hundreds of our team members have
examined processes inside our company that are most important
to making it easier for our customers to do business with us.
Their work is part of a way of thinking and acting we call
“One Wells Fargo” — a culture of collaboration that instinctively
and naturally puts what’s best for the customer first — and then
delivering it. Our “One Wells Fargo” teams are working on six
major initiatives:
• Deliver a consistent “you know me” experience for our
customers. Example: We streamlined the process for opening
checking and savings accounts by compressing the online
process from 15 screens with 18 fields to fill in down to five
screens and four fields. Completions for the new, shorter
application have tripled.
• Speak the language of our customers with clear and simple
messages. Example: We now have company-wide guidelines,
tools and examples of correspondence to help us communicate
with customers in ways that are easy to read, understand and
act on. We use their language, not “bank-speak.” For instance:
Bank-speak Customer-speak
Credited Deposited
Debited Withdrawn
Insufficient funds Not enough money in your account
Unauthorized transactions Charges made without your permission
Delinquent Past due
Delayed availability Your money will be available on (date)
• Communicate more effectively with customers electronically
rather than with paper. Example: Two-thirds of all our servicing
communication with customers now is available electronically
— saving 15,000 trees a year. We deliver one of every five
of our checking or savings account statements online only,
an increase of 50 percent in 2007 alone.
• Simplify products. Example: We reduced our “menu board”
of checking products from more than 20 down to six checking
and savings account packages. This makes it easier for our
customers to do business with us and easier for our team
members to serve them. We rolled out an automated tool
across all our Community Banking states and the Wells Fargo
Phone Bank for those situations when we reverse fees.
• Fix customers’ problems the first time they contact us.
Example: We now track in 14 of our 80 businesses and 15 of
our 39 call centers how often we fix problems for customers
the first time they contact us. This covers 95 percent of the
calls our customer service team members handle. This year, we
fixed problems for three million more customers after they
contacted us the first time. By measuring and tracking this and
finding ways to improve the process, we expect the number of
first-time fixes to improve significantly over time.
• Address recurring complaints affecting customer loyalty.
Example: Making it easier for our customers to reconstruct
where they paid for goods and services. When they review
their debit card, ATM and online bill pay transactions, they
now see the name and location of the merchant where they
made the purchase or payment rather than just the generic
“Check card activity.”
Working Together
Wells Fargo has been at the forefront of every major innovation
in financial services, including being the first to offer internet
banking (1994). How does this happen? It does not, we can
assure you, start with technology in search of a need. Nor does
it start with outside consultants. It starts with our customers
and the team members who serve them. Everything we do at
Wells Fargo starts with what our customers need. Developing
products and services to satisfy their financial needs requires an
environment in which our team members at every level (most
often those closest to the customer) are free to use their “what if”
imaginations. They then should be assured that they’ll find open,
receptive minds across our company willing to listen to their
idea’s potential. Then come the most important steps —
developing the new idea, designing the system, processes and
technology, testing with customers and making changes based
on their feedback, and then rolling out the well-tested new
product to the marketplace.
In our annual report this year, beginning on page 12, we show
you how our customers benefit from our latest and best products
and services — created by our talented teams — and how every
new idea we have for better serving our customers starts by
“Working Together” with them.
We thank all our 159,800 talented team members for their
outstanding accomplishments during what has been one of the
more challenging years we’ve ever experienced in financial
services. We thank our customers for entrusting us with more
of their business and for returning to us for their next financial
services product. We thank our communities — thousands of
them across North America — that we partner with to make them
better places to live and work. And we thank you, our owners,
for your confidence in Wells Fargo as we begin our 157th year.
And now we’re going for great in ’08!
Richard M. Kovacevich, Chairman
John G. Stumpf, President and Chief Executive Officer