-: Hi, I'm Kathryn Swiniarski,
I'm the Director for
US Digital Card Application Experiences at American Express.
Yeah, so I work on the small business side
of the house.
I'm really passionate about how we can bring financial tools
to small businesses to help support their goals,
but my role and my team specifically,
we really work to make the application process
as seamless as it can be and specifically trying
to provide digital application processes
so people can get what they need quickly,
in and out, and start spending or get access
to the capital they need right away.
So, couple cool examples, we've been doing some work
around digital provisioning to Wallet,
so as soon as you apply for a card, if we approve you,
you know, how can you get that right in your iPhone
within five minutes versus waiting five days for us
to mail you a piece of plastic.
So my role really sits kind of squarely in the middle
of our business and marketing teams
and then our product and technology teams.
So we really try to communicate
what are the biggest outcomes and needs of the business
and hopefully those are reflecting what are business,
or what are the actual needs of our customers.
And then our tech and product teams are really the experts
on how to bring that to life.
So I think throughout my career I've had more
of a general management, operations/marketing background,
but really have come to learn how to speak the languages
on both sides of the house.
So we have both kind of paid posts that we do
across social platforms like Instagram or Facebook
or LinkedIn and also organic accounts that people follow.
And I'll tell you they don't hesitate
to tell you what they think, so I think we do capture a lot
of good feedback there and then
I do think the Amex customer base is one that still
has this connection to the phone
and to customer service
and especially our larger clients actually will have kind of
a representative that helps manage their account,
so they have a go-to person to provide feedback.
Yeah, one of our core principles is making sure
we're thinking beyond our walls, so how do we keep abreast
of what's going on competitively and one of
the key tools we use to do that is just usability groups.
So we will do, like, design thinking workshops,
try to concept, you know,
what if an application experience looked like this instead
or what if we totally change the way people shop
for products today?
You know, we'll mock those up in a digital flow
that we can take people through.
We pay them for their time, they come in,
and they provide really detailed feedback
so we can at least get a pulse on it
if we think we're heading in the right direction.