Wachovia Wins 1to1 Impact Award for Customer Strategy

Each year 1to1^® Magazine presents its 1to1 Impact Awards to organizations that have shown outstanding achievement in delivering business results through their customer strategies. SAS customer Wachovia is the recipient of the 6^th Annual 1to1 Impact Award for customer strategy. Wachovia was selected for demonstrating its ability to identify, differentiate and interact with customers according to their needs and values.

The 1to1 Impact Award also recognizes Wachovia’s commitment and ability to measure the effectiveness of its strategy and its impact on the bottom line. 

“Wachovia is honored to receive the 1to1 Impact Award for customer strategy,” says Dan Thorpe, Senior Vice President and Statistics and Modeling Director of Wachovia’s Customer Analysis, Research and Targeting (CART) Group. “Customer satisfaction has always been extremely important to Wachovia. Using SAS, Wachovia provides customer analysis for each unique channel and banking group, including wholesale banking, the Wachovia Direct Access call center and the eCommerce division. This helps Wachovia decide how to spend its marketing dollars to address a customer's unique needs and provide more targeted customer service.”

Kay Lemon, PhD, Associate Professor of Marketing at Boston College Carroll School of Management and an independent judge in the awards process, says Wachovia’s strategy “is a strong cross-functional effort, and that its success within one aspect of the organization is leading to organic growth of the approach in other areas of the organization.”

Understanding the needs of 13 million customers
Using SAS^® software for analysis and reporting, Wachovia rigorously measures customer behavior and insights and applies that information to drive business decisions. The bank harnesses the power of SAS to analyze survey results alongside historical customer data on Wachovia’s 13 million customers. With these results, the bank can understand what loyalty means to Wachovia and what drivers affect customer loyalty. 

Wachovia consistently outscores its peers in the esteemed American Customer Satisfaction Index compiled annually by the University of Michigan. And according to Gallup surveys, more than half of Wachovia’s customers would gladly recommend the bank to a friend. 

Wachovia’s next step in its customer intelligence initiative is to define customer equity – a lifetime measurement of how much value each customer brings to the bank and, more importantly, how Wachovia can improve each customer’s value. To accomplish this plan, Wachovia is depending on SAS to assist in the complex analysis and data management.