Ever wish that you had a guardian angel? Someone who was looking after your best interests even if you weren't aware they existed?
I don't know if you have a guardian angel 
in your life (though I sure hope you do), but I do know you have one looking out for your best interests here at Wachovia and Wells Fargo: It's a team called Customer Advocacy.
What do they do? Customer Advocacy stands up for you, the customer, and your perspective throughout all levels of our business. Right now, they're deeply immersed in determining how the integration of the two companies is affecting you and trying to find ways to make it easier and smoother.
For example, they recently discovered that upon the conversion to the Wells Fargo platform, some Wachovia customers were going to have their transfer limits reduced because their accounts would be registered as new accounts in the Wells Fargo system. The advocates raised the alarm and the product team found a solution that maintained customer's transfer limits!
We then communicated this new practice throughout the bank in an effort to improve your bank-to-bank transfer experiences as we continue to merge.
With the first state conversion planned for this November in Colorado, our Customer Advocates are busy outlining details of customer impacts. They're analyzing and documenting each experience across all internet services and channels, planning ways to reduce negative impacts and building workarounds where necessary.
And of course, once the conversion is complete, they're going to continue to fix any issues that pop up and make things work even better.
This Customer Advocacy team is growing as Wachovia and Wells Fargo integrate, collecting and analyzing customer impacts and experiences. It's just one of the ways we're working to make the integration of our two companies and your future customer experiences as good as they can be.
I guess I would like to know what you mean by "Wells Fargo Platform." Is this a new system, which represents the coming together of Wells Fargo and Wachovia? In other words, taking the best of both and creating something new? Or, is it the old Wells Fargo platform to which Wachovia customers will be transitioned? If the former, that is what Wachovia customers are looking for; if the later, then this really isn't a 'merger' at all. Especially considering it was reported by a business news company that WF was very interested in acquiring Wachovia's systems.
Does this mean Wachovia is going to be adopting Wells Fargo's on-line platform?
On the surface, it looks like a good thing to have this group. But, to be honest, its existence says a lot about Wells Fargo's culture. It says that most of your employees don't think about the customer during process improvement. This customer advocacy team has to come in after the fact to think about the customer. If everyone at Wells Fargo (on the back end) thought about the customer, then everyone at the company would be a "customer advocate", and you wouldn't need this team to come in after the fact. The customer should be thought of throughout the process.
And, let's be honest. Wells Fargo thought they had us fooled this whole time about choosing between Wells Fargo's and Wachovia's system. Stumpf said in a news article just a couple of months ago that they were still deciding which system they were going to use. Wells Fargo decided from day one to use their systems. It is just like they supposedly don't know the integration schedule yet.
"Customer Advocacy stands up for you, the customer, and your perspective throughout all levels of our business."
Shouldn't everyone at Wells Fargo be standing up for our perspective?
Do you know what would be cool? An ombudsman (but with a different title).
I have a 15 year fixed Mortgage at 7%, with a credit score of 700, can the Bank lower percentage, to be competitive with other Banks , lets say to 4.5 %%?
Wolf, thanks for the question. To get answers on rates, you would need to go to one of our stores or call a Mortgage Specialist at 1-877-937-9357.
@ Anonymous, thanks for taking time to comment. We believe that being a customer-centric company is a journey, and if there are new, better ways to integrate the customer perspective in to our decision making, then we are enthusiastic to adopt these new practices. While Wells Fargo has mature teams focused on customer experience research and design, the advocacy team is a new group that has the sole responsibility of centralizing the identification and documentation of customer impacts and how they are handled.
This work was done in the pre-merger environment with product managers, technology, customer service teams and communications. The customer advocacy team brings improved efficiency around understanding customer impacts and making sure the best resolutions are developed.
To the second point, there are numerous systems that are still being decided upon. The system we are referring to in this blog post is specifically the online banking platform, which will be the Wells Fargo's legacy system, which was announced in a previous blog post. Other system choices are still be in the consideration process.
@ Larkin, thanks for your comment. As announced earlier, Wachovia customers will be migrating to the Wells Fargo online platform. That conversion will be timed with the regional conversions. Stay tuned for more information.
@ Anonymous, thanks for your comment. As we previously announced, customers will be migrating to the Wells Fargo online platform. The good news is, there will be a combination of services that will be implemented to better serve our customers. As you can imagine, there has been a lot of work looking at what makes the most sense for our customers and businesses.
I like the ability I have n the Wachovia online banking site to be able to transfer funds to and from non-Wachovia. From some of the notes I see on the Wachovia site, it appears the WF site does not have this functionality. If we have to switch to the legacy WF system, will WF be adding this functionalty?
Hey John, you'll be glad to know that the transfer functionality is being piloted within Wells Fargo and is planned to be part of the integrated online banking site. Just another way that we're working to combine the best of both organizations to better serve our customers. Thanks for the comment.
It seems that Wachovia's bill pay is quicker than Wells Fargo's (1 day electronic payments versus 2-day). Will Wachovia customers lose that efficiency after integration?
Dear Doug C.
From what I'm reading on th blog is that WF had already decide to use their online banking system and not Wachovia. As a customer of Wachovia I have to say that I have look at WF online banking and it just does not compete with Wachovia. I guess when WF switches Texas over(sometime in 2012)I will be going to another bank or credit union. To me it is like everything is going to be WF and we have to live with that.
Do you complete credit checks on the consultants you are bringing in to work on the data conversion project?
When do you expect the existing Wachovia on line banking accounts being able to merge with Wells Fargo on line banking in this area (zip code 33990) ? Will all of the existing benefits associated with Wachovia banking transferred to Wells Fargo remain the same?
Thank you