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Learning from Wells Fargo from | Digital Tonto :
Ellis immersed himself in Internet culture and eventually hit on ethnography techniques, which had been commonly used in consumer products companies like Procter & Gamble, but were completely foreign to the banking industry. At first intrigued, then excited, he sent his team for training at Stanford university to learn how to perform ethnography studies.
It seemed to be exactly the answer he was looking for. Instead of having executives brainstorm in the corporate offices, they would get out and observe customers as they navigated often confusing banking routines. As they uncovered problems and experienced frustrations first-hand, Ellis and his team could devise solutions.
Today, Wells Fargo executives go into customers’ offices 30 times a year and watch them bank. Ellis has also created customer councils to advise where the pain points are and how service can be improved. To a large degree, Ellis has shifted the focus of corporate banking at Wells Fargo from merely devising financial solutions to product design.
This is the exact change the social and public sector need to take. Away from a inside-out focus on products and services to a outside-in focus on customers and what they value.