Haas IBD Blog – Citibanamex
Written by Michelle Boyd, Kira Mikityanskaya, Jack Anderson, Danielle Pinder & Neeraj Goyal
As the second Haas IBD team to work with Citibanamex, we knew we up for an interesting experience! Citibanamex is one of the oldest and largest banks in Mexico, and it has a culture of being traditional.
So how does a massive and traditional bank attract the young and emerging affluent, and adapt to an increasingly digital world?
That is the question we were trying to help solve, and here is a day in the life:
6:00 am – 9:00 am
We were fortunate enough to be staying in an Airbnb on the 18th floor of a beautiful apartment complex. The views from our apartment were incredible, and we were rewarded with amazing sunrises and sunsets – but more importantly we were able to get a sense of how large Mexico City is. There are over 21 million people living in the greater metro area, which contributes to some of the worst traffic any of us had ever seen.
Although our apartment was less than a mile away from Citibanamex headquarters, our daily commute regularly took over 30 minutes, as we wound our way down the hill and through incredibly dense traffic.
9:00 am – 1:00 pm
When traffic was light we made it into the office by 9:00am. The office doors were also a source of daily comedy – we are still not sure what their purpose is.
On one of our first mornings in Mexico we hosted an Ideation Workshop. We had 17 Citibanamex employees from across the organization come together to help us develop new ideas. Although this workshop was very generative (over 90 ideas!), it got off to a bumpy start. Just as we kicked off the workshop with a presentation about our research, we were told we needed to evacuate; a 4.7 magnitude earthquake had just hit a town nearby.
After about 20 minutes of waiting outside, we went back upstairs to finish our
presentation. We then divided into groups and tried to embody different customer personas. Our goal was to brainstorm the tasks, influences, pain points and feelings that these customers would experience while working with Citibanamex. These factors were then assembled into a customer journey, which was used as a platform to brainstorm potential solutions.
1:00 pm – 2:30pm
Lunch is Mexico is a production. Working lunches are not the norm, and employees regularly take an hour and a half to relax and chat with friends. We tried everything from going to restaurants nearby, ordering from Rappi (the Amazon of Latin America), braving the crowds at the wallet-friendly Citibanamex cafeteria (3 dollars for a three-course meal!), and even the street taco’s.
2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Afternoons were filled with team-work sessions, meetings with various stakeholders, and the occasional coffee break.
During this time we saw some challenges related to innovating across such a large organization. We met with amazing, intelligent and driven people, who were questioning the status quo and tackling big challenges – but were struggling to implement their initiatives, or multiple similar projects were being undertaken in different departments. For most of our team (who came from small organizations pre-Haas), this was an interesting education in large corporate culture and organizational structure.
4:00 pm – 4:15 pm
Coffee was an important ingredient for our team, and we definitely took advantage of the Starbucks in our building. For those of us who did not know Spanish before Mexico, ordering coffee was about as far as we got. It was appreciated.
4:15 pm. – 6:00pm
After coffee it was back to work, although on a few days we were lucky enough to get out of the office to learn more about Citibanamex first-hand. We visited two branches, one traditional branch and one digital branch, as well as a contact center. These visits gave us greater insight into both the benefits and pain points of being a priority customer.
After 6:00 pm
When we were not indulging in the amazing restaurant scene that Mexico City offers, dinners consisted of Rappi, Uber Eats, and a few homecooked meals.
IBD is pitched as an intense team experience – after spending all day together, we were still each other’s company for dinner. Our team made the most of this experience, and we turned dinners into friendly ‘interrogations’. We threw out the etiquette rule of no religion or politics at the table and asked each other about childhoods, families, career goals, weird habits, and everything in between!
Although we never fulfilled Jack’s goal of watching Ten Things I Hate About You (his favorite rom-com), we all became closer friends from this experience, and we had a lot of fun hanging out and exploring what Mexico City has to offer.
Here are a few more highlights!
