Voices of Discover
Reflections from an ex-employee as the Cap One deal is now final.
The Discover-Capital One deal is now final as of yesterday, May 18. There will undoubtedly be more coming as integration work now accelerates, and we’ve made our predictions last year and it’s time to see if those pan out - good and bad. But that’s not what this edition of the newsletter is about.
As many of you know, I spent 8 and a half years working there, longer than anywhere else in my career. And if you throw in the 6 months I did a college internship with them, it essentially rounds up to 9 years. This is a subject that I didn’t really talk about publicly until seeing the initial cold, unfeeling media reaction to the surprise news last year prompted me to share my thoughts about it which more or less went viral, and spurred me to create the “Now What” series here which got a lot of views especially from current Discover employees. All that, for those of you who have been here since then, is old news.
Today I would like to share some of my reflections as a new entity now forms. These are not necessarily related to Compliance, so if you’re here looking for that maybe it won’t be the best read for you this week. No worries, we have a lot coming in store very soon. For those that want to take a trip down memory lane with me, read on.
How did I even find out about this place? Late in my college career, I had gotten a B+ in a college class, and a professor told me he was going to “make it up to me” by facilitating an introduction that he promised would have an impact on me long after this course was over. He introduced me to the career counselor at our University, who facilitated my application for the summer internship program with Business Technology, and so I actually started off my career in tech doing a mixture of SQL coding, managing portfolio marketing campaigns, and working on intranet pages. When the time came to make a decision on what I wanted to do after graduation, Discover offered me to come aboard full time. Instead, I ended up going into public accounting where I was part of the post-busy-season layoffs about a year later. It took 4 years before I “came back to my senses” and found my way into Discover again, and the entire time between stints all I could think of was the amazing campus and the familial vibe. For some reason, the RAK in particular always stayed with me.
Stint two was working in Internal Audit, and it was frankly, a hell of a ride. My sincere thanks to my boss of 7 years, Michael Nesler, who saw something in me during my interview and basically strapped a rocket to me - giving me opportunity after opportunity. I got to prove myself as an IC, then a project lead, and eventually got to lead and grow teams for the first time in my career, something that has truly become a passion since then. These sort of “trial by fire” skill building approaches are rare at any company, large or small, but I’m proud to have had the opportunity to experience it. I worked, traveled, and made lifelong friendships with incredible people, not just my own team but with stakeholders, colleagues in China, and even external peers. By the end of my time at Discover’s IA, we had done some wild innovative stuff that left management consultants we worked with asking me if they could set up time to learn more about some of it, and allowed our leaders to humble brag at conferences about our direction.
The field, as we called it, was something that I’ll probably never experience again. Most of us have deal with call centers and it’s not really a pleasant experience. You have seen the Discover commercials, though. And the hype is real, the customer service is second to none - something that I hope Cap One does not mess with. The JD Power awards are proof of the fact that it’s no joke. However, all of this is one thing - actually visiting a call center is another. A few things stood out during my approximately 15 visits to Utah, Arizona, Ohio, and Delaware during my time at the company:
1) The floor of the call centers were a constant buzz, and not in a bad way. It wasn’t just calls either. There were little subcultures formed in different wings, with decorations, different shared snack days, brief huddles that sometimes included offbeat things like costumes, and so on. All to keep folks happy, motivated and connected while they provided top notch quality to customers. It is a stressful job, and I remain in awe of how these folks did that while having actual smiles on their faces (it’s not just in the commercials)
2) If you were a new employee and didn’t know how the product works, sitting down with the agents and watching them in action (or listening to their calls) was the best way to get up to speed. And as a bonus, because I was there doing audits, after the calls the agents would tend to offer extremely candid insights about the process and how they thought it could be improved, sometimes sharing things that their management wasn’t always eager to share but begrudgingly admitted later on.
3) Speaking of management, our senior leadership up to and including the CEO constantly visited the sites. Not to gauge performance, but to remind the folks working in these centers, many of whom were hourly employees and did not have the luxury of corporate bonuses, that their opinion mattered and that even someone with years of experience working in big companies elsewhere could learn a thing or two from sitting back and just listening to the agents do their thing.
Recognition programs! This was something that came as a shock to me when I started at the company and received my first “Smart Appreciation” coin. But over the years I realized how much these little nudges of encouragement meant to me and kept me motivated. Yeah, it’s great to get a salary, but if you want to ensure loyalty you build out formal programs like these. These extend all the way to the President’s Award which I was fortunate to win in 2014 with some of my fellow colleagues for revamping a training program, and the Pinnacle Award which is essentially the equivalent for those in the field.
There are some things, as I look back, that I would imagine would be warning signs for any company in a similar profile to Discover because let’s be real about it - the Cap One deal did not happen because Discover decided it was a good business move. On the contrary, it happened in the wake of a major compliance and finance error that cost the longtime President his job and the deal likely was the cost of getting over the hump for the $300M penalty associated with this miss. Here’s a couple of things without getting into specifics:
1) While a culture where you have folks who have been with the firm for over 30-40 years is amazing, it can also breed complacency and the classic “we’ve always done it this way” approach. Most notably, executive leadership remained largely static for over 10 years before undergoing change. Although recent years have led to a huge number of changes and management turnover since then, I’d argue a balanced approach is necessary.
2) Partnerships are critical. They keep you out of your bubble and give you allies and new perspective. While many of the peer companies offered co-branded cards or partnered with cool up and coming entities, Discover did not always do so. Perhaps the biggest example of this is in 2014 when Apple launched Apple Pay, yet Discover was noticeably absent. Eventually, we know that things changed, and yes Discover did a lot of hard work on things like international payment network sharing, but does anyone remember the last real celebrity endorsement of Discover before Jennifer Coolidge of White Lotus fame?
3) Compliance must be a priority and tone at the top on this matters a lot. Won’t say more about that but I think you get the idea.
I’ve interspersed some pictures from the 2012 “Voices of Discover” book we were all given after a company town hall which reflects the culture at the time and something that for better or worse, is going to change as the company, its employees and its customers embark on a new era. Thanks for the memories, and best wishes to everyone on the new chapter.
If you’re a current or former Discover employee, chime in with your comments and thoughts below. Would love to have this become a wall of good memories.