Walter Bettinger II - President and CEO Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab is a great example of a turn around story based on core vales and a belief in customers. For Charles Schwab Net Promoter® is the best way to measure that you are running your business on a core set of values.

Walt related that the bad business practices at Charles Schwab started with charging account fees to their customers. Because they were chasing bad profits they soon saw their Net Promoter score drop to -34%.

How did Charles Schwab turn the business around?
It began with a leadership change when Chuck rejoined the company.  From here the company defined core principles based on what they truly believed as a business and these principles were focused on the customer.

As they continued to change their business model, the company expanded who had authority to make decisions and empowered those leaders.
Walt did his own research as well.  One of his first actions was to call the last 100 clients  that left and the last 100 employees that left to learn the answers to the problems Charles Schwab faced.

Based on these findings they developed a strategy based on values they believed in. This resulted in the four core pillars for the company:

• Pricing values
• Client success
• Personalized relationship
• Help and guidance

Because customers were key and employees were now empowered at the front lines to ensure positive customer experiences, they held these principles as key to the process:

• Listening
• Simplicity
• Innovation
• Service
• Trusted relationships
• Value
• Honor
• People

With these changes in place Charles Schwab has seen large growth in its Net Promoter ® Scores. To ensure employees were putting the customer first, they took the additional steps of taking compensation based on Net Promoter Scores off the table and have in place a zero tolerance for gaming the process.  This ensures that the employee doesn’t do anything that isn’t in the customer’s best interest.