Blake Marfechuk

Blake Marfechuk

Senior Digital Product Owner

Arvest Bank

What’s been the situation at Arvest Bank on the digital side?

We’re having a big digital transformation at Arvest right now. We’ve started to introduce technology that we’ve been afraid to introduce in the past.

In the past we didn’t have a lot of digital communication tools or avenues for our customers. With the introduction of Video banking and Secure chat, those are kind of our first steps to transforming into more digital channels.

What impact is this having on your branches?

It’s not really a virtual branch, but it’s that virtual branch experience for customers who don’t want to go to the branch.

Before, we didn’t have a lot of the tools that provided those experiences for our customers. 

We’re a very branch heavy organization, so in the past going to the branches was super convenient for our customers. But with the pandemic, some branches closed, and we had to find a way to virtually serve our customers, and that way it’s here to stay.

So it’s just kind of been adding those pieces of technology that’s been a big project of mine, and for our team I work with – getting new digital offerings out to our customers.

What results have you seen so far?

We’re still in the early stages, and haven’t brought the marketing effort yet to make it successful, but our next step going into next year is letting our customers publicly know that we have these tools. We have seen some success in the departments that have started using it, and then customers started asking for it more frequently, now that they know that we offer it.

Our wealth advisors are starting to let their customers know that they have this new channel where they can connect if they don’t want to go into a branch. They can take a phone call and use the co-browse feature to sort out customer needs.

It’s really early and we have a very small team there but we’re planning to grow in that sector in the coming year. We’re going to use a proof of concept to assure there is a need and our bankers agree with it.

How has the Leadership Summit been?

It’s been a great opportunity. I’ve only been in banking for two years, so it’s been a great opportunity to see how Eltropy and POPi/o are coming together, for one, and also how other institutions are using the tools outside of our department.

We’re trying to do things in a certain way, and we’ve been able to connect with other leaders, and see where their failures as well as their successes are, and built that roadmap and strategy to use POPi/o and potentially Eltropy in the future as they merge together.

And, how we can use them and where we should really start to get in the door as an organization, and see where the earliest wins are.