Michelle Ward Email and Phone Number

Product Manager, responsible for Debit & Consumer Prepaid products.Won Highest Overall Portfolio Performance award from Visa DPS for 2018 and 2019, and also won Pursuit of Excellence award for 2019.Manage consumer and business debit card portfolio of over 1M cards, consumer prepaid portfolio of over 85K cards and our Student Banking Segment. Created and launched a new Consumer Prepaid GPR product available nationally.I plan and oversee all aspects of the product lifecycle of these products, including acquisition, activation & usage, customer experience, and retention activities. I have one Product Specialist direct report.I have extensive experience and proven success as the Marketing Owner of my products. I created and implemented a customer communication lifecycle strategy which ensures we're sending the right message to the right customer at the right time. Within the first 6 months, 5 of the 6 showed statistical significant lifts in response rates, customer engagement, activation rates, purchase volume and transaction volume. I've dictated the creative on multiple marketing videos, webpage re-designs, print and digital ads, social media marketing initiatives, etc.

I am responsible for defining and enhancing the overall Customer Experience. I serve as a digital services strategist by managing cross-functional, multi-disciplinary teams to release online service features and enhancements. I create and execute digital strategies that align with and surpass industry parity. I implemented a series of digital communications and implemented those into our overall Collections Strategy, making a statistical difference in the number of payments being made, the time frame of getting those payments, and lowering the expense of our manual collection team efforts. I'm a change management facilitator by continuing to implement more efficient processes for operating expense reduction and more fluid customer engagement while ensuring corporate buy-in from executive management to front-line staff. I have been an Efficiency and Expense Reduction Champion by engaging the team in future growth initiatives at grass-roots level.

Primary role as New Product Implementation Manager where I managed cross-functional teams to hit select target new product launch dates. I developed various partner marketing collateral, designed Web Landing pages and compiled Press Release documentations. I developed launch strategies including acquisition materials, marketing materials and managed the exclusive Rewards/Offers/Benefits of each partner product. As the department event coordinator, I produced 13 Royals Cardholder Appreciation events and 8 St Louis Blues events. I also managed outside vendors (Bluestone Advertising and Reactor) as well as various client relationships.

I managed the Consumer Credit Marketing Budget - $3.5MM +, ensuring our LOB expenses was captured and processed appropriately by Corporate Finance. I was responsible for our new product onboarding processes which included collaborating with external clients and vendors and creating collateral and training materials for all front-line staff. I was responsible for fulfilling and managing all our various partner exclusive incentives. I maintained the status of being the subject matter expert for Consumer Credit Card and key resource for all external LOBs.

I executed our Customer Satisfaction Survey for two years, transitioning the survey from paper to web while staying on-timeline and reducing budget by 50% in the first year and 16% in the second year. I continuously refined current processes, eliminated inefficient tasks and executed new policies to increase the overall effectiveness of our back-office teams creating a higher ROI. I was also tasked with managing Consumer Credit's highest escalated customer issues – CFPB complaints, law suits, fraud, credit bureau dispute, etc. I was thorough, factual and swift in these escalations, often minimizing the bank liability.

As the Marketing Assistant, I coordinated all of our credit card statement inserts with various third party vendors and was responsible for the copy writing all of customer statement messages. I used this available space to help educate customers on product information, notify of account changes and to promote product usage. I drove the efforts of Consumer Credit's first sweepstakes promotion and by breaking those barriers, the Consumer Credit team has seen many fiscal benefits of these promotional campaigns. My highlight of this role was planning, producing and executing our 2008 Royals Rewards catalog. I selected and managed an outside creative agency and print vendor, as well as managed the merchandise vendor relationship in selecting and negotiating all merchandise prices. I brought new, dynamic creative elements that was previously missing as well as an innovation in new product options and offer packages.

In this role I was responsible for talent management as I managed five direct reports. In addition, I rotated as Manager on Duty with my fellow store managers to oversee all functions of retail operations and support staff. I incorporated corporate policies and procedures in the most efficient manner while ensuring the store provided a safe environment and first class customer service to our guests.