In good times and in challenging times, Commerce Bank is here for our customers, team members and communities. More than 150 years of helping customers has taught us that life is complex, and the best moments come with financial challenges. We have a corporate culture deeply rooted in core values of integrity, excellence and customer focus, but it’s also one that allows the agility to quickly respond to a changing world.
As life changed with the rise of COVID-19, we wanted to provide the help our customers and communities needed, so they could continue to focus on what matters most. Whether that was by providing the latest information to help them make smart financial decisions, directing them to resources to help alleviate financial difficulties, or just being there during a time of significant stress, we needed to think outside of the box on how we could make a difference, find ways to strengthen the relationships we’ve built with our customers and provide necessary support to the places we live and work.
At the end of the day, we are real people helping our neighbors through a very difficult time. Our social channels allowed us to respond in the timeliest manner, delivering the things that were most important to our clients and allowing us to adjust our content as those needs changed.
While many in the industry went quiet, we completely revamped our content schedule and web pages to be present in the lives of our customers digitally during a time when we were not able to engage with them face-to-face. We are an essential service for the communities we serve, so we needed to respond rapidly with new, valuable content that provided information in a time of great confusion and reassurance that we were there to support them however we could.
We totally revamped our planned content to put the focus on what was happening in the lives of our customers. We developed a new, tagged section in the Ideas & Tips section of commercebank.com that covered topics like how to quickly access your economic impact payment and protect yourself from scams, planning financial moves to keep finances on track during economic uncertainty, and even tips for young professionals entering the job market for the first time during COVID. We deployed these articles through our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn channels, driving them back to commercebank.com to receive the latest information.
We knew there would be a lot of uncertainty in navigating a lot of complex and ever-changing information, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, so we helped to alleviate that by delivering quick-hit videos that answered frequently asked questions and demonstrated how customers under stay-at-home orders could best access their accounts. We developed landing pages that allowed customers to not only easily scan and find information that was most relevant to them, but also showed the steps we were taking to protect their health and the actions we were taking to support the local businesses they love.
We were able to showcase the efforts of Commerce teammates throughout our network, who were putting in countless hours volunteering their time to give back to their communities, from sewing masks to assembling backpacks of school supplies, to organizing donation drives for local nonprofits to provide relief where the need was greatest.
Throughout all our communications, we consistently delivered messages that told customers facing financial difficulties how to access help, driving them to our Here to Help landing page that outlined all the COVID-19 relief measures we had available.
Now more than ever, we all need each other. As we’ve helped Commerce customers with some of the challenges they’ve encountered, they’ve let us know what it means to them.
“Love how Commerce is supporting us during this time, by educating us and looking out for us. Thank you.” – Patrice A.
“You guys are ensuring safety and security for clients and employees. We see you. People will remember awesome companies who do the right thing in this time.” – Maylynn H.
“Wow, @CommerceBank I am so impressed with the fact that you care for your customers! Thank you for your help during this crisis! ♥️ #banking #youactuallycare” -Julie M.
To date, we’ve achieved a reach of 1,029,441 people with our COVID-19 content. While we are proud of the work we’ve done so far, we know that the situation is not yet resolved. We are committed to continuing to bring helpful, relevant information forward to our customers that helps them navigate what lies ahead and adjust to changing situations. We will continue to be involved in our communities and make a difference where it matters most.
