Interview
The Gist
- Close the loop with care. Deborah Bearden trains associates to respond meaningfully to customer feedback—no generic templates allowed.
- Every channel matters. Simmons Bank meets customers where they are—whether it’s a mobile app, drive-thru, or coffee-fueled branch visit.
- Associates are CX leaders. Bearden’s team treats every frontline worker as a leader shaping the customer experience, not just a policy follower.
Dom Nicastro, editor in chief at CMSWire, sat down with Deborah Bearden, enterprise customer experience manager at Simmons Bank, to talk shop on all things CX, from closed-loop feedback and associate empowerment to coffee chats with customers and real-time survey insights.
With a background that started in the drive-thru, Bearden now leads enterprise-wide customer feedback strategies at Simmons—and she’s got plenty of practical takeaways for CX pros across industries. Catch her reflections on AI, personalization, training frontline staff and creating micro-moments of joy with every banking interaction.
Table of Contents
- From the Drive-Through to the Boardroom: Deborah Bearden’s CX Journey
- Closed Loop Feedback, Clear Language and Channel Choice
- Banking Channel Choice and Customer Feedback Loops
- Survey Strategy, Personalization and Surprises in Customer Data
- Empowering Associates and Using Customer Feedback to Fuel Improvement
- Contact Center Performance and the Future of Associate Experience
From the Drive-Through to the Boardroom: Deborah Bearden’s CX Journey
Dom Nicastro, editor in chief at CMSWire: Hello everybody, Dom Nicastro, editor in chief of CMSWire.com. We're here for our CMSWire TV show, Beyond the Call, and we got our latest awesome customer experience leader and practitioner who connected with us on a recent CMSWire webinar. So it is so good to be with Deborah Beard, an enterprise customer experience manager at Simmons Bank. Deborah, what's going on?
Deborah A. Bearden: Hey, Dom! Good to see you again!
Dom Nicastro: It is, it is. I'm so glad you connected with me on LinkedIn after we had that webinar. We had Medallia on there. We had some great—we had McDonald's on that webinar. So I'm so glad it caught your attention and, you know, talking about customer experience and insights and data and all that fun stuff that you live every single day. So with you, we're going to be talking about things like closed loop feedback, healthier conversations, education with products and services—just, you know, things that are like kind of important, I guess I would say, right? But before we get into the meat of the topic, I would love to know more about you and tell our listeners, you know, your role, your team and sort of how you arrived there.
Deborah A. Bearden: So I have a great team. My role is part of the marketing group at Simmons Bank. So when I came to Simmons Bank, we had probably two or three programs, and we have roughly eight right now. And we have four in the works. So customer feedback is always something we are looking to get on many different channels, on many different customer types—for both our associates and our customers.
So, interesting story—I actually got my roots started when I lived in Florida and I was watching this drive-through bank teller. I was like, whoa, she's got a fun job. I think I want to try that. And so I tried it, and from there I moved to Tennessee. I helped start up a call center in Tennessee.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah.
Deborah A. Bearden: And the financial services industry has been a part of my life ever since. And so I'm a huge proponent that the more that you can cross-pollinate yourself in different roles, the more valuable you are. So in this case, I'm more valuable to Simmons Bank. And more importantly, I'm more valuable to myself because I learn and grow all the time. It's something that I love to do. It's another reason why I lead the Medallia Mug Group—because I just love networking and learning with other people. And your show was a great example of that.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, speaking of the show, we have something in common because we had McDonald's on there—an employee experience design person. And I also thought it was a cool job to have, being a drive-through person—but it was at McDonald's. I wanted to work at McDonald's so I could have the fries. So it was a little different. You liked the bank situation, I liked McDonald's—but we get it. We like that experience, right? So, let's get into it. Let's get into the meat of the show.
Deborah A. Bearden: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Closed Loop Feedback, Clear Language and Channel Choice
Dom Nicastro, editor in chief at CMSWire: You know, with building customer relationships through closed loop feedback, you know, that's such a big priority for you. What's important about that? What strategies have been like the most effective in this arena for you right now?
Deborah A. Bearden: I have found over the years that when you are trying to coach somebody on closed loop feedback or the quality of their work, telling them what they do wrong is not the way to go. So I'm a huge Simon Sinek fan. The five whys—I love the five whys. Used it on my kids, they don't like it. Used it on my husband, he doesn't like it. But it's effective.
And so when I do spot checks with closed loop feedback, I look for quality. I look to see: did we address the people aspect of the feedback first, and then go into the process or the procedure or the policy? It's always interesting to me how sometimes we choose to do one or the other and not both. So I challenge myself to teach our associates and guide them to say, "We can get both done. Here's an example of how to do it. Now you try."
Coaching With Compassion And Tagging The Standouts
Spot-checking closed loop feedback is probably the top thing I do that helps me do that. Another thing I do is when customers mention an associate’s name—in my opinion, when customers remember your name, that’s huge. Even if they remember your last name, right? So tagging or commenting those specific associates mentioned in those surveys is huge, because they may not have seen that unless I did that or their leadership team did that. Drawing extra eyes to feedback they may not have made time to see is also a big thing.
And then lastly, fine-tuning word choices that we use. Being in the financial industry, we use a lot of what we call bank jargon. There's a lot of things we have to say because of legalities, policy, and regulation. I always say, try and tell your mom or your kids or your spouse—explain that policy to them and watch their facial expressions. See what questions they ask, because those are your customers. You have to dumb it down for people, because they don’t work at the bank. They don’t know what you know.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, yeah. Get rid of all the terms and inside baseball stuff. You know, Deborah, give me the lay of the land. When you're talking about associates, who are you talking about? What’s your team look like, and what kind of customer interactions are they commonly having?
From Jargon To Journey: Equipping Associates For CX Success
Deborah A. Bearden: So I'm part of the marketing team, and the marketing team is responsible for customer emails, the different systems we use to collect customer feedback, and the customer experience team. So we each play a part in making sure all of our associates know everything, that they have the tools they need to do their job. And then the rest is just small tweaks after that—gaining awareness.
I like to think of all of our associates as leaders. They're leading the customer experience train. Doesn’t matter if you're in the front or the top of the train or the bottom or the back, you are still a leader in the customer experience journey. So it could be tellers, new account opening people, or our leadership team—our senior directors. And I like to have fun with it. I don’t like to limit people by titles or tenure, but by content instead.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah. Banks are so dynamic in 2025 in terms of how they interact with customers. I mean, when I first got my checking account—maybe mid to late '90s, in high school or college—I remember I got a check in the mail from my employer or they handed it to me. I went down to the bank, stayed in line for 25 minutes, gave it to them, and cashed it. That was my interaction.
Bring me up to speed today. Where are the common interactions with customers happening at your bank? What is like the number one channel where you actually do one-to-one or one-to-many communication with your customers? Where are you living?
Deborah A. Bearden: So we like to live in the channel that the customer is living in. We get a lot of digital feedback, but that doesn’t mean all of our customers are all digital. I’m going to throw a training pitch at you: there are five ways—probably more—but five ways to bank with Simmons. It’s in-branch, ATM, drive-through, mobile banking, and online banking. So every customer has a choice of how they bank with us.
Related Article: 3 Must-Follow Rules for Customer Feedback Before Launch
Banking Channel Choice and Customer Feedback Loops
Deborah A. Bearden: Every customer has a choice of how they bank with us. So when we are training and coaching, you have to know your customer to know what channel they prefer at which time. So if it's my day off—let’s say it’s not a bank holiday—and I want to visit a branch, I have a choice. I can visit the branch. I can go to the ATM and get my cash. I can visit the drive-thru—because you know I have a soft spot for the drive-thru.
Dom Nicastro: Yep.
Deborah A. Bearden: Or I can just stay at home, watch my favorite show, log on to the computer, or use my mobile app. So getting the word out to our associates, as well as our customers, that you don’t have to choose just one way—there are several ways you can bank with us. And for Simmons Bank, it’s about us learning what type of customers we have. Even though I call it the five finger rule, you can use three of those ways at any time.
Dom Nicastro: So anytime—you give them the choice, they have the freedom and flexibility. Is your data showing that today, like here in Q1 2025? Where are they living? Or is it really that spread out that you can’t identify one channel versus another as the go-to for Simmons Bank customers?
Deborah A. Bearden: So because our footprint is mainly in six states—and then outside those states, we’ve got all-digital customers, mortgage loan customers—we’re best known in those six footprint states. Arkansas, of course, is our corporate headquarters. And I hear this every day from several of our branch managers: our customers love to come in.
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Dom Nicastro: Sure. Okay.
Deborah A. Bearden: They love that face-to-face contact. They love to grab a cup of coffee, bottle of water, sit down with their banker, and have a good conversation. But then you have people who work during the day and they don’t have that luxury of time. And they also don’t need the in-branch visit—they’re very self-sufficient. They can follow instructions online. So they like to get on our mobile app—which, by the way, is a great mobile app—especially for people who travel. And you know, who doesn’t have a phone in their hand these days?
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, yeah. I love bank coffee, by the way. I love free coffee. My quality-of-coffee bar is very low. I just want convenience store coffee, K-cups—any kind of coffee. But they’re coming in, they’re having coffee, they’re interacting with you. Now, getting back to the feedback part of it—and the feedback loop—how are you collecting these feedback mechanisms? Follow-up surveys?
Deborah A. Bearden: Free coffee is very good. (laughs)
Survey Strategy, Personalization and Surprises in Customer Data
Dom Nicastro: Face to face, "How was your experience today?"—that kind of thing. Email follow-ups. What’s the big source of customer feedback data gathering, if you will?
Deborah A. Bearden: So each of our surveys is based on either a transaction or a relationship, and it’s based on the channel by which the customer does business. So if you go into the branch and you're having that cup of coffee with that banker, you're going to get a branch survey because it’s based on a branch interaction. If you do a mobile deposit, then you’ll get one of our digital surveys that have mobile app–specific questions or digital channel questions.
Our feedback is collected by channel, by customer type, and then we have specifics like tenure of the customer, the type of transaction they did, and we have key metrics for each of those programs. Of course, we measure NPS. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is our leading metric. It's very important for us to measure how easy it is to do business across all our survey programs. And then I like to call the very last question in a lot of our surveys the "Santa question"—what do you want from Simmons Bank for Christmas? And that’s our suggestions box.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, that’s a clever way to put it.
Deborah A. Bearden: I mean, we want to know what we’re doing well, what we can improve on, and what other suggestions our customers have. Some of our best suggestions come from both external customers and internal associates. And I think it's important to measure both—not just pick one or the other.
Understanding the Trigger Points for Customer Feedback
Dom Nicastro: Yeah. So you have an actual trigger, like a mechanism—someone’s in the bank, and there’s a trigger to send them a follow-up email about that in-person experience? Interesting. How does that work? Well, of course, there’s a transaction with the teller, so you have a record of who they are. How does that follow-up work? I’m sure you have a nice system behind that too.
Deborah A. Bearden: Yes. So I love that Medallia gives us options for how to set those triggers. Based on the survey program, there are different triggers. But we always have—if there’s a complaint or even the warning of one—that’s a trigger across all our programs. Some programs are by score. So if our scale is 0 to 10, and the customer score is 6 or below, that could be a trigger.
And then a lot of times on our digital side, we just have customers who want to know, “Hey, how do you do this?” What’s really cool is when they put suggestions in that last question—and we’re already doing those things—they just don’t know it yet. So that’s kind of a “surprise and delight” moment for us. Like, “Did you know we’re already doing this?”
Testing Assumptions and Reading the Customer Right
Dom Nicastro: Yeah. You have to tell them—“By the way, we have this. Go here.” You know what I love, Deborah? When insights in my world—like as an editor—tell me something I didn’t expect. Like proving me wrong. We have these gut instincts, like “shorter subject lines are better,” but why are we saying that? Let’s test it.
So can you remember any recent surprises? Something like: people who come into the bank are all traditional old-school folks, 60+, and Gen Z stays home on the app. Anything surprising in your data lately?
Deborah A. Bearden: One thing that does surprise me—we’re in the process of launching a few surveys right now. Part of that launch includes user acceptance testing, UAT testing. And it’s very different when you take the survey as someone who works at the bank versus someone who doesn’t. You’re reading it from the customer’s point of view.
Survey language—especially in the invite—has to trigger some kind of desire on the reader’s end: “Do I want to make time to take this? What’s in it for me? Is anybody really going to read it?” So it’s got to be catchy, fun, but short. And there are a gazillion ways to craft that survey invite. Every tester since I’ve been here has had a different point of view. So it’s very fun to test how each part of the language gets received.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, we’re always trying to capture people’s attention. You know, we’ve got great stuff—great articles, great programs at our bank. But it’s about roping them in. Getting their time. In the inbox, on the site, in the mobile app. That’s the trick—how do we do that? Because just having great stuff is only half of it.
Deborah A. Bearden: Yeah. I think a lot of times we have agendas. We have paths that we want to go on. But the person we’re surveying—or the customer we’re having a conversation with—they have a different path. You only know what they’re willing to share. But what about the things you don’t know yet? It’s all about building relationships through conversations and learning what the customer is all about.
I often use this training exercise where I’ll pull up a random customer in Medallia and ask the team: “Draw a diagram. Instead of pros and cons, I want you to write ‘personal’ and ‘business.’” This person comes into your branch all the time. They’re a repeat survey taker. Tell me what you know about them personally. Then tell me what you know from a business or professional standpoint. Almost always, the business side is strong. But the personal side? That’s where we have room to grow.
A lot of times in financial services, people think you’re being intrusive—asking too many personal questions. But isn’t money personal? That’s what I always say. Money is personal. It’s stressful—when you have too much of it, because you want to make more. When you don’t have enough, you still need to make more. Ultimately, people want to make more money.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. And I can see the fine line when it comes to “personal.” You’re not going to say, “Are you doubling that money next month?” But maybe it’s, “Hey, how are your grandkids?” I saw your little ones in here the other day—are those your grandkids? That kind of thing. And of course, you respect privacy. So, man, this data is at your fingertips. Now, let me ask—do you have six branches, or is it more centralized?
Deborah A. Bearden: (laughs) Yes.
Related Article: Survey Shuffle to AI Shuffle: Medallia Wants to Reshape the CX Deck
Empowering Associates and Using Customer Feedback to Fuel Improvement
Dom Nicastro: Centralized call center, or are they just branch-branch-branch kind of setups?
Deborah A. Bearden: No—so let me clarify something. We have six footprint states. We have about 220 to 230 branches, and then we have our digital channels. One of the things I love about Medallia is it’s real time. I can look in there at any time and see up-to-date survey feedback. Up-to-date feedback means up-to-date responses. So we love to say thank you—send thank-you emails to our customers—because we appreciate the comments, in particular.
Anybody could tell you, “You’re a 10,” but you need to know why you’re a 10. I always teach—pull the adjectives out, the nice ones, pull those out of the comments and use those adjectives back, so the customer knows you read it. And I love the ones where you can actually see customers responding back in Medallia as well.
Dom Nicastro: Yes. Yeah.
Deborah A. Bearden: And they’ll say, “Wow, I only said that because I didn’t know there was a real person reading this.” And then when you look at all their feedback after that, it’s so quality-driven. The customer just spills everything they want to see—new locations, better hours, fewer fees. But you can actually do something with that feedback. If someone just gives you a 10, you don’t know what to do with that.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, yeah. So you're taking large scales of those anecdotal tales and responses and you're able to bring it back to the—what you called earlier—associates, right? And kind of get outputs that way. And I’m sure the associates themselves are a treasure trove of great insights too. How do you leverage their insights? You’ve got this customer data—that’s great—but how about theirs? Do they have a place? And how do you collect their feedback?
Training Champions and Keeping the 'Fire' Alive in Customer Associates
Deborah A. Bearden: In training—I love to collect their feedback in training. I lead a group I’m pretty proud of. It’s a CX Champion Group. It’s got about 20 to 25 people from various roles who are responsible for sharing everything I teach them within their markets.
The top thing that customers bank with us for is our people. So I always say, if our people have a bad day, there’s a good chance our customers are going to have a bad day. And so honing in on each person’s individual gifts—or I like to call it “fire” sometimes—we shouldn’t let anyone, or any customer, or anything take that fire from us. Because that’s what customers love about us.
I try and keep it simple—make sure every person knows what their fire is so they can keep it lit all the time. Not to sound corny, but it really is just that simple. Customers know we have policies. We have FDIC regulations we have to adhere to. But it’s how you explain it, how you give customers choices, and how you help them deal with whatever circumstance they’re in—that’s what keeps them banking with us.
It’s not just the products or the services. It’s the human interaction—whether that’s through conversations, the chat feature, in person, or in our contact center. We have contact centers in several different areas. And the contact center has a rough job too. You never know what kind of calls they’re going to take, and they can be from all over the bank. So we try and make communication the best we can under all circumstances.
Contact Center Performance and the Future of Associate Experience
Dom Nicastro: Yeah. What kinds of big changes has the contact center seen lately, the last year or two? We know there's the intersection of AI coming in—and how do you balance conversational AI with humans and all that. What are some of the dynamics that are top of mind for your teams with the contact center these days?
Deborah A. Bearden: I think one thing I love that our contact center does is we do quality improvement scoring calls as a team. There are lots of different levels, which means you get a lot of various feedback to ensure that what we’re saying to the customer is what the customer needs—and we’re doing it the right way. I’m very proud of our contact center for doing that.
Prioritizing Professionalism And Personalized Advice
Our contact center is actually the fastest closed-loop feedback responder we have. Sometimes our branch folks don’t like that. Our branch folks are fast—but I’m telling you, the contact center is very fast. They’ve worked very hard on two specific metrics that come to mind: personalized advice and being professional. Because sometimes, you don’t want to sound like a lawyer, but you also want to show that, “You know what, I use this product,” or “I’ve heard other customers say they use this product and love it.”
So it’s a constant work in progress. But those two areas—quality, response time, personalized advice, and resolving the issue—those are things they really hone in on, even if the issue isn’t technically the contact center’s fault.
Dom Nicastro: Right. Everything’s on them. It’s like, “You didn’t resolve this and you spoke with them for 15 minutes.” That’s a fail. Meanwhile, it’s a tech thing and they can’t quite get it done. The customer might still be happy that you listened and cared. But those two metrics—personalized advice and being professional—those are two I’ve never heard in a contact center. How do you measure those?
Measuring Agent Interactions And Learning As A Team
Deborah A. Bearden: So it's on that scale. It’s on a scale of 0 to 10. The contact center questions are very specific to a phone call. The thing I love about the contact center—unlike the branch—is you can go back and listen to the call. That might be a call we listen to during a leadership calibration call, where we’re all like, “Let’s listen to this one and see how each of us would’ve handled it.”
We’re learning more versus just scoring, although scoring is part of the process. You begin asking, “Why do we do it this way? Is there a better way?” If we hadn’t listened to that together, we may not have discovered a better method. And issue resolution can vary. I may have one solution for a customer, and my manager may have another. So again, it goes back to having choices and knowing our products well enough to make good recommendations.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, so those questions go out to the customer—like, “Was your agent professional?” or “Did they offer personalized advice?”
Deborah A. Bearden: Yes. Agent helpfulness is a big one on the contact center side. On the branch side, we factor in the associate’s name, the branch name—we want the customer to remember who helped them, when, and where. Because they may have visited multiple branches. That helps us dive deeper into behaviors, products, services, and those suggestions I mentioned earlier.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, well Deborah, we could probably chat for another five or six hours. I really think so. But you know, attention spans—people like quick interviews. How do we know? Let’s ask them. Anyway, let’s wrap it up with this: I think employee experience in the contact center and customer service arena is the big opportunity right now. If we improve agent experience, they’re happier—and customers can be happier, too.
So where are you doubling down the rest of the year in terms of associate experience? Where do you most want to take care of your team? Is it technology? Coaching? Recognition? What’s top of mind?
Doubling Down On Associate Experience And Survey Quality
Deborah A. Bearden: I want to teach our associates to think outside-in, not just inside-out. Because when your mind is open to what the customer is saying—when you understand their situations and circumstances—you get to know that customer personally, so you can better match their business or professional needs. I’m honing in on quality, and that stems from whatever channel the customer chooses to use—through the app, in person—focusing first on the person, and then on the transaction.
Closed-loop feedback is another area I’m focused on. I’ve challenged myself this year to lead more training and refresher training on how to respond to a customer through Medallia using our email templates. If you keep sending the same generic email, customers aren’t going to take your survey. So we teach survey health—how many invites were sent, bounce rates, response rates, etc.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah.
Deborah A. Bearden: Our associates don’t have to live and breathe it—but they need to understand it, so they know the impact quality has on all of those things. Quality is a big deal for me at Simmons Bank. And closed-loop feedback—because for me, nothing gets my attention more than someone responding to a survey I took. And I take most surveys that come to me personally.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah. Because you know that people like Deborah are out there, combing through those insights.
Deborah A. Bearden: Exactly—for that very reason. I want to know how I can continue doing what’s working, how I can improve, and what our customers are thinking. Their perception could be totally different than ours. When you bring those together, you get balanced feedback. And it all starts with quality conversations—in any channel.
Dom Nicastro: Well said, Deborah Bearden, Enterprise Customer Experience Manager at Simmons Bank. We appreciate you coming on Beyond the Call. And your interview kind of sums up why we call it that—because there's so much more to customer service than just a 1-800 number. You captured that beautifully. Thanks again for sharing your insights.
Deborah A. Bearden: Thank you, Dom. I appreciate you, too.
Dom Nicastro: All right—and I know I’m trying to do a trick here because this interview aired after we met, but we recorded it before. So, great seeing you in Vegas, Deborah, at Medallia’s conference! Thanks again for tuning into CMSWire TV’s Beyond the Call. We hope you have a great day.
Deborah A. Bearden: Absolutely! Thank you, you too.
