Meet Matthew Yack

What do you love about working for Zions Bancorporation?

Working at Zions Bancorporation has been an incredibly fulfilling opportunity. I get to work with some of the best people in the world who are intelligent, driven, genuine, and as eager to see me succeed as they are themselves. Zions provides outstanding channels through which I can build and grow relationships throughout the enterprise. Also, I am continually presented with interesting challenges that utilize my current skills as well as stretch me to develop new ones.

What is something unique about you?

Something unique is that in addition to Customer Experience certification, I’m also previously certified in Lean Six Sigma and Scrum. Seeing things externally and internally has allowed me to balance the empathetic side of experience with strategic management of projects as needed. As a manager of the customer and employee experience, I feel a responsibility to tell each of their stories, and to help drive improvement where necessary.

What project are you currently most focused on?

I have dubbed 2024 as the ‘Year of the Insight’. We are currently working to refine the insight feedback loops that are scoped into our business area, as well as throughout the enterprise. We have an immense amount of data and feedback that give insights into what is really happening with our customers and employees. This is critical for our organization to know. I believe that it is important that insights are presented in a way that is simple and will motivate change, so we have designed what we call an ‘insight package’. This package contains the explanation of the insight, corresponding data, customer or employee impact statements, a customer journey map, and anything else that will help the recipient quickly learn the insight and be motivated to act. We are also working to build and use tools that will not only analyze the current experience, but eventually predict and automate.

What is your proudest professional accomplishment?

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to build a Customer Experience program from the ground level or early stages for 3 outstanding organizations. Each of them has been my proudest! They were uniquely challenging, and rest assured that I likely made many mistakes. Luckily, in each case we were also able to realize significant gains in key areas such as increased retention of employees, higher average customer spend, higher customer referral percentages, and longer retention of customers. I attribute the successful programs to the effort of all the leaders and practitioners that I had the privilege to work with.

What is your proudest personal accomplishment?

In 2023, I received a letter from my eight-year-old daughter who lives down the hall from me. She had just won a coding competition against kids from many other schools and couldn’t stop smiling. She informed me in her letter that she was grateful that I encouraged her to do something that she didn’t think she could do, and for spending time to help her prepare. She promised to keep having courage to do hard things. While that accomplishment is 100% her, I am proud that I didn’t encourage her to watch a cartoon instead, which was my first thought.

What motivates and inspires you?

It’s all about people. I want my colleagues to feel that I care about them personally and professionally, and trust that I care about their growth. Movement is constant, and I am motivated by the fact that I can impact momentum in a positive way. This applies to how I view both the customer and employee experience. I take pride in finding ways to align with the mission of the organization to create value for clients, employees, and the communities we serve.