Jamie Finkral is part of Pacific Life’s Institutional Division’s exceptional customer service team; she joins The Wave Strength’s Jim Breen to share her passion for providing the best customer service in the industry. Listen in as Jamie shares how an innovative, proactive, people-focused philosophy is ensuring a world-class customer experience. Catch it now, on The Wave Strength.
Jamie Finkral , Operations Service Analyst
Jamie joined Pacific Life in 2017; she supports the Operations area for Pension Risk Transfer and Defined Contribution Lifetime Income annuities for the Institutional Division. She is a member of the team that provides industry-leading customer experience through the consistent and accurate handling of transaction requests across the lifecycle of our contracts.
Voiceover: Welcome to The Wave Strength: Innovative Solutions for a Secure Retirement. Presented by Pacific Life.
Jim Breen: Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Wave Strength. I'm your host, Jim Breen. I'm a marketing director with Pacific Life's Institutional Division. And with us today is Jamie Finkral, visiting from Colorado actually today. So, first off, Jamie, thanks for making the trek out here from Colorado to California to join us on the show.
Jamie Finkral: Yeah. Happy to be here.
Jim Breen: And Jamie, you are on the sales team for Pacific Life's Institutional Division. But before we get into today's topic, which is Pacific Life's philosophy as it pertains to customer service and some of the customer service innovations that Pacific Life's Institutional Division is bringing to the market, I'd love for our viewers to maybe learn a little bit about your background and your role at Pacific Life.
Jamie Finkral: Yeah, absolutely. So, I've been with Pacific Life since 2017, and one amazing thing that I've noticed with Pacific Life is we're very people focused, whether that's with its own employees or the people we serve, our customers.
Jim Breen: That's very true. And you are very; you are, I would say in particular, you are very people focused because we spent some time at a conference last November in D.C., and I remember that was our first time really meeting each other in person. And I remember going, "Wow, you're really good with people, and you really enjoy talking to people, and people enjoy talking to you." And you really have a desire to kind of understand where people are and maybe their process, whether it's a sales process or just their journey as it pertains to our business.
Jamie Finkral: Right. Yeah. And that's what attracted me to my current role. So, like you said, I'm with Institutional Sales, and the same goes for this team. We're very people focused, so we're really focused on ensuring the best customer experience.
Jim Breen: Now, Pacific Life is known for its excellent customer service. Many customer service awards across the enterprise, across the company. And, you know, talk to me a little bit about your philosophy on customer service and the importance of customer service in the role that you bring to the table.
Jamie Finkral: So, I help onboard when we win a plan. And so when I'm onboarding the plan, I'm just really focused on making sure we have a great customer experience, especially with the first interaction with Pacific Life. So, that's what our team is focused on.
Jim Breen: And that customer experience, that's really important. I think in years past, sometimes customer experience wasn't always, you know, not just the financial industry, but just in general, customer experience wasn't always the first and foremost focus. I think Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, a lot of what they did at Apple back in the 90s, you know. And even as they, if you move all the way to 2007 with the iPhone, creating something that the people didn't really know they needed or creating something or an experience or an interface that the customers just didn't know they needed yet. And so it is important where you're trying to look ahead and trying to always make sure that the folks that you work with are well taken care of.
Jamie Finkral: Right. One thing I like to think about is anticipating needs, just making sure that we're one step ahead and making sure that our clients and customers are well taken care of.
Jim Breen: Yeah, And I think that it's important to always make sure that when you're in that position to take care of people or have the opportunity to provide that service, that philosophy that Pacific Life brings to the table where, you know, the "P" in Pacific, right? People: always looking at our people. Looking at, you know, the participants in this case and the conversation we're having right now, making sure that they're taken care of. And it's not always through, right, that, I mean, it's important to always make sure that that customer, that high level of customer service, the actual human interaction there is top notch. And it's also, though, providing innovation, right? What do you think about that?
Jamie Finkral: So, innovation is also another very important thing to Pacific Life. We have recently undergone an administration upgrade, and with that, we've implemented some really great innovation with our web experience, for example. Just trying to stay ahead of the curve and making that interaction with Pacific Life that much easier.
Jim Breen: So when those participants, when they need to have some sort of interaction, whether it's something as simple as uploading forms...
Jamie Finkral: Right.
Jim Breen: ...or something like that, it's a much more technologically advanced or maybe more user-friendly experience?
Jamie Finkral: Right! Like, who faxes anymore, right?
Jim Breen: Yeah.