Team spirit is at the heart of the Societe Generale's new communication campaign. What does it mean for you as a manager?
Frédéric Oudéa: Whether playing sport or in the office, I have always believed that the greatest strength of a team lies not just in the talent of its individuals but also in their ability to work together as a team. The player who keeps the ball without passing it at the right moment will probably cause the move to break down. But when the team is more than the sum of its individual parts, when the players are really playing together and the game becomes smooth and fast, that is when the team wins. You can see it in football and rugby, and it is basically the same thing in the business world.
The need to work as a team is one of my deepest convictions. That is why I like the concept of team spirit. I am comfortable with it on two levels, not only because it expresses our plans for our clients, our Group, and our employees, but also because it is behind my personal view of management.

For your customers, what is the meaning behind the new signature – "Building team spirit together"?
Banks sometimes tend to forget that they are service companies. While talking with customers, it has become clear to me that relationships are the driving force behind service delivery for them. Regardless of developments in new technologies and the Internet, there will always be someone’s face behind the service, whether it is your local branch customer advisor, or a senior banker with whom a CEO can discuss their ideas for developing their business. It is this personal relationship that we bring to the fore through our new signature. It reflects our customers’ expectations and what we need to provide them as service companies.
In addition, when we say "Building team spirit together" to our clients, it is a statement that genuinely reflects who we are, because team spirit is a core value at Societe Generale, and a part of our history and culture.

When you were appointed Chairman of Societe Generale, you launched the Ambition SG 2015 programme. What is the connection between this programme and the Group's new communication campaign?
The underlying goal of our strategy is to become the reference for relationship banking. The commitment our Group’s new signature makes to customers directly translates our strategy into action. It articulates this richly in both feeling and in meaning.
The relationship with our customers is built on trust and over the long term. That is the essence of team spirit. It is because branch advisors have established a connection with their customers that they will know how to manage all their situations – positive or difficult, and provide the right answers. The same goes for our business customers. When we help create a company, when we are by its side to finance its development we are demonstrating team spirit. The prime example is when we participate as an investor in our customers' projects, when we respond to calls for tenders for large infrastructure projects with construction groups, for example. We are therefore a stakeholder in the project; we contribute to its legitimacy by providing financing; we help our customer to succeed and share in their success.

In sum, does it mean developing a win-win relationship with customers?
Of course – developing team spirit with our customers means building a fair and balanced relationship together, where we are at their side helping them get ahead, and we get ahead as well. That also means that we are not focused solely on instant returns. Considering the customer's long-term interest, how to approach them, to inspire and strengthen their trust over time - all of this is essential. We are not here to make a quick profit. Squeezing a transaction out of a customer who is going to figure out six months later that it wasn't what they wanted is not our attitude. What we want is for our customer to tell us six months later: that's exactly what I wanted, it really serves my interests.

Beyond the communication aspect, how will you actually keep the promise that you are making to your customers?
We are not simply trying to develop our image. Our new communication campaign is part of our transformation programme, the end goal of which is to improve the performance and quality of our services and, in turn, customer satisfaction. Ambition SG 2015 is playing out in the form of various concrete initiatives that converge on this priority. We have listened to our customers, for example, when they complain that our advisors change too frequently. To facilitate the building of trust, we have made the decision to extend the average branch posting for our advisors, in particular for business customers. And when advisors are replaced, which is inevitable at some point, we intend to better prepare for and manage the handover. Similarly, we will reduce processing times for customers when they request loans. We will also work on aspects as simple (but important) as the letters that we send to our customers, because our basic responsibility is to send them clear and understandable messages. As a final example, we will do more to include our customers in the life of our companies by asking what they think of our services; for the first time, a hundred test branches throughout France will collect customers’ opinions.

Customer satisfaction cannot be decreed. It is earned through sustained deeds and actions. We are mobilising all of our business lines and our employees through our transformation programme. We are doing this internally, with the same team spirit and collective strength that we advocate for our customers.

Your strategic ambition for Societe Generale seems, essentially, more qualitative than quantitative...
Definitely. Our strategic plan is not to occupy this or that ranking in the market, which does not make much sense in a fragmented, competitive environment such as our own, but to be the reference in our markets. We are not seeking to be present everywhere in the world and for all types of customers. In our targeted locations and areas of expertise, however, our ambition is to be at the forefront of our customers’ minds. In other words, if a customer, be they an individual or a business, needs a bank for a given service, our goal is that the name Societe Generale springs to mind instantly. It is up to us, then, to show that being a team with them is not a simple calculation but a real promise that we are able to live up to, by putting our skills and energy into action, to provide excellent quality service!