Ep. 253: Mathieu Staniulis & Séverine Clairet | Blinded by Pride: Inside a 125-Year-Old Co-Op's Return to Customer-Centricity

Episode 253: Desjardins thought its cooperative roots made it member-first by default. Then members started leaving. Desjardins is a 125-year-old financial co-op based in Quebec. It has deep community ties and a proud history. But that pride masked a painful truth: Members no longer saw it as customer-centric. The organization believed its cooperative structure guaranteed loyalty—until low NPS scores and rising member churn showed otherwise. Mathieu Staniulis and Séverine Clairet recount how Desjardins confronted its own mythology, restructured governance, and began treating feedback as a system, not a score. Desjardins' wake-up call came in the early 2010s. Despite its co-op status, members said the experience felt disjointed. Branches operated as near-independent entities. "It was really difficult to see the full scope of our company because we were presenting ourselves as different companies," says Mathieu. CEO Guy Cormier led a bold move: unifying the 17 siloed organizations within Desjardins under a single governance structure. But structure alone wasn't enough. Internally, CX, risk, and profit still pulled in different directions. As Mathieu puts it,  "People in charge of customer experience only talk about customer experience and NPS. People in P&L ownership talk about their performance—their bottom line. How can they improve their performance, especially on the financial metrics? And then you have the risk people trying to manage risk and deal with regulators always bringing new regulations, especially in the financial industry. And I believe we have to find a way to work together to balance customer experience, efficiency or financial metrics, and risk management." The challenge became about integrating those forces to make balanced, member-first decisions—without sacrificing performance. Now Desjardins faces a new frontier: recreating intimacy in a digital world. Transactions moved online. But financial advice—the core of trust and loyalty—remains unsolved. The question, Mathieu says, is urgent and unanswered: "How do we bring advice into a digital world?" Guests: Mathieu Staniulis, Vice President, Products, Solutions & Digital, and Chief Transformation Officer | Séverine Clairet, Vice President Customer Experience & Marketing Strategy, Desjardins Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Time-Stamped Topics 00:01 – A logout button reveals blind spots in member experience 00:04 – Desjardins' founding story: community aid in a kitchen 00:06 – "Member-owned" in theory vs. practice across 17 silos 00:08 – How Guy Cormier unified Desjardins under one governance model 00:09 – Why NPS lagged despite a strong co-op identity 00:12 – "The S means system": transforming how feedback drives action 00:15 – Balancing CX, P&L, and risk without silos 00:18 – The call center debate: cost now vs. loyalty later 00:20 – Journey teams as a model for cross-functional accountability 00:21 – Digital did the easy part, so what comes next? 00:22 – Can "digital" be intimate? The next frontier for co-ops Notable Quotes [15:00] ​​ "It was really difficult to see the full scope of our company because we were presenting ourselves as different companies. … We had to pivot from working together, but in silos."  [16:00] "We believe we're member-focused, but we were lagging in NPS. We were also losing membership, so we had to pivot and change all of that, changing the way we look internally at our performance, raising NPS as the top KPI for our company." [16:00] "That's the equation of NPS. Buying more, referring more, and staying longer mean more profitability. For P&L, it means better risk management, because there's a tendency to lower your risk when you have loyal customers with you. So you have to bring that all together." [17:00]  "We were very proud of Desjardins, especially in the Quebec market. In some lines of products, we have almost 40% market share. You will see a branch of Desjardins in every town. It's deep in our roots." Additional Resources Read Bain's case study, From Laggard to Leader: Desjardins Evolves Member Centricity for the Digital Age: https://www.bain.com/client-results/from-laggard-to-leader-desjardins-evolves-member-centricity-for-the-digital-age/