Investing in customers and banking on their support
Christina McCoy oversees operations at a bank on the top of a hill, but the M&T Bank manager in Cold Spring feels like she is on top of the entire world.
Bursting with energy and enthusiasm, McCoy can be seen rushing across the bank floor to procure an investment document for a customer or hurrying to assist a departing senior citizen on a cane.
The bank at 40 Chestnut St. sits on a peak directly across from the Foodtown strip mall, which houses several businesses, including the community”™s only other bank.
“Our location allows us plenty of parking spaces for customers without the hassle of dodging vehicles driving through a busy shopping center,” McCoy says. The location also provides for a drive-through window equipped with a semi-automatic transaction drawer, a tube transaction carrier and an intercom system.
The six employees reporting to McCoy share her people-oriented skills and greet customers by name. Their congeniality is contagious, McCoy says. “It”™s a friendly atmosphere where customers talk to one another,” she says. “I”™ve seen one business owner get to know another and exchange business cards. It”™s a wonderful experience.”
Networking is built into McCoy”™s nature. If a customer chances to mention a need for a particular business or personal service, she is quick to say, “We have a customer that does that very thing.” And, a connection ensues.
Although raised in the Bronx as one of two children, she qualified for Brooklyn Technical High School and emerged from the arduous curriculum to enter Dowling College in Suffolk County, where she earned a Bachelor of Business Arts degree.
Clutching her new degree, she met with recruiters from Barclay”™s Bank, which had a management development program. “It involved a lot of travel,” she says of the two years during which she earned an American Institute of Banking Certificate and an American Banking Association Certificate. But, yearning to be near home, she settled in Yonkers and spent 17 years with The Bank of New York, remaining when Chase bought that bank.
From retail she moved into middle market, dealing with relationships with clients having a minimum of $20 million in sales. “But I missed having customer contact and a team of people to develop,” she says. “A number of people I knew had come to M&T. The bank had a community feel.” She has been in her present position for five and a half years.
McCoy speaks enthusiastically about the quality of her bank employees. “They will go out into the parking lot to do transactions for seniors with difficulty coming in,” she says. She recalls the new customer who came to the bank on behalf of his 95-year-old father who could not get out of the house. “Multiple employees offered to go to the man”™s distant house to take the required signature in the presence of a bank employee,” she says.
She credits an alert teller for rescuing a senior citizen from fraud. “She noted that this customer was seeking new checkbooks frequently and writing, for him, an unprecedented 200 checks a month,” she says. “We located his power of attorney, who looked into it and found he was receiving bills for items he had never ordered and was paying them to these questionable sources.”
The M&T Bank was founded in 1856 as the Manufacturers and Traders Bank. Today it numbers 725 branches and 1,700 ATMs and has selected a green waving flag as its emblem. Its locations are primarily along the East coast.
McCoy commutes from Pawling. Her son, Jason, and three grandchildren reside in Danbury, Conn.
Challenging Careers focuses on the exciting and unusual business lives of Hudson Valley residents. Comments or suggestions may be emailed to Catherine Portman-Laux at cplaux@optonline.net.