ABOUT MICHELLE

Dr. Michelle Kinch’s expertise is in the area of behavioral operations management. She uses both laboratory and field experiments to develop insights into how the balance between automation and human presence influences customer and employee engagement — particularly in emotional service settings. As a researcher, consultant and board director, her work has guided operational design choices for companies of all sizes within financial services, healthcare and technology in global markets.

Michelle’s research draws on a depth of professional experience as a product management and development executive in financial services. Having previously served as a senior vice president and brand strategist for the research team at LPL Financial and a vice president in asset allocation at Fidelity Investments, her product management responsibilities, across a 15-year career, spanned mutual funds, managed accounts and online planning tools.

Dr. Kinch is also a Chartered Financial Analyst and member of the CFA Society Boston’s Financial Literacy Initiative, through which she delivers educational workshops on personal finance to communities in the Boston area. She received her doctorate in Technology & Operations Management and her MBA from Harvard Business School, and she completed her undergraduate studies in Management Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Sample Client Engagements

 

Embedded with a leading ride-sharing company to examine what factors might be driving observed differences between male and female driver enrollment rates. Conducted a series of interviews with drivers and candidate drivers of both genders and worked with management team to design and experimentally test changes to the driver enrollment experience.

Worked with large Canadian insurance company to design and test messaging and framing that might overcome decision avoidance due to customer emotion in a purely online environment.

Consulted to regional credit union to determine how the introduction of a new text messaging platform that updated potential borrowers on the status of their credit application affected customer decision-making.

Advised a prominent Australian bank on initiatives that might drive self-service technology adoption among older customers.

Partnered with a FinTech entrepreneur to conduct primary research and build strategic plan for customer experience of personal finance application.

Triaged potential customer dissatisfiers and recommended process improvements for a federal government agency charged with staffing a consumer complaint call center.