Reimagining the end-to-end digital banking experience
Creating a new vision for the future by understanding pain points, needs of current and potential customers, and the effort needed to deliver it, resulting in two follow on projects.
RESULTS
17
2
Follow on engagements resulting from this discovery work
New opportunities identified and prioritized to support the future experience
Background
From the start of the engagement, the client had emphasized that their greatest differentiator was their people. This was confirmed when we interviewed customers - everyone loved that their teller at their local branch knew their name and made them feel at home (which we later dubbed “The Cheers Effect”).
When the global pandemic struck, people weren’t going into branches to chat with their favorite teller. They were trying to do their banking through an outdated mobile app or confusing desktop portal with limited customer support channels. Couple that with multiple siloed CRM platforms and disorganized data, and you’ve got a slew of technical challenges to sort out on top of designing a new experience.
The client leadership was customer-focused, meaning the customer’s experience came first, data and tech were enablers. However, we needed to make sure that the experiences we were designing were scalable and actionable while still delivering that human touch that made this client who they are.
Approach
This project was divided into three parts: current state analysis, future state ideation, and roadmapping. Our research consisted of one-on-one interviews, a competitive analysis, and a hybrid workshop to ideate based on the current pain points.
From that research, we identified specific concepts (e.g. live chat with customer support) that would build upon the human connection which was a focus for this client.
Interviews
Conducted 30 interviews with internal staff, current customers, and small business owners in the community (i.e. potential customers)
Designing the future experience
Created a service blueprint documenting the ideal digital experience for small business owners. Integrated inputs from data and technology SMEs.
Role
Customer experience lead, service designer
Service design, user interviews, hybrid workshop facilitation, service blueprinting, prioritization and roadmapping
Timeframe
January 2022 - May 2022
Industry
Finance
Deliverables
Service blueprint, concept cards, future state roadmap
Synthesis and concept ideation
Analyzed findings from across interviews and identified common pain points. Facilitated a hybrid workshop to ideate on potential solutions (“concepts”) for these challenges.
Prioritization and roadmapping
Leveraging the service blueprint, led the estimation and prioritization of key concepts to enable the future state.
Interviews
Initially, I spoke with 15 internal employees and eight current customers identified by the client. When current customers identified very few pain points, I reached out to the small business owners to understand what they needed from their bank as potential customers.
“If we don't grow, we die. But how do we still maintain the core tenants of our service?”
Client employee
"I don’t want to lose the community feel or the ability to go into any branch and make a deposit.”
Current customer
“My banking should be nice and easy. If it wasn’t, I’d go somewhere else.”
Potential customer
Synthesis and current state validation
Needless to say, the 30+ interviews resulted in a lot of opportunities for improvement. To make sense of it all, I identified common themes and ideas through affinity mapping, resulting in an initial list of pain points and opportunities.
Across the board, I saw that the employees made a huge difference to the customer’s experience, they were the reason people stayed with the bank. They were looking for more guidance and more engagement from the client on how to grow their businesses and expand into new opportunities.
However, siloed business units and data sources were limiting cross selling. The client was also behind technology - they didn’t have online tools readily available for customers to reach out and get the guidance they need.
Designing the future experience
With a strong understanding of the current state, I built upon the ideas uncovered through the interviews and competitive analysis to build an end-to-end blueprint for the new customer experience.
To build upon that human touch which differentiated this client, I recommended new capabilities such as live chat with an expert, digital scheduler tools for appointments, and integrating behavior tracking functionality into marketing campaigns.
At the end of the day, we identified 17 different concepts to bring the new digital experience life. Now, we needed to determine where the client should start.
Prioritization and roadmapping
We evaluated each concept based on its value, impact, level of effort, and gaps in the way of implementation. The biggest hurdle here was around the gaps - sequencing the concepts based on their dependencies was extremely important.
Through a final workshop, we were able to co-create a roadmap with the client that gave them a path forward to deliver their ideal experience.
Conclusion
This project was an amazing cross-capability collaboration and remains one of my favorites years later. In addition to giving the client a clear path forward and identifying solutions for their major challenges, I learned the importance of being scrappy and pivoting where needed.
The discovery portion of this project resulted in two follow on projects for Slalom: a deep dive into the client’s customer support center and a redesign of their financial advisory website (along with the digital scheduler tool).
FROM THE CLIENT
“All of this resonates with me. I feel like I've heard all of these things all over the organization but have never seen them outlined so succinctly. "
"A problem named is a problem solved"
"I'm realizing that any strength overdone, is a weakness"