Article

The digital banking experience: 7 ways to put the customer front and center

Functionality alone no longer gets the job done; engagement is where loyalty is truly gained. Guest commentator Mark Kilpatrick offers suggestions for gaining it.

August 18, 2016

by Mark Kilpatrick, Chief Marketing Officer, Urban FT

The hottest topic in retail banking is the digital channel — that is, interacting and transacting with your bank using your mobile phone, laptop, or tablet. And, the hottest topic in the digital channel is the customer experience. With the penetration of digital banking estimated at more than 67 million U.S. adults with Internet access  and the mobile phone-centric millennial generation still developing its need for financial services, digital banking is transforming how financial institutions deliver service to customers. 

So, how can technology (realistically, a platform with emphasis on apps) replace — or, aspirationally, improve upon — the traditional face-to-face interactions between a financial institution's employees and its customers? 

For me, it's clear the answer lies in harnessing technology to fill the void left by removing human interaction; using technology to create an experience for consumers, not just to build banking functions. 

Digital: The competitive battleground for today's banks 

There's a lot at stake in this distinction, because simply offering digital banking functionality is no longer a competitive differentiator; it's the new competitive battleground for financial institutions and neobanks serving the consumer market.

Today, a successful digital banking platform must meaningfully engage a wide swath of consumers with the ultimate goal of building loyalty for the organization. Along the way, it must feel seamless and intuitive to consumers, constantly adapt to changing needs and new and enhanced technology, and deliver on the promise of a variety of use cases. 

And, of course, it must perform flawlessly, despite millions of possible permutations, 100 percent of the time. 

Customer-first design

Even in the digital age, design remains a combination of art and science, so there's no single correct approach to the challenge of experience building. But, there is one universal guiding principle; that is, placing the customer experience at the center of design. To help other designers, I'm sharing my seven personal suggestions for keeping the customer experience at the heart of building a meaningful digital banking experience. 

1. Know your customer. To be honest, it's an aspirational goal, because if you're designing digital banking for general use (i.e., the broad swath of users of financial services), how can you ever "know your customer?"

Demographically, users may range from ages 16 to 90. They may be male or female; come from all economic backgrounds and education levels; have different needs and experiences with the banking system; and have varying proficiencies in digital interaction. 

Sometimes, B2C digital banking providers are specialized; for example, credit unions serving a particular industry or neobanks targeting a certain demographic market. In these situations, it's easier to hone in on a customer profile.

But beware of taking generalizations too far. The spouse of a member of a credit union focused on serving a high-tech population may not himself or herself be technologically inclined. Not all millennials are tech savvy, and not all baby boomers are technology-phobic. 

The point is, the digital banking experience must have the flexibility to serve the full range of consumers with banking needs. The hard part, however, is users of this self-service channel will, by definition, assemble digital banking experiences that are all their own, and it's up to the designer to facilitate this custom approach.

Designing for the customer experience, therefore, must accommodate mass personalization and emphasize ongoing consumer testing — both addressed below. 

2. Design for mass personalization. Oxymoron aside, the design goal is enabling consumers to build and control their own digital banking engagement experiences. Tutorials, for example, must be progressive — starting from onboarding — and are likely a mashup of how to use and how to customize the app. Some consumers will use tutorials as virtual handholding; others will respond intuitively. But for both, the process of building a personalized digital banking experience should be easy, incorporating today's customization variables and anticipating tomorrow's. 

Mass personalization also must contribute to supporting the consumer's affinity for his/her financial institution or neobank. It's entirely desirable for digital banking to displace routine transactions (e.g., depositing checks and checking balances). It's entirely unacceptable for digital banking to displace the customer/financial institution relationship. This means the digital banking design must facilitate meaningful customer/financial institution interactions and conversations. The goal is building customer loyalty and extending the trusted relationship from the physical realm of brick and mortar to the digital realm. 

The great future for mass personalization is, of course, artificial intelligence, which "learns" consumer behavior and adapts dynamically to how consumers interact with the app. Based on consumer behavior, the app might suggest, for example, exploring the provider's money transfer feature or adding to savings. It's an exciting future, because AI offers limitless possibilities to, literally, customize service for a market of one. 

3. Research. Test. Repeat. Nothing provides more insight for designing the customer experience than researching and testing with real consumers who represent the breadth of targeted users. This process is messy and subjective but necessary to understand consumers' needs, wants, and perceptions, as well as their ability to understand how to adapt the app to build their own experiences. 

Three points go without saying, but — for the record — I'll say them anyway. First, the opinions and experiences of you and your colleagues are important, but they're not a replacement for third-party consumer research and testing. Second, use a professional facilitator when working with consumers to avoid introducing your own biases. And, third, remember the research/test process isn't a one-shot proposition. It's required at every phase of design and must continue as enhancements are added and upgrades are made. 

If digital banking is the new battleground and the customer experience determines who wins, research and testing are not the places to look for economies. 

4. Eradicate customer pain points. The combination of research and testing identifies customers' digital banking pain points, with the results creating a three-fold responsibility for designers: 

• Address actual pain points. Work with product development to ensure every feature in your app solves an actual pain point for customers dissatisfied with their current banking (and other) solutions. For example, before building out a smart watch app, verify there's a user base and determine where current solutions are failing users. Bluntly speaking, if your app features aren't addressing customer pain points, there's little value in what you're doing. Don't let the experience of a sharp client calling you out on the misalignment of pain points and features be the first time you've thought about this. 
• Eradicate pain points (or friction) before they affect the customer experience. Not to add too much pressure, but you have only one chance to get it right. Research shows that one-third of customers will give up on a brand after a single poor mobile experience.
• Keep looking. Continue to look for pain points you might have missed. Your metrics will help you identify trends as activity grows. For example, is there a point during the experience when a disproportionate number of customers "drop out?" If they don't get past enrollment, examine your sign-up process. If they don't complete a certain type of transaction, find out where the blockage is. If they go inactive, find out why. Patterns will tell you the magnitude of the problem, but research and testing will tell you why and put you on the path to a solution for a customer experience with less friction. 

5. Leave your ego at the door. The best digital banking design is unobtrusive; creating a pathway that makes the customer's journey intuitive and natural, not calling attention to itself. Your goal in this medium is design elegance and simplicity, which — to the untrained eye — may not even be noticeable. An aesthetically beautiful app is wonderful, but if form doesn't follow function, it won't be commercially successful. Also consider other apps — not necessarily digital banking apps — that consumers use regularly. Think about the patterns in those apps, and do your best to stick to them. There's more benefit to handling a sequence similar to how Facebook, for example, does it, than reinventing the wheel for a basic gesture that requires customers to become acclimated.

Another point about ego, as right-brain people, we pride ourselves on our intuition — sometimes even devaluing or overriding metrics in favor of what "we know best." This is a dangerous failing, because, in this arena, decisions must be data-driven. In sports, referees are essential to the game for control and structure, but they shouldn't be noticed. In designing for customer experience, designers are the referees. 

By leaving our egos at the door, we — hopefully — set an example for the executives we work with, encouraging them to leave their egos at the door, too, and to trust the design team to incorporate business requirements, while not compromising customer experience.  

6. Don't crowdsource your vision. On one hand, good design requires the input of others; on the other hand, you can't sacrifice your vision. Designers of all stripes know the idiom: "A camel is a horse designed by committee." You can't allow your digital banking design to become the proverbial camel. Similarly, you must be aware of what your competitors are doing, but your choices, including product strategy, can't be driven by them. There's a fine line between learning from your competition and simply following. By learning, you gain the upper hand, adapting early and not repeating their missteps. By following, you're always a step behind. Create from inspiration, not imitation. 

7. Embrace change, but recognize customers' limits to absorb. Change is necessary and can be good, but too much change in a digital banking platform/app also can be disruptive for customers accustomed to interacting in a certain way. So, carefully consider changes that affect the customer experience and implement carefully for minimal impact — unless, of course, you're addressing a pain point. And educate your product team and management on the effect of change on customer experience. Is the business consideration worth disrupting the customer experience? If so, is it possible to change without disrupting customers who are okay with the status quo? Choose wisely.

Designers are responsible for fighting for the end-user experiences. We are the voice of the customer, and it's up to us to ensure that we incorporate business objectives without compromising the customer experience — even in the face of short-term exigencies. Smart business executives recognize that without an outstanding customer experience, any app — much less a digital banking app — can't achieve its full potential, and they respect design teams who are committed. 

Functionality alone no longer gets the job done; engagement is where loyalty is truly gained.

photo istock