Making remote channels the first choice

MAKING REMOTE CHANNELS THE FIRST CHOICE FOR EXCLUSIVE CLIENTS

HOW MIGHT WE turn remote advisors into the main interaction channel, leaving the bank branches as the last option?

Sector: Financial services

Company: Banco de Credito del Peru (BCP)

Role: Design Research, Employee Experience

Date: 2019

THE CONTEXT

The "Exclusive Clients" segment launched a pilot of remote advisors to increase efficiency at the branches. A couple of months afterwards, a research was required to discover how it was working out.
The challenge was to understand the type of relationship between exclusive clients and their remote advisors (service and communication wise) in order to maximize their gains and reduce pains, making the remote channel more functional.
Based on the learning and input from the "Exclusive Clients" pilot, the remote advisors would be applied as well to the "VIP Clients" segment (the next client segment).

THE design PROcess

I worked hand by hand with another design researcher for this project.

Due to the proprietary nature of this work, the case study will discuss the process and some of the work but at very high level.

Desk Research

Advisor interviews and Shadowing (2 different segment advisors)

Client Interviews and Card sorting

Personas

Journeys

Design principles

The research aimed to identify:

How do clients usually solve their problems regarding banks?
What are the pain points on the customer's journey?
What are the barriers to remote and non-remote services?
What is the relationship like between client and advisor?
What are the client's needs regarding service and communication?

Some of the hypothesis included:

Clients feel closer to the bank through WhatsApp channel as they use it frequently in their everyday environment.
The remote advisors generate insecurity as the clients cannot see or verify the official identity of the advisor.
Clients are afraid of making phone operations because of insecurity and low trust on the channel.
Clients accept bank offers from different areas (marketing, sales, etc) because they do not know that the remote advisors can offer them exclusive deals.

desk research

As an input for the research project, we collected studies from both of the clients segments, as well as the remote advisors pilot. This helped us to understand the context and define basic themes to discover or validate at the interviews and shadowing.

UNDERSTANDING THE USERS' NEEDS

user groups

We decided to focus on 3 large user groups. Within each of them, we looked for extreme users.

Exclusive clients: 18 participants were interviews and participated in card sorting activities. Within the Exclusive clients, extreme users were identified according to:
- new to the service or old to the service
- young, adult or elderly clients
- Digital clients, digital potential or non-digital
Remote advisors for the "Exclusive clients" segment: 3 participants were interviewed and shadowed throughout their work day. Within this advisors, extreme users were identified according to:
- exceeding performance and satisfaction goals, or struggling to reach goals
Physical advisors for "VIP clients" segment: 4 participants were interviewed and shadowed throughout their work day. Within this advisors, extreme users were identified according to:
- exceeding performance and satisfaction goals, or struggling to reach goals

shadowing

My-coworker and I accompanied the advisors from two different client segments throughout they day. We learned a lot just by listening to how they spoke with clients, how clients asked for requirements and all of what advisors had to carry out to give an answer back to the client. When advisors were not speaking with clients, we took the opportunity to interview them.

Remote advisors from the "Exclusive clients" segment

Interviews

To complement the shadowing phase, several advisors were interviewed as well as clients (only from the exclusive segment).

we carried out X focus groups (each for a different user group).

The questions for clients where divided into 5 themes:

Services, technology and communication
Bank services
Customer journey
Remote advisor's service
Card sorting: Channels and Functionalities

MAKING SENSE OF THE INFORMATION

The information from each user group (interviews and shadowing) was analyzed. For each user group, personas, journeys and design principles were generated.

remote advisors (exclusive client segment)

First, we portrayed the main characteristics of remote advisors, including a demographic and behavioral description.

Next, similar to an empathy map, we mapped out how the advisors felt about their motivations, frustration, functional jobs and social jobs.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

journey

To complement this information, a journey map was created on what a day is like for remote advisors. It allowed us to evidence that there were few touch points with high satisfaction, resulting in a general stressful and frustrated experience.

The journey included satisfaction with activities before, during and after working hours, as well as quotes, opportunities and the design principles present per touchpoint.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

design principles

Based on the information collected from remote advisors, design principles were created. These included themes such as holistic view, agility, independence, alignment and support.

Cards used to communicate the 4 design principles to stakeholders.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

persona

Finally, we build a persona that represented an Exclusive client based on the advisor's perspective. This was later on contrasted with the personas build based on the client interviews.

Remote advisor's view of Exclusive clients.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

exclusive clients

Information from the client interviews was downloaded, analyzed and categorized into 5 Personas initially. After going through the information from all interviewees, 2 personas were not robust enough and they needed a secondary research phase to complement them. For that reason, they were left on stand by and only 3 very strong personas were presented.

Sample from the research analysis.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

BUILDING EMPATHY WITH personas

We illustrated 3 personas to represent the needs, goals and design principles of each depending on their digital maturity and confidence on remote services. They included demographic and personal descriptions, relation with technology, preferred communication channels, frequent operations, and relation with the service offered to exclusive clients. They also included the prioritization of channels and functionalities raised with the card sorting activities.

The personas were portrayed in a matrix depending on their confidence in remote services and digitality. They were also rated depending on what level they required on warranty, amiability, clarity and precision.

These personas will be the main reference for stakeholders for any adjustments and future implementations within the Exclusive clients segment.

The 3 personas created mapped within the matrix (left) and showing the levels they require on specific aspects from the service (right). * Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

Extract from one of the personas created, this particular persona was the Digital Newbie.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

journey

To complement each of the Personas, a journey map was created since they first became clients of the remote service within the Exclusive clients segment. Hence, the journey included touch points such as first contact, onboarding, communication with the remote advisor, problem resolution, follow-ups and more. The journey included as well satisfaction with different activities, quotes, opportunities and the design principles present per touchpoint. The gains and pains varied depending on the persona.

Sample from one of the journeys (journeys created for the Digital Newbie persona).

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

design principles

Finally, design principles were established for each of the profiles. Overall, they covered aspects such as empathy, warranty, confidence, secure communication, clarity and speed.

unexpected DISCOVERIES

It was interesting to discover that the barriers to the remote service were connected. We identified 4 barriers, which had to be unblocked from left to right.

1 S T D I G I T A L I T Y

The user's digital knowledge and confort is the first barrier to go from a physical service to a digital one.

2 N D A U T H E N T I C A T I O N

If the user is confortable enough to use a digital service, the next barrier is the first contact where it is crucial to general a bond of trust. There is a strong need to authenticate and validate if the advisor is really from the bank and not a fraud.

3 R D S E C U R I T Y

If the advisor is able to authenticate correctly and the user trusts him or her, the next barrier regards security. The client can contact the remote advisor, but performing remote transactions and operations is a different matter because the client might not want to share sensible information. This is a limitation for the remote service.

4 T H S E R V I C E

Finally, if the clients unblocks the previous barriers (is confortable with remote services, trusts the advisor and the security of transactions), the final barrier to making the remote advisors the preferred channel is the service provided. If the service is nor effective, then the client will choose to use alternative channels.

Quantifying clients from each persona

Finally, we needed to quantify how many clients belonged to each of the personas identified so the business analyst from the segment could address them in the most appropriate way.

To do so, we selected several variables on 3 major topics:

Personal information: Including age, location, education level, work situation, etc.
Bank information: Including product tenure, preferred bank channels, branch visits, etc.
Digital behavior: Including digital payments, digital communications, etc.

After defining those variables, clients who contact the remote advisor's service could be further categorized by the following variables:

4. Remote advisor's service: Including bank claimed through this channel, direct inbound calls, applications entered, etc.

The variable selection was passed on to the business analysts to perform the calculations.

physical advisors (vip client segment)

As learnings from the pilot with the Exclusive clients segment would be used as input for a potential implementation with the VIP clients segment, the advisors from the latter segment were also interviewed and shadowed.

Just as with the remote advisors from the Exclusive clients, we portrayed the main characteristics of physical advisors, including a demographic and behavioral description. Similar to an empathy map, we mapped out how the physical advisors felt about their motivations, frustration, functional jobs and social jobs. Unlike the remote advisors, the physical advisors were not frustrated or stressed, they managed a much shorter client portfolio and had less dependencies.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

journey

To complement this information, a journey map was created on what a day is like for physical advisors. It allowed us to evidence that there were few touch points with low satisfaction, resulting in an overall positive work experience.

The journey included satisfaction with activities before, during and after working hours, as well as quotes, opportunities and the design principles present per touchpoint.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

design principles

Based on the information collected from physical advisors, design principles were created. These were similar from the ones of the remote advisors, coinciding on holistic view and agility, but adding client autonomy and remote closeness.

Cards used to communicate the 4 design principles to stakeholders.

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

persona

Finally, we build a persona that represented a VIP client based on the physical advisor's perspective. This should be contrasted later on with the client interviews. The advisors identified 3 different types of clients depending on their age, digitality, communication preference and main requests.

Remote advisor's view of Exclusive clients (left) and the 3 client types identified (right).

* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.

THE next steps

After handing off our research to the business team from the client's segments, adjustments started being made with the remote advisors service for Exclusive clients.

A second research loop was launched to discover the needs from VIP clients and deepen the understanding regarding that particular client segment to define the best way to implement a service with remote advisors.

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