Bank X – The Road to Money Moments is through the Heart of your People

Posted on by Duena Blomstrom

Bankers ask us all the time why they can’t jump over this people betterment malarky and just go ahead and use our CX workshops to create Money Moments.

Many of our conversations go like this:

“We at Bank X love the idea of Money Moments instead of Banking Products!”

“Thanks, that’s great.”

“We think that’s spot on!”

“Brilliant.

“Can you guys come in and roll out some “EX not UX – how to Create Money Moments” workshops with some best practice examples please?

“Sure… Before we talk about that, what have you guys done to challenge the status quo of the offering so far?”

“Well we have various internal initiatives and projects.”

“Excellent – such as what?”

“There’s… well a multitude of things. There’s the overall digitisation priority of course.”

“…”

“And we are launching another innovation lab!”

“…”

“AND we are nearly ready for Open Banking!”

“Right. So are you guys fully Agile?”

“No – well that’s being implemented in some teams I hear.”

“Has everyone in Product and Proposition reentered around HLD? Have you popularised design with the rest of the organisation?”

“Well we’ve always designed well.”

“What have you found when you re-examined the full proposition with a “What if we had a blank slate, what would we build?” lens?”

“We do a lot of blueskying in every innovation sprint, I’m sure we have done some of that.”

“Have you asked your customers what counts for them money wise to design those moments?”

“We constantly listen to user feedback, sure.”

“What can you tell me about your culture? How empowered do you think your people are?”

“Huh? We attract the highest percentile of top graduates in the industry,  and we recently went through a strong re-branding exercise, we even changed the name of the digital offshoot so that’s not the issue – what’s the connection to changing products into MoneyMoments?”

“OK these banking products you want to change – how many of them do you have today?”

“…”

“Can we start by first taking an honest look at your organisation?”

“What? No! Why can’t we just get some of those killer-app style quick wins a consumer would like? Isn’t that a MoneyMoment?”

Leaving aside how MoneyMoments refers to the collection of all experiences the consumer has with their financial provider, whether overt or invisible, online or in person, conscious and subconscious, and not mere specific features or interactions, the answer to that is that even if the bank could create the most magical of UX while not having worked on Knowledge, Passion and Courage, then it would simply be masking the deeper issues within and it would be futile exercise with little end value.

And that’s a big “IF” because painting by numbers when it comes to the end-user experience simply doesn’t work.

how-to-know-if-someone-is-a-good-person

Moments of CX delight are unique and unless genuinely authentic and born of a true need to make the consumer happy they don’t resonate so they are non-transmittable.

This is why the extraordinary touch points that set Zappos, Disney and Apple aside have not become the norm cross industries.

It’s not for lack of information – everyone knows what makes the Apple store experience magical in terms of tools and processes – but while widely desirable it’s unrivalled. Everyone understands how Zappos goes above and beyond but offers mechanical copies of their wording at best. The technology Disney employs to make the experience seamless is easily accessible to any other experience provider be they a museum or a cinema and yet we don’t see it anywhere else.

What makes them unique is the intensely consumer-driven intention that built the experience. Their customer driven purpose. Their obsession with making them go “wow”.

Unless that spirit comes from the inside, unless the company  has enough good people with courage and passion who deliver against this purpose not because they read it in a white-paper, or it was mandated in their KPIs but because they live and breathe the conviction that it would make their customer’s life better – the “wow” can’t be copied and bolted on. Not consistently, not genuinely.

Supercharging emotions on top of the best of human centred design practices creates such magical experiences that we consumers fall -and stay- in love with the brands that can consistently give us that.

I ask bankers to imagine they could hook up the majority of their employees to a lie detector and ask them if they truly, genuinely, from the bottom of their heart care about their consumers.

Unless they are prepared to bet the summer cottage on how the answer would be a heart-felt, resounding “yes!” they shouldn’t wonder why their bank can’t delight and build MoneyMoments.

SME Banking Hasn’t Been Challenged – my BSTER (Blood, Sweat and Tears Empirical Report)

Posted on by Duena Blomstrom

“This time it will be different”

So I needed a new business account.

3 years after my brush with an aneurysm caused by Metro’s form boxes demands which was so painful it even made it in the book , I found myself actually giddy at the thought of seeing the magic of functional FinTech in action and showing it to my business partner who hadn’t been part of my first journey.

Our new trendy accountants -bless their hearts- had suggested Tide and in fairness that added to their cool factor and was one of the reasons why I decided we would go with them. I did have some reservations, as about a year ago, I had test-set-up a Tide account and gingerly added the details to an invoice I sent to a bank and when I realized that a substantial payment just didn’t show up and they had it returned to them ages later so I had them use the normal path and presumed Tide were simply too young, likely in Beta and just finding their feet so this was an one-off glitch.

Seeing how a substantial amount of water had run down the Thames meanwhile and they’ve gained momentum, things must have changed, I thought, so they were my first port of call.

On second thought…

Having sailed through the authentication piece I was pleased to see how quick their API returned the results from Companies house and helpfully suggested our company so we were on a roll. A very short one as the next screen asked me to confirm the two directors of the company and when I’ve done so they proceeded to helpfully ask for her address. Her UK address.

Not that she has one. Not that she claimed she has one when the company was set up in the Companies House! Knowing how moaning to them about incomplete API calls won’t help I proceeded to try and lie to them that she lives at the company address. No dice, it didn’t map the datafield. We were now stuck. Eventually I texted them and uploaded her passport AND driving license and then they told me they are getting it checked.

t1

To which I received a canned “everyone is different, we are working hard, give us 72 hours” response which felt utterly outrageous at this time so we decided we’re done and will instead go with someone who was actually the absolute FinTech darling of Julia, my business partner over the last two years– Revolut.

As the decision hit, I was having coffee with Devie Mohan, so I thought who better than a well-respected analyst to witness the magic of FinTech onboarding.

We sailed through the first two screens while I was explaining to her how Tide managed to get stuck and how they weren’t able to verify her address and shortly realised that Revolut had the same issue of lack of data but an amazingly elegant way to handle it – they said they needed more data but offered to email Julia to ensure she verifies herself. An obvious coup ensuring they get another sign-up AND can talk to the director directly.

r1

Incidentally, the fact that I later discovered none of the other competitors implemented this incredibly elegant and intelligent solution just reveals a sad fact: they never saw it, never did any onboarding with Revolut themselves.

With little else left to do but wait for Julia and Revolut to get together, Devie and I mused over the various fees and whether or not the 25 GBP a month for the basic account is not a bit too much and we returned to our coffees and more pressing FinTech gossip.

Meanwhile, in the land of “no, can’t do”…

 Now with my appetite for non-Tide well and truly whetted and Revolut having me in limbo I decided I would systematically try the remaining options so I found the first list of Challenger SMEs I could find and started going through the list.

With Starling at least the pain was swift – after a few glitzy screens that got my heart racing with the promise of the most awesome free and functional account they frankly admitted they basically do sole traders only and can’t support multiple directorship. Same goes for Coconut. Sure, business accounts but only if you’re a freelancer, otherwise we should take our limited needs (ha!) elsewhere.

Monese let me “register my interest” while Monzo claims no interest in business banking at all.

With CountingUp I got stuck in an endless loop of trying to deal with two different directors and kept sending me back to the login screen in the app and while I enjoy a Beta-app challenge and normally would try my best “spot the developer-FU and try to work around the coding” game this time I was not amused.

I then fiddled with Anna – which I initially thought was a dumb name till I realized they acronym-ed “Absolutely No Nonsense Admin” which gave me the warm and fuzzies because let’s face it, who in banking doesn’t love a good acronym? Aside from how I found their graphics are a bit too cutesy – will everyone take kindly to this piglet face representation?- I made the mistake to register with the company where I am sole director and after having been through the pain of being asked for 2 different ID documents and a bill with my address on it I couldn’t be bothered to even try our two directors limited so the comparison isn’t perchance fair but I’ve included what I know nonetheless.

anna1

While all of this was unfolding –and make no mistake about it, no unfolding was instant and straight forward as it said on the flashy press releases- Revolut had managed to open our account and we were nothing if not over the moon. Only clear glitch – neither Julia nor I could escape the prison of having previously logged in as private Revolut customers in the app on our phones so we sign up with our brand new business account, and after a fair amount of deleting and reinstalling we each started messaging them (in the app, on Facebook and and on Twitter) for ideas on how to sign out of the personal and sign into the business.

Seeing how no one was answering our multiple queries (and even when they later did, it was so flippant that it broke Julia’s die-hard-Revolut –early-adopter heart!) I thought the race was still on and returned to Tide where compliance had managed to vet the documents and there was now an account! Success!

Or was it? As soon as I sent the details to one of our team and asked them to upload them to the invoice template I realized I had no IBAN/BIC or SWIFT code to add so I got back to them and then they broke my heart like this:

t2-1t2

A package came in the mail yesterday though and it was delightful indeed. Now I have this beautiful card the useless-to-me Tide account and no faith they will be getting back to me any time in the next century.

I gave up after this and gave in. We are now Revolut business customers. I’d like to say that’s because they were the best but really it’s because they were the only ones who showed up at all.

BSTER – Blood, Sweat and Tears Empirical Report

This is what I’ve learned and if it saves even one limited, international directors company (oh the design-for-Brexit jokes!) from the pain of trying challengers or if, even better, makes any of these guys step-up then it was worth it.

  TIDE REVOLUT STAR-LING MONZO COUNTINGUP ANNA MONESE
Digital Onboarding using only ID and Face YES YES ✗ ✗ YES ✗ ✗
Mobile App Existence YES ✗ YES ✗ YES YES ✗
Accounts for Ltd vs. Sole Trader YES YES ✗ ✗ YES ? ✗
Multiple Directorship support YES YES ✗ ✗ YES ? ✗
Non-UK Director address YES YES ? ✗ ✗ ? ✗
Monthly Usage Fee (aka Expensive) ✗ YES ✗ ✗ ? ✗ ✗
Clear Communication of Features ✗ YES ✗ ✗ ✗ YES ✗
Facial Recognition YES YES YES ✗ YES YES ✗
Upload of Picture for Onboarding (i.e. instead of live camera access) ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗
Easy log-in (i.e. Touch ID) YES ✗ YES ✗ YES YES ✗
Card YES YES YES ✗ YES YES ✗
International Transfers ✗ YES ? ✗ ? ? ✗
Speed of Account Opening ✗ YES ? ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗
Customer Service YES ✗ ? ✗ ✗ YES ✗
Connection to Xero or FreeAgent YES YES ? ✗ YES ? ✗

I could tell you what went wrong with each of those steps. Where their authentication provider was poor, where the prioritisation of features was appalling, where there was no user testing, where API calls were impotent, why organisationally their customer service is crippled et cetera, but these are just excuses in 2018 and after all the hype and promise of the user centricity FinTech in general and UK Challengers in particular should bring.

Looking at the above and considering that after all this pain and suffering I only have ONE (hopefully “functional” – we have yet to see the test amounts we set over arrive) account that can take international payments that we could add to an invoice as I write this, Revolut wins the SME banking race hands-down.

Screen Shot 2018-10-02 at 06.19.31

While they were rather horrid Customer Service wise, I accept they may –wrongly- presume I’m part of a some FinTech influencer clique or other and intent on disparaging them, so that would have added to their lack of promptness in answering me so it’s possible that they would be far less painful to deal with, to others.

Ironically, a while back I was headhunted for a leadership position in one of the banks above and in my chat to the board I said something about how I would like to see the budget for “people-back-up until AI and experience deliver” and they didn’t like that much at all, they said it doesn’t belong in my acquisition strategy presentation. Uh well.

This banking was very emotional indeed

Screen Shot 2018-10-02 at 06.18.43

How did it make me feel?

Frustrated, fearful, concerned, burdened, unsafe.

All that and I’m not your average consumer, I want it to work out, I want to find the way around the lack of testing or the app interaction error, I’m a technologically savvy and hell-bent-on-getting-in user. Is that who we should design for though? Am I Customer 0? Would every other company director have the same patience and drive?

This is why we can’t have nice things

Sadly, I have a feeling that because these companies are still small and fairly defensive, this won’t be taken as constructive criticism but bad PR, but I look at it as efficiency: sending them each a long email with suggestions and complaints wouldn’t have gotten me or their Backlog prioritisation anywhere much, and would have also not let other new users go and try it for themselves.

So there you go banking, free user testing and publicity with a very restrained dash of snark considering. You’re welcome.

Now I can only hope these challengers don’t release my frustrated 5 am selfies in retaliation!

The Banker and the Sour Grapes

Posted on by Duena Blomstrom

*Warning – the following may cause your knickers to knot. If it does so, please re-read as it is meant as compassionate analysis not mindless bashing.*

Cognitive-Dissonance-1

Today’s story will be about bankers’ cognitive dissonance when it comes to consumers’ needs.

We are all “grown” here so I’m sure everyone is familiar with what “cognitive dissonance” stands for but a refresher may be in order to help us along:

In short, it’s the feeling of really uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time.

The most well known example of cognitive dissonance can be found in Aesop’s “The Fox and Grapes” fable where a fox is really keen on having some grapes but can’t reach to eat them so decides to end its internal turmoil by concluding they weren’t going to be tasty as they were not ripe yet, originating the “sour grapes” expression.

Let’s replace the Fox with our Banker.

The fox’s thought is “I believe I fancy some grapes and I think I will reach and jump and generally do what is necessary to reach them and consume them which would make me happy“. Our banker’s equivalent is “I believe I am a good at my job, surrounded by good people and knowledgeable enough about FinTech that I accept fast changes need to occur in our digital proposition so I am working hard to ensure we make them fast enough to keep our customers happy.”

The dissonant thought on the part of the fox is “I know can’t reach the grapes” whereas the banker may think “I know that I am part of a nearly paralysed monolithic structure that is slow to come up with newness and implement it, that all the agile new challengers will bypass us on the race to the consumer no matter what I do.”

After having decided he can’t do it despite its better efforts, the fox thinks “‘They’re sharp and hardly worth my while!” while after seeing his first thought being uncomfortably challenged by the pace with which others are moving, the banker said no further than last week “Seen that there Tandem losing its license? Challenger -schallengers, no danger there, they won’t even make it to consumers, no need to hurry anyone, business as usual!”

Having personally heard variations of the “sour grapes” thought above from the mouth of a few different bankers, I was aghast. These are uber smart, uber hard working, very knowledgeable bankers, surely they can’t truly believe that.

Surely, I thought, they know that’s generally untrue and that examples such as Tandem’s story or Monzo’s tech issues or even the delays in Starling and Atom they use to make the same point, are not true illustrations of their license to relax as the customer will get better nowhere else, yet they say it. And momentarily believe it.

Furthermore, surely they know that the real threat and why they should not start leaving the office at 5 pm again and cancel their innovation labs, is not the challengers but the huge technology giants and what they are cooking in the background in digital money experience and yet they say that.

cognitive_dissonance (1).jpg

Don’t get me wrong, I know for a fact bankers are aware that there’s threat in the immediate propositions too – after all no one contests that the challengers and the experience-layer-banks will serve to wet consumers’ appetite for impeccable UX and really contextual functionality and once wetted it may be impossible to keep critical dissatisfaction at bay, but when you add to that same CX magic the mass that the giants have – it should keep every incumbent banker awake at night.

Here’s the kicker though – they are human beings, they can’t keep being awake every night, they work double hard without the luxuries the other FinTechers have – the freedom of expression, the speed to see results, the feeling of being part of change at a suitably innovative, fast paced rhythm so they need the momentary relief.

I’ve said this many times before – no other industry behaves quite like ours or has been affected by the sharp advent of technology and its effects on customer experience in quite the same fashion so we’re experiencing unprecedented levels of discomfort in many ways irrespective what part of the industry we are in. All of us – bankers new and old, technology makers and commentators, we are all impacted by this spectacular time in the growth of digital and the money retail business. There’s no time to complacently relax into anything, deep conceptual thinking is nearly banned if we wanted to keep up, there is definite uncertainty to accompany ever growing demands and it feels like the more we learn, and the more we try, the harder it is.

FinTech these days has become like an immensely fast paced game with absurd levels of difficulty thrown in for ever-diminishing (or at least largely unclear) pots of gold. No one has to bare the stress more than those working in large incumbent banks. Spare a thought (and occasionally a pint of beer) for their painful bouts of cognitive dissonance, look them straight in the eyes and remind them “Forget Tandem, they’re not sour, keep trying to reach.”

I am a Banker – therefore I lie

Posted on by Duena Blomstrom

 

While I came up with the Emotional Banking concept a few years ago, it’s only been a year now that I’ve waved my banking-change crusader flag and inflicted my indignation of banks not caring about their customers’ feelings, full time. I’ve learned a lot in this past year.

I have learned in utter consternation that banks have no interest in being a serious brand like every other consumer business does. I’ve then learned why this is and dissected its utter perceived lack of imperative that comes from a lack of mobility that no other industry has the luxury to experience.

Next up I questioned how banks can be neigh but blind to the imminent changes in the industry – the peer-2-peer plays, the internet players, the experience layers (neo banks), the technology giants dabbling with financial services and the new challengers. How they justified being able to afford more of the lack of care to the way their clients really felt about their money.

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me” – S.E. Hinton

It turns out their blinds are handed out as soon as they become decision makers in banking. If life were a science-fiction work by Philip K Dick there would be a higher evil mastermind that keeps bank’s boardrooms topped up with pre-Y generation males and then ensures they speak McKinsey talk in lieu of real English while loosely discussing hip FinTech words they once read in the Guardian for all of 2 minutes before returning to P&L and share prices.

This would help this evil mastermind ensure there’s no regard for the consumer, no insight into his or her needs and desires and surely no understanding of how to get, motivate and keep the right people who can put that new fangled technology to good use.

Sadly this is not a novel but our reality.

More worryingly, in the past few months I’ve witnessed the famed challenger banks, a wave of new and promising structures that Britain bet its farms on, start down that path as well. Business models that were courageous and disruptive iterated again and again to at most, tamer, pale versions of their initial selves, or worse, a completely different animal that amounts to more vivid colours on a version of the high streets current accounts. I’m sure if they cared to admit this is the case, they would blame it on the FCA license grilling but I believe it’s simply normal start-up pressure to demonstrate model which in their case means go to market half cooked an half stripped of dreams.

Maybe there is still time for the UK challenger banks to turn the boat around and do what’s right for the consumer but they need to stop crowd-funding till they break servers and charming conferences and journalists for vanity and put their heads down and give us insight and action.

Insight is all but absent in the industry. We never learn anything new. The same dusty statistical tidbits about amounts of tooth brushes versus mobile phones in the world and the length of marriage versus banking relationships are repeated over and over again. And it isn’t only the establishment that is guilty of it. Of the former (as undoubtedly they are even more today) 27 founders and CEOs of challenger banks the FCA has reviewed and that I’ve heard speaking in public or private contexts, do you know how many have had any revelation to share about consumers? If not “I’ve found the holy grail of savings” at least a “We saw huge anxiety when they tap in the overdraft so we change the colour of the app and the language to reassure”. You guessed it. Not one.

The incumbents blame the immutable inertia created by tens of years of patched, spaghetti-like backend systems, for their paralysis in real interest of what would truly make consumer’s lives better from the money point of view. If only they started all over, they say. The challengers don’t blame anything as they won’t admit it, but suffer from the same unwillingness because of natural constraints of being at the beginning and having to start proving their case. If only they had systems and mass, they think.

Meanwhile, the protagonist of the consumer centric mantra falls in between and gets what is, for all our FinTech sins, a flat design version of their online banking of 3-4 years ago topped off with an ever growing dread of customer support and mistrust in its uptime and an ever more futuristic in design cow-webbed branch.

It isn’t’ just the banks (big or small) either. We’re all guilty of it in the industry. We write articles, go to industry events and pat ourselves on the back for beginning to understand AI and Blockchain but we allow basic customer research to not happen anymore. We say it politely when we should allow ourselves to be alarmed and shake every banker we ever meet into action. We hear no revelations about consumer behavior about their money but we accept that what they really want is a new currency in identity and disruptive data and trust models. We have no serious interest in how to modify virtuous monetary behavior but we wave the “millennials want instant access to information” flag as if we came up with that nugget ourselves.

We lie. There’s no point in sugar coating it. When we collectively claim all we care about is the consumer and we will put them at the center of our every thought, but we banish design to a de-facto after-thought to prettify existent cumbersome products, we lie. When we say we’re building disruptive new models that will integrate money into larger digital contexts, but we don’t have the backend technology to even begin to understand the data, we lie. When we know as a consumer, as a human, that our needs are nowhere close to met in our interaction with our money holder, but we spend no time seriously studying those needs and feelings but say we do, we lie.

I fundamentally believe bankers old and new are not comfortable with this particular lie (research clearly shows they are ok with other kinds) and given the means would like to change it so let’s start with an honest look.

Where is experience design in your organisation? How many of the products and features you offer have been designed as compared to copied and modified?

How many people and how much time is devoted on good old fashioned customer research? Not the odd focus group to prove the choice of green on the left corner of the mobile app is correct but honest, intense research about their attitudes, emotions and views about money and the interaction with their provider.

How many innovation labs, funds, in- and ac-celerators have you poured (granted, non-significant) amounts of money into over the last 5 years? What can you point to that has trickled down to the consumer? How has it changed their financial lives?

Saying “it’s about the people” sets you aside from the old and dusty ones who won’t even admit that but is that rhetoric confined to water coolers and hip events or brought into the board room and made a priority? How many of you reward knowledge if you happen to accidentally have FinTech industry voices with strong opinions and a name working for you instead of treating them as having a shameful hobby? In your list of KPIs, OKRs or any other Rs does it say “Get, keep and nurture mega smart and passionate people who put the consumer first”?

Here’s the thing, we all agree the status quo won’t hold.

We all know you could become pipes (and that goes for challenger banks as well when it comes to invisible banking). We’re up against companies who get experience intimately, have brand, have people, have an obsession with understanding the consumer and don’t have to lie about it. We absolutely must shake the lip service, the convoluted meaningless language, the excuses about too much legacy or too little funding and the hope that these other guys “would never enter banking, why would they?” because at this rate, our lying amounts to such abuse of the consumer they may enter banking as sheer compassionate charity and not in the hopes of turning a profit.

P.S. My faithful readers – hi honey!- know, I end articles with a bang so the above phrase would have been the perfect point to leave hanging to emphasise the doom and gloom but that would make me guilty of the same demagoguery. This is not in the scare mongering series we all seem to write these days. This is a call to arms. I know so many of you reading this well and you’re amazingly passionate, smart human beings who struggle with the fact customer centricity is reduced to a lie despite how you still feel everything you do is with the consumer in mind. Changing it is daunting, but it’s doable. Let’s break this down and figure out how to listen and care and tell the truth about our culture and what it needs to fundamentally change and we will eventually get there. 

Dear Bankers – feelings make bank

Posted on by Duena Blomstrom

buy

Tapping into emotions and driving positive ones through addictively delightful interactions- pays. That’s why you need to be a brand. No seriously, I know I’ve been repeating this like a broken record over the past years but it most certainly does.

There are three areas where the connection between customer’s feelings and their shopping behaviour becomes most evident. Areas where the Rational Consumer is but Myth.

TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Recent research shows that the way we relate to technology and its digital manifestation has drastically changed over the past few years. We started our pre-digital relationship to technology by perceiving it as an objective enabler for various goals with practical benefits. Now-a-days technology translates into an instant appraisal of how it can “express and enhance who I am” – an emotional goal touching on motivation and needs.

CONSUMER GOODS

Nowhere is the connection more surprising than in purchasing decisions when it comes to everyday goods. Dr. P.N. Murray and his team found that:

“…consumers’ beliefs about a brand’s personality are based primarily on their interpretation of its “story” – the narrative expressed in communication, packaging, and other marketing elements. The narrative communicates what the brand means to them … the emotional connection. It is this connection that makes consumers loyal to brands.”

LUXURY BRANDS

We all know that luxury items are maybe the most emotional of purchases with no reason to buy a Tesla versus a Mercedes SLK beyond the fact that it intrinsically appeals to our aspirations and sense of self.

This new research also uncovered subconscious reasons behind each aspirational purchase decision

“unconscious perceptions about a brand’s authenticity and timelessness – what consumers describe as its “truth.” These perceptions evoke emotions – the sense of trust and security that is the essence of luxury for consumers.”

If you’re in banking and quickly scrolled down to see if Financial Services was listed only to let out a sigh of relief not to see it I would suggest it’s time you hold that breath and look up again because no matter how much we may not like to admit it, banking is part consumer goods, part luxury and it’s all underpinned by technology and digital products so all of this, the irrationality of consumers, their need for an emotional connection is highly relevant to us.

So Mr (or, sadly far more unlikely, Mrs) Banker let me ask you this: do you know how your CBBE (Consumer Based Brand Equity) pyramid compares to that of Levi’s, Amazon’s or Google’s? Does your bank have one? Shall we grab someone from the Customer Behaviour team and ask, maybe a Neuromarketing expert? Does your bank know what it is?

I’d wager the answer is “no, no, who?!? and no” because we’ve already established banks do not lift one finger to become a brand. In their defence there was no need – if they did not build delightful experiences and expressed their story and “truth” then what? What would the consumer do? Go to the next non-delightful-devoid-of-truth bank? The reality of it is that while there’s ample safety in numbers and banks can continue to abuse its consumers by withholding delight some of them have where to go now. And the places they go to will fundamentally have built an identity and the type of strong brand that will make people join them and fall in love with them hence buy from them

While we struggle to understand why we should even put the consumer truly at the centre of what we build in retail, private banking and wealth made some –timid- steps in researching emotions and some studies such as this and this have been surfacing. That’s because they care, they want to make money.

That 1 point change in mortgage rates you debated for 3 months won’t move the needle. The 0.02 higher savings offer or the 100 quid signing bonus won’t make anyone a loyal, invested customer because your premise doesn’t work. It’s not about the numbers, it’s about the feelings. That’s what pays.

No matter how much denial they invest in it and how many times they roll their eyes at the urgency to understand and act on Emotional Banking, retail banking will have to soon stop avoiding the issue, rip off stifling culture to inject experience design into the DNA as a sine qua non technology enabler, and become a loved brand, as opposed to just paying customer centricity lip service sometime very soon.

 

 

Money 2020 Europe – this is how we rolled

Posted on by Duena Blomstrom

 

CfL_hRIWIAABXJH

Let me tell you what this won’t be. A play-by-play of the conference. It won’t be that for several reasons including the fact that I missed a few general sessions due to meetings and the occasional hospital stay so I can’t comment on the full content. What I can comment on, is my experience of it.

First off, while I publicly flogged them for the iffy WiFi the rest of the organisation was flawless in terms of location and endless delightful perks such as DJs, laser beams, ice-cream and pancakes, cute huts for meeting places, mini Lego figurines for each speaker, smoothie bars, cool exhibitions and even the occasional bejeweled wheel chair for the temporarily impaired. As many people remarked it had a trendy, hipsterish, festival feel to it. Which made it an experience.

Which sadly, was in stark contrast with the content of most of the sessions I attended.

Stiff. Corseted. Jargoned to the gills. Wooden language galore. Many speakers other than the usual suspects who tried to liven it up, sounded like media trained drones repeating soul-killing messages about collaboration, technology and customer centricity devoid of critical thought or meaning. Why is this?

I find this fascinating and genuinely think this is a FinTech specific illness. The way in which we slip in and out of meaning and the way many people are genuinely passionate and bit by the bug one moment, and deadpan and businessy the other. Why can’t we say precisely what we mean in plain English?

Is it because the excitement of the Technology world only recently met the Finance world where being stiff has traditionally been everything? Many of the people in FinTech are new to both sides of the story, the new wave are new to the working force altogether yet they seem to adopt this same non-meaningful half unicorn, half sloth language.

Maybe it’s a sign of how everyone is more or less out of their depth and all the experts are still in the making. Even the most knowledgeable of the FinTech world have only had a few years to work this out as they go along and while in the Tech world one can easily be proud of the outstanding speed of change and focus on innovating for the sake of it, when we apply that to financial services it has to have application and it has to be worked out fast enough to allow the ridiculously long cycles of buying and implementing in banking so it is all scarily fluid. Having to translate all this Tech excitement into Banking value may be what makes them sound like a Silicon Valley hipster one minute and like a retiring McKinsey consultant the other.

Or maybe, more likely and hopefully, it’s all about the fact that before technology decided to stuck its hedonism inducing nose into finance, it was all about numbers and being stiff and corseted was necessary to perform the right math whereas now, banking has had to notice the consumer and attempt to start matching these moments of delight they get elsewhere thanks to digitisation.

UX is only “a thing” that bankers have to take seriously because our mobile phones is where we bank rather than where they’ve been expecting us for the last hundreds of years and the table has turned – it’s no longer the consumer shyly coming to the branch hat turned in jittery hands asking for the banker to make some incomprehensible number magic and sell them a product, it’s now a case of the banker holding out their top hat asking for the technologists’ best tips on how to get to a consumer through this new fangled device. Digital technology brought CX to banking and with it a new language and if it has to be a weird combination between real talk and consultancy speak for now while we build new paradigms for the consumer, so be it.

To me, wheeling my chair through its delightful networking areas and entering panels that felt like annual reviews for shareholders, Money2020 was a good metaphor for today’s banking proposition. Beautifully packaged, hip and trendy on the outside and tangled, stiff, immutably old school and rather useless on the inside.

Chateauneuf-du-Branch

Posted on by Duena Blomstrom

I hadn’t thought I’d ever write about a branch but here we are. It isn’t even because I’m fresh out of FinTech and Digital Experience topics – I am so not out of those I’ll be starting a podcast likely called “What my #FinTech?!?” that you can tune in if you are sick of the political correctness and ready to hear winning, complaining and righteous ranting on the topic of technology and finance-. I’m writing about the branch because I think it matters and had an “a-ha moment”.

Last week I was with a very digital branch and while we were dissecting the death of the critical thinking, self directing high street bankers who could make decisions and build relationships not only mindlessly follow process, we realised these places where the customers would have to go to so that they meet one of these old skool superstars are really unexciting.

We all expected branches to go away as Brett King promised us in 2010 and they did not. They will not. Then we’ve decided to “make them into an experience” – most of the time it meant better colours, newer, funky furniture and if we were lucky some iPads in the prying hands of tired tellers.

Banks had decided face-to-face advice is irreplaceable and getting video a la mBank was a distant dream so they were keeping the branch, they were making them awesome, into “lounges”.

Fast forward to 2012 and the new branches where you could “relax” by getting a coffee and having free WiFi were all the rage. As many of us must have done, I became convinced I must simply not be the right segment they were trying to attract to find these features utterly unappealing and to this day I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted the mythical branch coffee. I have to say I find this trend that incubators share with branches really condescending. How large is the “will work/sign a mortgage for WiFi and coffee” segment?!?

Wifi-Flip-Phone-940x529
Couple looking for cell phone signal with Wi-Fi sign

You know what would work? Stuff we need or stuff we like.

Chargers. Tell me my branch has Starbucks-like chargers everywhere and I may stop to get the nanny’s cash out in the branch tonight – catch me then to tell me I ought to have another savings account in case Her Majesty descides to slap another tax on au-pairs.

A free MOT while my mister gets investment advice would mathematically lure him in. With how many flimsy cars we’ve amassedhe’d be all adviced out in half a year

You know what else would get him in for a chat? A pint that’s what. Or a posh glass of wine or whiskey. Yes bank, if you want the slightly more grown up segment in for a chat make it fun for them than the coffee. Take a page out of the book of other retailers – l’Occitanne, Rush – their customers will always rather head there than the competition not because they can’t afford to pay for their own glass of bubbly but because, for as long as they’re there, they feel well treated, cared for, pampered.

Change those horrid chairs and those flimsy partitions and offer them a glass of something. Is there some piece of regulation here that I am missing? Is getting a drinks license disallowed as giving financial advice to people under the influence is immoral or illegal? I doubt it but if so, fair enough – cake! Nuts! Posh salami! Just make this an experience for me, asking for a slight sliver of delight can’t be too much when you ask for my attention to sell me something for the rest of 20 years, can it?!?

Or even find out what they like and then offer them an experience to suit it outside the branch – a Ferrari driving one or a balloon ride – something to bring them back in to tell you about it and get that fixed term while at it.

Send them a basked of baby formula and the number of a savings account you already opened for their newborn and ask them to only fill in their name. Send an “I’m so sorry, condolences, Peter, your Branch Manager” card when you know they borrowed for a funeral. Don’t even try to blame it on bad CRMs – ask! Make your people be eternally curious and passionately caring and they will build your CRM the same way that the old skool branch manager did. A conversation between people that reveals human moments and ways to make them pleasant for your customer.

Oh I don’t know, maybe none of the above (save for the booze one, that is an important one to try) but do the thinking as to what it takes to make your branch experience one filled with delight and joy then expect us in if you’re not gonna close all the damn places!

Ok so here’s the secret to in-branch engagement. Ready? Pen at the ready? Catch me when you can, make me go “wow” when it matters. Got that? Cheers. Let’s catch up over a drink soon.