Retail Account Opening Validation

An Ethnographic Research Study

What research challenge were we asked to solve?

The project team was asked to develop a tool that can be used across channels to facilitate consistent relationship building, identify consumer goals and financial needs, personalize product recommendations, and improve the referral process.

The new process tool was piloted in branches during Fall 2018. In the first quarter of 2019, the tool was piloted within the phone bank.

Because the phone bank is a different channel than the branches, with different resources, limitations, and goals (for customers, colleagues, and the business overall), it was important to test this tool within its’ intended setting to gauge how appropriate it is within this channel.

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obscured confidential information in this case study.

Actions

What was our plan to address this?

After gathering information from our business stakeholders, the research plan was used to summarize the reasons and background information for the project. We covered the goals, scope, user types, and defined the research deliverables, as well as, time-line.

business goals

Based on priority of the business and sales segments the following are the overarching goals for the new account opening process.

Enhance the strategy and design of our branch & phone bank sales process
Elevate the customer experience
Improve ease of use for our colleagues
Earn more share of wallet

research objectives

Do the question sets facilitate valuable relationship conversation? (Does the customer feel cared for? Do the questions help bankers learn more about their customer than before the new tool/process?)
Is significant additional explanation from phone bankers necessary? (For example, do bankers need to define what CD’s are, or explain why they are asking about investments.)
What’s the customer’s perception of reasoning for the goal and product expert questions, and are they able and willing to answer the questions?
Do bankers and customers understand and accept the rationale for account recommendations? What’s their rationale for selecting an account other than that, which was recommended?
Does the tool or workflow require deletions, reordering, or additional flexibility within the phone bank context?
In regards to perception of time required to complete the new account opening process, how do customers and bankers react?

Research Methods

About the Pilot

The new consumer account opening process was piloted in production with the Columbus phone bank for 3 weeks. The pilot was used for new and existing customers opening new Checking, Savings, and Money Market accounts.

Personal Bankers in Flint, Michigan were used as a control group. Bankers in that location opened consumer accounts without using the new tool. Results were reported across both pilot and control groups in an effort to isolate the new tool’s impact, specifically Average Handle Time metrics (AHT- is the average amount of time a sales banker spends on the phone with a customer in order to handle the customer’s request.)

About the Study

During the phone bank pilot, UX Research conducted Naturalistic Observations (40), Intercepts (20), and reviewed Recorded Account Interactions (13). These were done to assess the account opening process, the customer/banker reaction to, and perceived value of the question sets within the new process.

UX employed observational techniques to unobtrusively listened to account opening processes (53) in the phone bank and collected data on specifics of:
- the conversational flow,
- banker techniques for information gathering and relationship-building, and
- technical obstacles and opportunities
In parallel, we conducted phone intercepts with customers (7) following their calls, and organized one-on-one interviews with phone bankers (13) who utilized the new tool. We collected feedback on:
- the interactions that the new tool/process affects, and
- account opening using the new tool as an integration to the process

Both phone banker and customer feedback were used to assess the experience and to suggest improvements to the process and question content.

Participants

Twenty-three (23) Columbus sales bankers were recruited to participate in the Phone Bank pilot. Pilot location was determined based on geography (central Ohio). Thirteen (13) sales banker intercepts were conducted once bankers had experienced consumer account openings using the new tool/process, 3-6 times.

Banker participants were:

Inbound sales phone bankers, both Universal (10) and Personal Bankers (13);
With a range of experience and performance levels;
A mix of genders; and
A mix of ages.

Seven (7) customers agreed to intercept interviews following their account opening calls.

“People, if they have them [investments] set it and forget it. So the questions are harder and causing the customer to have to think too much. Too much cognitive load. Too confusing to them - why do you need to know that?”

— PID 4 (PB)

Key Findings & Recommendations

Bankers appreciate guidance around a goals-oriented conversation and feel it reinforces the organization as a relationship bank.

However, bankers desire flexibility in the tool so they can have meaningful conversations with their customers.

The current banker workflow and the reason a customer calls the phone bank impacts the usefulness of the new tool/process.

Most often, this is not a linear conversation, but the tool is designed to function linearly, even with recent updates.
The tool, in its current state, is not appropriate for all customers and all scenarios. It’s important for bankers to have the flexibility to use their experience and emotional intelligence when it comes to interacting with customers. For example, people with few assets can feel belittled and older, retired people can feel excluded.

Bankers are seeking support for pulling the goals piece of the conversation all the way through the interaction.

They feel the conversation makes more sense if they can connect the Goal questions, to the Product questions, to the Recommendations, and finally Next Steps. Having the conversation in this way keeps the focus on the customer’s priorities instead of the bank’s.

Left: New Process Conversation Flow, Right: Bankers Suggestion for Conversation Flow — Left: New Process Conversation Flow,
Right: Bankers Suggestion for Conversation Flow

Customers feel some questions are intrusive and refuse to answer. There are also situations in which bankers sense their loosing the customer emotionally through the product questions.

Currently, bankers don’t have a “refuse to answer” option for questions and must enter a false answer. Collecting inaccurate data may adversely impact future business decisions.

There is still concern from a business perspective, about the time that the new tool/process adds to the account opening process. Only 3 of 53 customers commented about how the call was taking longer than expected. Bankers were patient with customers who caused delays when looking for ID info or other distractions.

The business concern is in regards to Average Handle Time metrics. Using the control group for comparison, it’s estimated the addition of the new process conversation will add approximately $12,000 in incremental annual FTE expense. This presents an opportunity to adjust the scorecard expectations of the current phone bank colleagues.

“Customers have difficulty understanding that it can be to their advantage to pay monthly account maintenance fees, which goes against their predisposition that fees are bad and unnecessary. We need a simple, efficient way to explain this concept. It’s like spinning the customer around-and-around and then asking them to walk a straight line.”

— PID 9 (PB)

Results

What were the results of the work?

Following the research, bankers were able to get the flexibility they desired from the tool. The navigation was changed to allow bankers to move back and forth in the tool in order to better follow the flow of a conversation that doesn’t adhere to the intended linear flow.

Bankers are also able to select from additional answer choices like, “refuse to answer” so anyone analyzing the data will know the customer chose not to give an answer instead of presuming the banker didn’t ask the question. If enough customers refuse to answer certain questions, possibly the organization will think better of asking those questions going forward.

Lessons Learned

What did this project teach me about research, design, or myself?

Additional research will be needed to capture the customer’s expectations for account opening, and their experience with the new account opening process. The only customers that agreed to participate were individuals that were very relaxed and had plenty of time to spend on the phone. So, none of them minded the additional questions or time it took to open an account.

Obviously, this dynamic skewed the customer sentiment results. I hadn’t anticipated this beforehand. Knowing this now, I will be far more hesitant to attempt speaking with customers after they’ve completed a lengthy phone session with a banker. In the future, we’ll need to come up with another way to intercept customers.

However, I must say the real-time ethnographic observations allowed us to hear the customer and how they expressed themselves by paying attention to tone and other verbal cues. This enabled us to understand the customer’s experience as it was happening.