Improving the customer experience in retail banking

A UK high street bank was concerned about the low usage rate of the touchscreens installed in many of its branches. The technology wasn't delivering the expected benefits and staff and customer engagement was low. The bank wanted to understand how the screens could be put to better use.

I proposed a project to understand customer experiences, preferences, and expectations of their branch visits. The project began with stakeholder workshops to understand the bank's strategy and concerns. We agreed a list of key questions to answer and completed a series of studies which included  field observation and surveys in several branches, bank staff surveys, and field-based competitor research, 

After 3 months of data collection, I sifted and synthesized the findings using affinity mapping and thematic analysis,  identifying pain-points, opportunities,  personas, and customer journeys. I led a series of ideation sessions with our design team resulting in a series of ideal customer scenarios illustrating how changes to hardware, content, and operations could work together to dramatically improve customer journeys. Together, we created design principles and storyboards. I then identified a set of specific and actionable next steps.

I presented the results to the bank’s management team who appreciated the customer-centric approach to the research and considered how best to implement the findings.