Competitors customer experience audit for Bank

Research, UX audit, consulting
#Case study
Knowing your competitors’ weaknesses and strengths is always beneficial for business, especially when it comes to customer acquisition competition in the financial industry, particularly in the B2B segment, where is much happens behind the scenes...
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  • Client
    NDA
  • Industry
    Banking
  • Timeline
    6 weeks

Challenge

Several key competitors in our client’s market have launched a new feature for SMB businesses that significantly simplifies and digitalizes the process of applying for financing and obtaining credit line approval within a couple of hours, as advertised. Our client has asked us to help them investigate the real-life customer experience, evaluate usability, and determine the process behind this new service. The project’s main challenge was to conduct a customer experience audit acting the “customer role” for various customer types, such as solo entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs, and CFOs from different industries.

Project goal

Conducting customer experience research, usability audit of digital interfaces and investigating the processes behind the new services introduced by our client’s competitors.

Process explained

  1. Several key competitors in our client’s market introduced a innovative feature for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). This new offering promised to streamline and digitalize the process of applying for financing, with the added allure of obtaining credit line approval within mere hours. Our client tasked us with a comprehensive investigation to uncover the real-life customer experience, evaluate the usability of this feature, and understand the underlying processes. The complexity of this project lay in our need to authentically represent various customer profiles, including solo entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs, and CFOs from diverse industries.
  2. To truly grasp the decision-making process from the bank’s perspective, we needed to provide sensitive data such as business financial statements, shareholder information, and tax reports as a part of application process, depending on what type of legal entity we were representing. This requirement necessitated collaboration with  business owners of real businesses and solo entrepreneurs. So we decided to use moderate usability testing and service safari methodology. Our approach involved engaging with these stakeholders to act as genuine applicants, thereby gaining authentic insights into the customer journey. To get this connections our management used its wide business network. Meticulously negotiated with several business owners to participate as potential customers in the financing application process. After securing legal agreements and NDAs, we guided these “mystery shoppers” through every stage of the application, documenting their experiences in granular detail. This included noting their moments of excitement and frustration, measuring task completion times, cataloging the required documents, and observing interactions with bank account managers. We also tracked the banks’ decision timelines and subsequent steps.
    In a parallel our UX team studied the digital interfaces of the rivals web platform to identify pros & cons of the solutions, documenting the user journey, legal papers exchange process, other important details for that matter.
  3. As a deliverables of the project were a detailed Customer Journey Map, enriched with insights into competitors’ business processes as well as  identified the strengths and weaknesses of the UX/UI in the financing digital application process and formulated recommendations for improvements based on direct feedback from the business owners that participated in the test.
  4. Our findings enabled our client’s business team to secure internal approvals for process enhancements. The implementation of our recommendations led to a significant improvement in customer experience and boosted new SMB customer acquisition metrics.This project not only provided our client with a competitive edge but also underscored the importance of understanding and optimizing the digital customer journey in the financial services sector. Our strategic and hands-on approach ensured that the client could confidently navigate the competitive landscape and meet the evolving needs of their SMB clients.