The answer was the key to digitizing onboarding processes for retail, wealth and investment lines of business of a major bank. We set out to capture customer preferences, expectations, wants, needs and dislikes to find the key input for design of digital onboarding process and technology.

Arguably, the most important ingredient in any business is the customer journey.  It is the reason for being.  It is that from which all else should fall, and therefore should be a harbinger in driving change.   

And yet, outside-in thinking can sometimes take a back seat to budgets, deadlines and other concerns when there is pressure to get to market.  

In the race to digitize all that we do, it can be tempting to speed the replacement of manual processes with technology.  But if you don’t provide a compelling customer journey, why should your customers get on board?   We asked ourselves this very question, and used it to create value where it didn’t exist.

Change is good.  It just needs to be the Right Change.

Make a point of finding out what the customer journey is today, and how it should change as a result.  ‘Should’ is the operative word.   You may already harbor a vision for change that will not resonate with you customers.    Getting customer confirmation will bring the confidence needed to ensure plans, forecasts and innovations are on the right track.    There are numerous drivers for change. Regardless of the reason, change must always center around the Voice of the Customer.    Think about it – whether change is due to a merger, regulatory change or product expansion, the customer experience should never suffer. 

We found ourselves faced with upwards of 700+ forms and associated manual processes, which needed to be digitized.   Key goals centered around streamlining the customer experience to increase sales and bolster retention. The sheer number of forms made it evident that we needed to solution around customer needs, because the inside-out view was clearly far too complicated to maintain. The customer in this case included clients, service delivery partners, regulators, employees and their supporting processes. So, making the right change was key. 

Steering Clear of Assumptions

You know what they say about assumptions… so, it’s best not to make them!   Get the facts.  In a world of AI, IoT, social media et al, we have a unique and varied window into customer needs and preferences.  

We made a point of finding out what the existing customer journey was, and how it should change to reflect the optimal customer experience.  ‘Should’ is the operative word.   The team started the initiative with a vision for change, but that wasn’t quite what resonated with customers.    Getting customer confirmation is key to setting direction, and confirming that plans, forecasts and innovations are on the right track.  

The Voice of the Customer – What’s it Saying?

You may have big plans to make your products and services stronger, deeper and more efficient.  But if it throws your customer experience into disarray, what’s the point?  That may seem straight forward enough, but oftentimes, the downside of customer impact is more subtle.    …perhaps the new customer journey will be more efficient but is no longer engaging.   …perhaps the team will opt to trim non-critical  features, that the client believes are a useful value-ad.   Regardless of the particular concern, make sure you’re clear on what it is and can factor solutions into your end product.

Mile wide, Inch deep.

Think big.  You should always start a customer journey map with the big picture.   It doesn’t make sense to deep-dive on a journey to the bottom of the ocean, on a particular subject, or a step in the journey.   Build the big picture and get your bearings.  Figure out the answers to these burning questions – Where do customers want to go?  Where do they need to go?  Where are we taking them?  Then spiral down through your analysis one level at a time to ensure you get the answers.  In doing so, you’ll identify opportunities, weaknesses or gaps in products/services that prevent you from providing a holistic customer experience.

In working with the bank, we facilitated creation of a journey map to identify the interactions that would fulfill customer goals.  We uncovered the what and why, in the initial passes of the map.  Specifically, we solicited customer feedback to understand – What digital onboarding means to the customer? What are there expectations? Why?  What happens if those expectations are not met?   What happens when they are?  What needs to happen to fulfill them? Through a combination of focus groups, interviews, observations, and analysis of feedback channels and incident reports, we uncovered what customers really want and translated those needs into actionable requirements and value-added change.

Getting to the Heart of It

When we had a clear view to what and why, we were able to spiral down into deeper layers with confidence.  The next question was “how” (and also “how not”?).   They key was to understand how interactions needed to work to drive real value and fulfill customer goals.     We learned some valuable lessons about the existing onboarding experience:

First – The Happy Path worked reasonably well.   It was well thought out with a single point of contact, supported by auto-provisioning tools to establish most client products and services.   But if a customer encountered any breakdown in auto-provisioning, smiles quickly faded – the streamlined path was quickly replaced by a complex array of business departments and support centers, with little clarity as to who needed to be contacted for what and when.  We used this information to replace the current process with a simplified and cohesive journey map.

Second – Each business unit had their own way of working.  This wasn’t exactly news, but no team was entirely aware of what the other team was doing.   There was little visibility between teams.  So, it was standard fare for each department to create a set of forms to fulfill their needs, and ensure their respective due diligence and compliance.   Not surprisingly, this translated into duplicate forms for the same thing – all of which, required filling and signing by the client.  A client applying for 5 products could complete 5 very similar (or even duplicate) forms – the reason behind the 700+ forms was apparent.   We were able to reduce this number to well under a hundred across all forty product/service lines.

Third – Nothing went forward without signed copies – paper or otherwise.  Many processes were strung together with non value-added dependencies.   This resulted in a rather serialized process that was ripe for improving overall provisioning time.   Two key changes were implemented – (1) dependencies were removed to enable concurrency between activities and shorten the time required to onboard a client by 78%; (2) The signing process was moved to the end and harmonized into a single ceremony. 

These insights helped to make drastic improvements in customer experience – transforming into quick and effective interactions through streamlined processes, reduction in the number of forms, and simplification of the signing ceremony.  Further, we removed the various points a failure associated with exception processing… ensuring that both the happy path and not-so-happy paths resulted in a satisfying client experience.

Proving it Out

Include customers in the ideation process to ensure you’re on the right track. There are many ways to do this, and even the most secret of initiatives can validate the Voice of the Customer using the many tools available today.   Of course, the preference remains to have the customer tell you directly.  But why not capitalize on opportunities to think outside of the box?  Be creative! …tools like AI provide a means to ascertain customer preferences, evaluate those preferences against your products and services, and then propose winning strategies that can drive your forward.  

In the end, a multi-layered strategy is the best predictor as it will enable you to analyze insights from a range of perspectives.  And if you further reinforce that by including customer input as you move through design and development, the road to market will be much smoother.

Don’t Rest on Your Laurels

Customer needs change.   Your business should change too, if you plan to retain them.  So, at regular intervals, think and rethink to validate your journey maps.   Even if your business hasn’t changed, some external factor may have changed and made your process redundant or outmoded.   Better still, you may uncover a new opportunity to expand your customer reach.