TRANSFORMING USER EXPERIENCE IN BANKING: Here are the strategies winning financial institutions are using to deliver a superior user experience

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As digital channels become a more critical part of the overall banking journey, banks’ design teams need to strategize on how best to create user experiences (UX) that resonate with their customers.

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A strong UX enables banks to deliver a simple, intuitive, and frictionless digital banking experience.  A superior UX can also help banks improve customer satisfaction and bring in new customers.

Offering a wide range of in-demand mobile banking features, for example, can satisfy existing customers and drive bank selection among new ones — but only if these features are designed and implemented well: JD Power found that customer satisfaction was negatively impacted across both online and mobile channels by the flood of complex and hard to understand features that are common in banking apps today, per an analysis from its 2019 customer satisfaction ratings. 

The risk of not delivering a solid UX strategy is high — slower-moving banks face the threat of fintechs and big tech firms that boast a great UX as their main competitive advantage. Fintechs’ excellently designed apps are pleasing to the eye and simple to navigate.

Meanwhile, leading cross-industry players like Amazon and Google have long raised the bar for digital experiences within their core services — and as they venture into finance, they join fintechs in threatening legacy FIs’ established market positions. Large financial institutions (FIs) are already focusing on UX design as they reshape their organizations by enhancing their digital channels, and smaller ones can learn best practices from these early movers to inform their own UX strategies.

In Transforming User Experience In Banking, Business Insider Intelligence looks at winning UX design strategies employed by leading banks to reveal how other FIs can best capture the UX opportunity. We conducted exclusive interviews with nine major FIs to examine their UX teams in detail, offer insight into their approach to designing UX, and illustrate winning strategies for delivering a superior UX.

Their strategies highlight the need to create multidisciplinary teams that place customers’ needs and desires at the center of design initiatives, as well as the importance of utilizing a UX design methodology to deliver successful propositions in a timely manner.

The banks interviewed in the report are: Bank of America, BBVA USA, Capital One, DBS Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Lloyds Banking Group, and U.S. Bank.

Here are a few key takeaways from the report:

• FIs should put customers at the center of their design initiatives by involving them in all stages of the process to ensure maximum uptake of their UX initiatives. 
• They should use an established UX design methodology — like Design Thinking or Double Diamond — to zero in on the best solutions to users’ problems. 
• FIs should create multidisciplinary design teams with a broad range of talent and expertise to develop meaningful experiences more efficiently. UX design teams should in turn collaborate with other teams and senior leaders to identify solutions that account for user demands, banks’ business needs, and what is technologically feasible.
• Although the majority of customer interactions are happening digitally, FIs shouldn’t neglect physical channels when designing UX, as the customer experience often still involves these channels.
• FIs need to find the right tools to measure the success of their UX initiatives to better link UX to business outcomes. 

In full, the report:

• Identifies the UX oppportunity and provides an overview of popular UX design methodologies that can by deployed by banks.
• Utilizes exclusive interviews with nine leading banks to show how different FIs structure UX teams, approach UX design processes, and measure UX to link it to business outcomes. 
• Helps banks identify strengths and weaknesses in their own UX strategies by providing insights on winning strategies for designing a superior UX. 

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