To protect the interests of Citi, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information and unreleased features. All information in this case study is my own and solely focussed on Design & UX strategy. It does not necessarily reflect the views of Citi.

Un-complicating finances

Banking is cumbersome to many people. In turn, they barely engage, consider or purchase on the digital channels that have become vital for financial servicing.

Working backwards from Perfect

The team knew that making away with convoluted menus and complicated language wasn't enough to make customers feel more capable. We needed to redefine digital servicing from the ground up.

2 months, 25 concepts and many coffee shop user tests later we were ready to put an interactive experience into management’s hands. It was our vision for more customer-centric digital sales & servicing, and it literally took mere minutes to earn the team the green light. 

Defining ‘customer’ - Nobody likes a banking experience that isn’t made for them

With the budget in hand we conducted in-depth qualitative and quantitative research across 6 markets in Asia Pacific, using the prototype to check our assumptions about people, needs, and behaviours.

It became very clear that Citi was a different financial institution to different people - Whereas to one customer it’s a credit card company for a single piece of plastic, to another it's the custodian of a complex relationship comprised of multiple deposit, FX and investment accounts.

At high level, 3 customer groups stood out as the most prevalent across all markets. These were customers with:

Discreet groups, similar behaviour, matching needs

An elastic interface to serve every relationship

Both, action & information seekers, wanted clarity on their balances instantly after login. And both were prone to taking action afterwards, either intentionally or as a result of their financial situation.

We translated this into what we called the 1,2,3 structure of the dashboard:
After 1sec  -  clarity of financial status
After 2sec  -  comprehension of necessary actions and location of these actions
After 3sec  -  start of the planned action (action seekers), or necessary action (information seekers)

Within this framework we customised and personalised the experience to the respective banking relationship.

There were further differences we solved for and ultimately provided 5 unique combinations of dashboard designs and navigation for a highly personalised experience. At the same time, it retained a single basic structure to ensure cost-effectiveness and simplicity for servicing strategy and production.

Proactive servicing for engagement and control

Now that the dashboard was personalised to the customer group, we looked at the second problem - engagement and control. How could we alert customers of immediate opportunities or risks and help them act on these? Most banks relied on Emails, SMS or push notifications.
The problem with doing this is two-fold:

What really mattered to people was having clarity and guidance when they looked at their balances. This made them feel informed and in control, so they could decide whether or not they wanted to act on the alert or recommendation and this action should ideally be placed in view. 

We created actions for 

• Preventing negative financial impact - ie overdrawn accounts, blocked credit cards or exceeded limits

• Prediction - ie upcoming payments, statements and pay dates, replacement cards, new accounts, relationship manager appointments

• Opportunities - increase of limits, transfer of balances into higher-yielding products, renewal of expiring plans

Results: More engagement, higher return, faster production, 

In the interest of confidentiality, results are being kept high level.

Motivation
NPS was negative before we launched the experience and quickly turned high positive in every market after launch. We also saw a considerable uptick in the number of logins per customer - More than twice as many customers as usual wanted to return to an experience that made them feel like the could understand their finances better and they needed to think less for everyday actions. 

Return
Many customers started using features and took up products they never used or booked before. For some key products, the new experience raised conversion numbers 200-300%. This was driven by the relationship between contextual placement, personalised content and timing of insightful triggers. At the same time, call center contacts reduced considerably as customers felt more informed and more in control.

Flexibility
Modularising the experience with an omni-channel design system had a positive impact on revenue and cost by itself: Design & development time could be reduced by up to 50% through the use of a library of approved and standardised design system components. With faster production time came the ability to react quicker to insights from analytics and customer feedback in order to refine the experience, which in turn drove engagement further.

Why this success? Analysing the elements

Of course the overall journey to the product was longer than it seemed here and it wasn't smooth sailing every day. Many smart people were involved and many pivot storms had to be weathered. Things break, people disagree, and time is finite.

In the end, the success was a case of 'the fools didn't know it was impossible, so they just did it' and looking back I would attribute it to three factors:

Shared belief
Having a vision and making it tangible makes it possible for an entire organisation to march in the same direction. User experience is not simply a matter of logic but one of human truths and emotions, which are often hard to capture with numbers beforehand. However, not everyone can imagine the impact of a better experience without seeing it.
To crack: Give everyone agency to contribute to the vision. Co-owners are the best co-drivers.

Partnership 
Everyone must feel free to voice opinions. However, nobody understands business better than the P&L owner, nobody gets experience better than the designer and nobody knows the intricacies of technology better than the developer. 
To crack: Being aware that we don't know what we don't know. Trust every participant's expertise, reality of constraints and intent to work towards the vision.

Openness
You will be wrong at times. They will be wrong at times. Everyone will be wrong at times. The faster anyone raises their hand when they realise they were mistaken, the faster people can search for a solution. Together. More often than not this creates a tighter bond and higher trust.
To crack: Focussing on and recognising solutions, not mistakes. The more corporate the organisation, the harder you need to work for this. It is, however, the cornerstone of the entire undertaking.