Omnichannel

With ChatGPT all the rage, and customers getting lost in Social Media, engagement strategies more than ever must have an omnichannel narrative. Engaging customers across digital channels (chat, social media, video, mobile , web etc) and non-digital channels (contact centre and branch) is the work of the day, as perhaps it always has been.

The Odyssey UX is increasingly well understood for mobile and internet banking UI, with a range of use cases across children, wealth management, saving, spending and lending amongst others evident. The objective is to deliver customer journeys that encourage strong money habits. In mobile and internet banking the experience (UX) can be heavily influenced by the interface (UI), with strong use of colour and imagery.

There is less opportunity for these tools within other digital channels , ChatBots, ATMs and Social Media, or assisted channels, where there is little, or little control over the, UI. Here the UX has to be more inherent, more intrinsic, more implicit. Yet here the opportunities for Odyssey are equally as exciting, perhaps more so.

As a primary source of revenue, lending presents a huge range of opportunities to improve the experience. This starts with the loan application process but also the post sales experience. Customers are getting harder to acquire, nurture and retain. They are moving away from their main financial institution to brokers and fintechs because of uncertainty, anxiety and value. Funnel leakage is routine due to poor, clunky experiences that have poor emotional connection and lack empathy with the long and arduous loan journey to home ownership. There is a big desire within the banking executive to turn this around and nurture the customer through the process from search, borrow, buy and own, with lots of wow moments en route. This is a perfect opportunity for a customer journey architected around game and delivered through a unified omni channel experience.

25 years on from the birth of internet banking, customers are still calling the contact centre and visiting branches. This is especially true in times of uncertainty or urgency: When a card is lost, interest rate changes or volaility erupts. Crawling through a website or mobile app for the right answer can take time and may not necessarily leave the customer in a state of well-being: confident they are in a good place. This can be especially true if the UX doesn’t speak their language or to them. Enter the power of conversational banking – the ability for the customer to engage with the bank via a chat bot in a conversation,  getting straight to the point “Help – I’ve lost my credit card/phone/motorcycle.” The bot can rapidly identify the course of action, serve it up and remain with the customer till they are happy or hand them over to a human to do so. This chat bot can be bank curated or exist inside another messaging platform (Instagram/Facebook/WeChat etc) as a friend. Chat evokes what search engines and databases cannot: a sense of personal involvement. It implicates one’s selfhood, which helps cultivate behaviours. As such it presents great opportunity for engagement.

Bank WOW first engages Moroku to harness their On-Ramp methodology to define the customer journey, the set of challenges and levels the customer journeys on to home and investment property success. This 12-week process understands the bank and customer context along with the set of habits and behaviours that lead to success, along with definitions of success. From this the Game Frame is established and validated with customers, outlining the journey including the wow moments, opportunities to fire fitness payoffs, awards and rewards.  An initial digital experience UX is established including social media. After testing this is translated into a UI that is again tested before a pilot is scoped and in turn ends up in production.

Johnny Applesead sees an ad on Instagram advertising Bank Wow’s new product, promising a journey to borrowing success. He clicks the link and begins his loan application. Halfway through he gets stuck and clicks on a piece of content to understand his obligations, activated by Odyssey taht has recognised he is stuck. This opens up an Instagram page where he watches a short video on serviceability which he then likes, shares with his friends and follows #BankWOW. As he gets through the various phases of the application he receives various game based feedback and reward nudges again, triggered by Odyssey as he overcomes the first set of challenges in the lending mission 1.

With his credit score and lending rating now in the pocket he is ready to submit his loan but has one final question “When will I receive my cash back?” Johnny rings up the contact centre with his registered phone number. The IVR recognises Johnny as a potential new customer and fast tracks him to the new customer team. “Hi Johnny, congrats on the progress you have made with your loan application, how did you find the Instagram content last week?” The contact center system sees where Johnny is on his Odyssey journey, the content he has read and the awards he has received. “Yeah, real good thanks, I was just ringing up to see when I’d receive my cash back” “You already have ¾ of your cash back sitting in your provisional account Johnny. You will get access to all of it once we get through unconditional approval and after you have submitted your loan application. If you’ve got any questions, just ring up or hit us up on WhatsApp” “Awesome – I’ll get back to it.”

The next day, Johnny connects on to #BankWOW on Whatsapp. As it’s his first time connecting to the bank on Whatsapp he receives the SocialMedia Trendsetter award from the bank and another $10 cashback for his loan, all of that appearing on his Whatsapp message channel, before the messaging kicks off, again initiated by Odyssey. Johnny confirms with the bank that the loan application has been received and that they’re expecting settlement in 3 days.

2 days later, Johnny’s phone lights upon the what’s app channel, initiated by Odyssey, informing him that settlement is expected tomorrow as planned, keeping Johnny up to date and engaged. Its settlement day and Johnny gets an email and whatsapp message informing him that settlement is complete, the money is in his account, including the cash back and notification that he is now a Level 1 customer. The email outlines the challenges for Level 2 including hitting 6 month of on time in full payments at which time a new reward awaits. Fun engaged, omnichannel lending focussed on customer success with Odyssey.

Banking is changing with digital. More and more, customers are expecting more than convenience. They want help, support and emotional connection. Banks want to deepen the customer relationship.

As with many things new , whilst the technology is increasingly ready, the customers arent getting it, not confident in the new ways even if they are confident in the medium itself – eg Social Media. Customers are arriving  at the medium but leaving without having done much. As a result, banks are not getting the return on investments made at the pace sought.

Change is difficult. As with much in life we do things that make us feel better, that derive fitness payoffs, not things that we believe are some how true or veridical. We are tuned to do things that reward us as opposed to doing things because they are correct or some how “true”. This is where the power of game can be harnessed, connecting emotionally, presenting the mission and delivering fitness payoffs and reward to elicit change. 

Perhaps there is a group of customers for whom we want to build better financial fitness through a bot. This could be , checking their balance regularly to build awareness, having money left after each pay cycle, week , day or month and sweeping it into an emergency fund. In addition to the intrinsic reward of having more money left over and reduced fees and charges we could add some extrinsic rewards – e.g. improved interest rate for their savings account etc.

Perhaps there is a group of customers who are strong social media users but arent using the bank’s chatbot services.  Odyssey can run a challenge to see who can unlock and use 20 chatbot transactions in a month. This challenge isn’t necessarily advertised, but popped up as a surprise in the chatbot early on during a session as an easter egg. something special – just for users that find it – something special, something scarce, not advertised that they get rewarded with.

Digital customer engagement is the finance industry’s number one priority.  To acquire and retain customers and drive value banks and FinTechs must invest in technologies that help them create stronger customer connections or be outcompeted by those that do. Capabilities are sought that allow banks and fintechs to deliver personalised customer engagement. This means understanding where a customer is on their money and relationship journey (personalisation), then providing them with the feedback and support to continue, based on that context (engagement).

Odyssey is a set of player maps and journey orchestration layer for engaging customers around strong money habits. It exists to allow banks and fintechs to reward and support the customer’s pursuits,  engage them , build loyalty and grow the business. As digital flattens the world, customer engagement through unique experiences is a critical battleground to get customers to sign up and stay with the service. Moroku Odyssey and its companion design process On-Ramp and white label mobile and internet banking solution, Moroku Money, helps banks and FinTechs provide unique and compelling experiences to attract and engage customers around a telos of wellness, architected around serious games.

The 90 day Moroku design sprint On Ramp is purpose built for service providers looking to design a user experience that helps customers build strong habits in a win:win paradigm, where the service provider and the customer both win. During the process we define win:win journeys through a set of workshops. These are then converted into a “Game Frame” the rules , shape and makeup of the gamified journey. From there we build a series of prototypes, with increasing fidelity, to test with real users during a qualitative and quantitative research phase before writing up the results, including any ideas that we would like to take into pilot together.