In the Field: Uncovering Insights for
B2B Online Banking Excellence
An in-depth field study for a specialist bank carried out over a period of seven months by visiting business sites to understand customer pain points, motivations, behaviours and opportunities.
“There's so many positives about your products and services. There's just some simple little wins that would make you perfect!”
The Problem
After conducting a survey with 100 business customers, some interesting user pain points and needs were identified in relation to the business’s digital product and services. However, further context was required to understand user motivations and behaviour, with the goal of identifying actionable insights that could improve the user experience.
A contextual study was carried out over a period of 7 months by visiting business customers in their place of work and conducting interviews with financial teams to understand financial operations and tasks, banking needs and priorities.
Note: Findings have been modified for confidentiality purposes
How might we improve our services and products to increase
customer satisfaction and retention?
UX Research Roadmap
We are here in our
customer discovery journey
Process
Plan | Participants | Method
Objectives
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Get more comprehensive understanding of business customers' internal financial processes and tools used.
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Identify the most important, most frustrating and most time consuming financial JTBD (Jobs To Be Done).
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Understand motivations and goals behind customers behaviours and needs.
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Understand participant expectations and attitudes towards the bank’s digital products, with a specific focus on banking features and products.
Research Method
Field studies
(interviews and contextual inquiry)
Location
Offices, construction sites, restaurants, hotels and industrial estates
Timeframe
7 months
Tools
Dovetail, Miro, MS Suite, Teams
My Role
Sole UX Researcher
Skills
Planning, interviewing, qual analysis, report writing, research repository building, tagging taxonomy
Method
Participant Criteria
A selection of customers were chosen who covered a broad range of demographics such as number of employees in business, location, maturity of business and turnover to reduce the risk of demographic biases.
Location
I visited customers at their offices, construction sites, restaurants, hotels and industrial estates. This allowed me to see how their were using our product in their natural environment.
(Right image: the customer locations I visited for this project)
Interview Process and Structure
Interviews were semi structured interviewee-led discussions with prompting questions from myself. Based on the objectives, I would occasionally steered the conversations back towards topics related to the objectives (banking, financial jobs, business operations etc) if there was a significant digression but customers chose what they wished to share on the topic.
Interview Method Overview
16
Businesses interviewed
1-3
hours per customer visit
7
months to complete the study (alongside other projects)
3
Different positions interviewed
(managing directors, financial administrators, financial directors)
Findings
Jobs To Be Done | Tools and Software | Non-Product Feedback
JTBD Findings
Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is a framework for understanding customer needs by focusing on the tasks they aim to accomplish and/or the goals they want to achieve. The job becomes the unit of analysis, rather than the product or the customer. The idea is derived from the concept that people are looking for products and services that enable them to get a job done better, faster or cheaper.
My report was focused on the JTBDs commonly found in business financial processes which are essential to financial operations and have the most associated pain points.
Tool and Software Insights
I analysed the tools and software being used alongside online banking and found are there were no consistent patterns or dominating software or services being used. Instead most companies were using industry specific software, which varied from company to company based on size, turnover and priorities. However, there were some interesting behavioural insights observed.
Cost Considerations
One of the motivations that emerged for choosing specific supporting software was cost. Lesser-known tools were often chosen by customers due to more affordable fees in comparison to bigger brand names (i.e. Sage, Xero).
Differing behaviours based on financial turnover
Businesses with a smaller turnover were more likely to choose lesser-known tools, sometimes with less features available. When queried, they prioritised cost over convenience.
Payroll Tools Adoption
Businesses with less than 13 employees were less likely to adopt payroll tools and instead use spreadsheets to manage payroll.
Impact
Persona | Research Repository | Next Steps
Impact Highlights
370
Pain points identified
210
Opportunities recognised
96
Behaviours understood
17
areas of online banking feedback received
6000+
Customer data points gathered
What impact did the research have?
Building a Research Repository
This contextual study provided a wealth of valuable data, leading me to build the company's first-ever UX research repository. This repository, containing over 6,000 insights, has become a cornerstone for our product development and design teams.
By systematically categorising and storing insights from the field visits and interviews, I created a robust database that allows the team to easily reference specific user needs, pain points, and behaviours. This repository has streamlined our research efforts and fostered a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
Influencing Design and Product Decisions
The data was shared first in a presentation then followed by a series of workshop to understand which insights were actionable and high importance.
The findings significantly influenced the design roadmap for the upcoming year by prioritising user-centric development projects, ensuring that the product enhancements were aligned with customer needs and behaviours.
This approach has helped the business to address frustrations and improve the overall user experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction rates.
Building the Company's First Ever Personas
Using data from in-depth interviews and a customer survey conducted earlier in the year, I created the company's first-ever user personas. These personas, representing our regular users, have been instrumental in shaping our understanding of customer needs and behaviours.
The user personas distilled insights from the interviews and survey, highlighting key traits, needs, and pain points. They provided a clear and relatable reference for the product and design teams, ensuring that our decisions are consistently user-focused.
The impact of these personas has been substantial. They have aligned the team's efforts, resulting in more intuitive and effective digital solutions. Additionally, the personas have enhanced our marketing strategies and customer support, contributing to overall business success.
Next Steps
UXR Actionable
Insights Workshop
Regular workshops to be held throughout the quarter to continue sharing and discussing insights.
Grow the Research Repository
Building on the research repository and utilising it as an asset to become more customer centric.
Continuous Discovery Implementation
Building consistent research habits for a regular stream of customer insights informing Product and Design teams.
Further Research to Explore Unknowns
Conducting research to assess new features and products released this year and testing new design ideas on users.