How well do we know
our customers?
UX research study carried out with 100 businesses to understand their banking needs and satisfaction levels with their current bank provider
Research Method
Survey (qual and quant)
Timeframe:
2 months
Industry
Banking / Fintech
Tools
Miro, MS Suite, Survicate, Hubspot (CRM), Teams
My Role
UX Researcher
Skills
Planning and strategising, survey writing, data analysis and synthesis, report writing, presenting
Background
This project was for a specialist bank looking to improve their online banking experience (OLB) but needing clarity on who their customers were, what they wanted from OLB and current satisfaction rates.
This research served as the first step into understanding customer needs and became the first in a series of studies carried over 18 months using mixed research methods to become more customer-centric and make validated changes to the bank's product and services.
Method
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Objectives
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Process
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Survey Overviewe
UX Research Roadmap
We are here in our
customer discovery journey
Objectives
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Understanding who our business customers are (size structure)
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Identify Customer wants and needs are from a digital platform
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Assessing customer’s overall satisfaction
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Get feedback on our digital platform
Data
I collected quantitative and qualitative data to determine behaviours, priorities and key pain points for our customer demographic.
Recruitment
Participants were sent the survey link via email and given 21 days to complete. Each business could only complete the survey once and were offered a gift voucher upon completion.
Participants
100 businesses were surveyed, each with a current account and over £2 million annual turnover. This criteria represents the Bank's target demographic.
Process
The survey was conducted via a survey tool (Survicate) with data collected in a CRM tool (Hubspot). To analyse the data, I used Excel (quantitate data analysis) and Miro (qualitative affinity mapping).
Survey Overview
100
Businesses partook in the study
64
Questions asked
10-17 mins
Average completion time (mins)
94 %
Completion rate
Qualitative
Data
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Customer Demographics
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Online Banking Product Feedback
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Customer-led Opportunities
Demographic Insights
Understanding demographic information about customers enabled us offer personalised customer experiences, and efficient market segmentation. This data aided in developing tailored products and services, better communication, and enhanced revenue growth strategies through improved upselling. Overall, it offered valuable insights for informed decision-making and long-term business success.
Online Banking Feedback
We asked a series of questions asking customers to rate, rank and explain their experience with our online banking platform. The results gave us a clear understanding of what was working well, what wasn't and what could be better. Some assumptions were validated, such as the value of integrations while other results were unexpected such as how highly valued viewing transactions were to our customers. It allowed us to understand customer priorities and where we needed to focus our efforts.
Top Level Product Insights
Top Feature
Statements and transactions are viewed as extremely important features and so should be prioritised for further investigation.
Top Improvements
Compared to other banks, there are areas for improvement including viewing and downloading statements and viewing transactions.
Top Requirements
As suspected, integrations were validated as the top requirement by the majority of respondents.
40%
of participants said the wanted to see additional features and services from the bank.
Opportunities
Below are some of the features that customers requested. When prompted with a follow up question, they said it would make their experience better and would allow them to complete more essential financial tasks using our bank.
1
Offer Foreign Currency
2
Better User Customisation
3
Paying in Cash Deposits
4
Advanced Notifications
5
Offer Cheque Books
6
Better Reward Schemes
Quantitative Data
Usability and Satisfaction levels were measures across all of the Bank's product and services using industry standard metrics
SUS
Measuring Usability
The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a reliable tool for measuring the usability of a system. It involves a questionnaire with ten questions where users rate their agreement with each statement. The data is collated and calculated to produce an overall score.
NPS
Measuring Satisfaction
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty and satisfaction measurement taken from asking customers how likely they are to recommend a business from 1 to 10 (10 being highly likely). The score is then calculated and benchmarked against other businesses.
SUS Score and Insights
73
SUS Score
C+ Grade (rated as 'Good')
Read more about SUS scoring
Respondents were fairly happy with their experience using online banking, having given a overall C+ grade for usability.
Out of the 10 questions asked, question 5 and question 10 received the lowest scores, proving insight in which areas needed more attention to improve navigation, discoverability and ease of use.
Question 5: "I found the various functions in this system were well integrated"
Question 10: "I needed to learn a lot of things before I can get going with this system"
NPS Score and Insights
13
NPS Score
Overall NPS was rated 'Good'
Read more about NPS scoring
The results showed a strong base of satisfied customers (35.2%) contributing to an overall NPS score of 13, which is considered 'good.'
Additionally, 42.4% of customers fall into the "Passives" category, indicating potential for conversion to promoters with improved engagement.
A follow up question was asked....
Why did you choose this rating?
NPS Follow up Feedback
This question allowed us to understand the rationale and motivation behind ratings to recognise pain points and identify opportunities. Responses were segmented based on participants who rated as detractors, passives and promoters
Outcome
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Research Value
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Research Impact
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Next Steps
What were the results used for?
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Validate the short-term product strategy and drive the mid-long term product vision.
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Align feature build priorities with customer priorities.
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Validate assumptions on how customers are using features.
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Ideate and design features based on validated customers’ needs and wants.
Impact
8
Key demographic factors identified
19
Customer behaviours identified
27
Online banking pain points highlighted
41
Customer improvement suggestions
9
New features and service requests
Building a Business Persona
I collated demographic data to create a profile representing an average online banking business. This profile helps the product and design team envision the target audience when ideating and designing.
The profile includes details such as:
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Number of employees
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Annual turnover
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Business maturity
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Industry
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Location
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Finance team size
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Tools used
Next Steps
This survey provided valuable insights into the businesses we are building our product for, allowing us to empathise with their needs and identify key pain points and priorities. However, a gap remains in understanding the root causes behind customer requests. Our next step was to delve deeper into the motivations, goals, and behaviours driving these needs. By uncovering these underlying factors, we aim to build a product that directly addresses the core issues and aligns with the customers' end goals, ensuring we create relevant and effective solutions.
Why is this important?
“For us to not look at our feature build as “they're doing this job, hence this is the only solution” but rather we could potentially sit with them and work out...is there a different way of doing things that would make things easier for customers?”
Head of Product at the Bank
Interviews
To understand these needs, I conducted a field study by visiting businesses around the UK, performing contextual inquiries and in-person interviews over a six-month period.
The objectives were:
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To gain a comprehensive understanding of business customers' internal financial processes and tools
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Identify the most important, frustrating, and time-consuming financial Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)
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Understand the motivations and goals behind customer behaviours and needs
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Gauge participant expectations and attitudes towards the bank’s digital product and services.
