BANKING ON A GOOD CATCH BUT FISHING WITH THE WRONG TACKLE?

Rob Green, Altus Consulting

 

Like myself, there many must be parents taking a deep breath having spent a frantic September packaging up and delivering their son or daughter to university. One of the tasks in helping their journey towards financial “independence” was to open a new bank account appropriate for, let’s face it, a challenging few years of net spend. Many banks offer tailored “Student Accounts” which combine practicality, such as generous overdraft terms, with tempting “perks” targeting the student demographic. But once the fish are hooked, my own experience shows that all aspects of the onboarding journey need to work to ensure the fish are safely netted.

As with all good “shopping around” tasks our journey began with a Google search, in this case for top-rated student bank accounts. My son’s priority was an account with the best freebie. Particularly appealing was a top-rated account with a cash gift and one-year prime membership account for a leading online fashion retailer. Dad being dad, I wanted the account most appropriate for supporting him financially over a 4 year course, i.e. one with excellent overdraft T&Cs, but unfortunately no freebies! In a rare turn of events, I was able to sway him to my point of view (probably the idea of a money tree that does eventually stop bearing fruit). For convenience, let’s call my option Bank A and my son’s Bank B.

My son started his online application to Bank A and reached a field that required his student UCAS code number. My son’s code denoted “offer accepted and entry grades achieved”. However, a real-time validation check by Bank A could not verify the UCAS code. Thinking this might be a temporary glitch he tried again later in the day, with the same result. “Can I try Bank B?” said my son. No. The offer from Bank A was a good one so we pushed on. In a call to Bank A’s help desk (the wait time being impressively short), my son was asked to email his UCAS offer, which he did immediately – the document was rejected as documentary proof!

“Can I just apply to Bank B?” said my son. Having given Bank A more than one opportunity in the on-line and manual journeys, I was happy to accede and face the inevitable “should have listened to me in the first place Dad”. Within ten minutes my son had successfully completed an online application with Bank B. This included the very same verification of UCAS code status as Bank A, this time with a positive outcome, and for Bank B, the fish had been safely netted.

In what should have been a straightforward digital onboarding journey Bank A has gone from a position of strength as an independently rated top student bank account, to channelling its potential customers into the arms of a competitor. But it is clear, no matter how good your product is, a customer must be able to buy it.

Did Bank A provide a technically robust on-boarding journey? Without knowing the exact reason for the failure to verify the UCAS code it is hard to say. If the verification is performed in real-time via a 3rd party API for example, why did it fail consistently for Bank A, but succeed for Bank B within such a short space of time since the last unsuccessful attempt with Bank A? If the failure was out of the control of Bank A, e.g., unavailability of the API for a period of time, was there an adequate retry period? Why did it also fail an hour later? Even worse, if the Bank A validation was being made against a static look up table of codes, how many other potential customers would be hitting the same problem giving up on the application, before the problem is fixed? Are there analytics in place to monitor incomplete journeys, with alerts firing at adequate intervals for information to reach those who can fix the problem as soon as possible?

Could Bank A have planned and handled this situation better? They would have known a UCAS API would have peak traffic during periods in September – it is a critical period for new business. With the glowing reviews of the product on offer, there would surely have been a predictable surge in applications. Had peak traffic been simulated in the testing cycle? Could the UCAS code have been checked at a later date? Is this how Bank B designed their online journey? Of concern too, would be that with a customer still engaged enough to phone the helpdesk, he still could not complete the application manually.  Inadequate testing of the end to end online journey potentially lost Bank A not just a current account customer, but quite possibly a lost opportunity to upsell savings, loans and mortgages equating to significant lifetime value to the bank.

Customer journeys have a beginning and end, and no matter how good they are in part they must deliver end to end. For Bank A the line was cast, the bait was taken, but after reeling in, the hook was empty.

 

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