THE DATA-CENTRIC BANK: CUSTOMER INSIGHT
The Great Fintech Bake Off ! MullenLowe Profero’s Rowan Kisby on why banks should discard oven-ready, cookie-cutter experiences for renegade recipes of their own – and the magic ingredient is data It’s the evening of a dinner party and you’re dashing around the kitchen, surfaces splattered with the ingredients of a tricky main course. Time’s running out for you to make dessert. With a sense of guilt, you reach into the cupboard for the fudge cake mix. You read the instructions with a sigh: just add water and an egg. You decide to throw in a handful of marshmallows to give the bake a whiff of imagination – but you’re aware that, as the port’s poured, you’ll be plating up something everyone’s tasted before. So it is for the developers of banking apps. It’s not necessarily that they’re rushed – though the onslaught of challenger banks certainly sets the clock ticking for late-to-the-party incumbents. It’s that they’re all compelled to use the same recipes for their digital products, concocted a decade ago under a hail of design imperatives to make user experiences more ‘seamless’ and ‘friction-free’. Any innovation spotted on the menu of a competitor is quickly replicated across the industry. No one wants to risk serving up an untried recipe
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– especially when the cake mix is at hand. But the result for the consumer is bland, cookie-cutter conformity. In a Great Fintech Bake Off, there’d be little to choose between HSBC and Monzo – their bakes would be meticulously inoffensive, judiciously palatable. But they’d also be boring, impersonal and forgettable. And it’s becoming clear that consumers don’t like it. Surveys consistently show consumers are craving a dash of novelty and a sprinkling of the human touch from their digital experiences. These appetites, which only seem to have grown stronger during the pandemic, are now too ferocious for banks to ignore. Or so says Rowan Kisby, strategy director at the global customer experience agency MullenLowe Profero. According to her firm’s recent survey of more than 1,500 consumers, 43 per cent feel digital experiences are becoming more similar, with 48 per cent saying they’d spend more time and money with brands offering a good digital experience. That’s already quite a groundswell of discontent. But when asked which sector they think produces the least original digital experiences, consumers pointed roundly at banks and their apps – judged the least distinctive and different. “One of the things we challenge brands over is distinctiveness,” says Kisby. “It’s not something that’s confined to finance and banking – there’s an overwhelming lack of originality across the board, in nearly every category we looked at – but it’s particularly pronounced in that sector, where 63 per cent told us they felt brand experiences were the same.”
The Importance Of CX To Brand Growth report concludes that brands that continue to opt for digital dreariness over distinctive, relevant customer journeys, could risk losing £12billion overall in UK online sales. And, again, the sector that’s set to lose the most from their banal bakes – what Kisby calls the ‘sea of same’ – is finance and banking. So there’s the problem – but what’s the solution? It’s worth lending an ear to MullenLowe Profero, a firm with a global reputation for reviving and re-energising tired and tasteless brands. They’ve worked with the likes of the NHS and Wagamama, with parent company MullenLowe Group boasting Unilever, Diageo and Etihad Airways among its clients. One recent project nicely demonstrates the firm’s tendency to delight in the different. For the relaunch of Bahlsen, a biscuit brand, MullenLowe Profero decided to record the tonal key at which each Bahlsen biscuit snaps, before having symphonic scores composed around that key for a new set of telly ads. Even biscuits, it turns out, can be a source of high art. All this might seem unnecessarily urbane, but it’s thoughtful – and that’s what consumers are looking for. For Kisby, delivering on their desires is all about keeping experiences human. “We need to bring some of that emotion and empathy back – as these are things we all really need when it comes to talking about our money. There are a few areas that MullenLowe Profero really digs into in order to do that, and they all start with D, because we love a bit of alliteration. www.fintechf.com
