Winning by Design in Financial Services

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, Winning by Design and Financial Services, Four Keys to Designing for Adoption. We're excited that you could join us. My name is Laura Beth Ezel and I'll be moderating today's event. Today we are going to deep dive into focusing on customer needs and designing for outcomes. Before we get started, let's go through some quick tips to make sure your webinar experience is the best it can be. At the bottom of your screen are resizable and movable application widgets. Feel free to move them around to make the most out of your desktop space. The slides will advance automatically during the presentation. If you need to enlarge them, simply click the enlarge slides button in the top right corner of the presentation window. If you need technical assistance, click the help widget that's in the bottom left corner at any time. Now, as the presentation gets underway, you may submit questions using the Q and A widget. We will answer as many questions as we can at the end of the presentation. If a more informative answer is needed or we just run out of time before we answer your question, we will follow-up via email. After today's presentation, you will receive a link with on demand access to the webinar so you can watch it again at any time as well as share the content with colleagues. Well, are thrilled to be joined by our speakers. We have Bob Skubic, Experience and Brand Innovation Global Lead, Amdoc's Experience and Digital Engineering Studio, and Taylor Stanley, Strategy and Innovation Global Lead, Amdocs Experience and Digital Engineering Studio. So to kick it off, I'd like to ask each of our speakers to provide a quick introduction of themselves and their work. So Bob, wanna kick us off here? Sure. So clients get stuck. I help them get unstuck. I help them imagine new ways to tell stories, tell better stories, and connect them to their customer needs. And in the banking and financial space, have done work with MUFG, SMBC, so large banks as well as startups, hedge funds, and a little bit of everything, as well as working in the consumer space with clients like Tesla and Disney and others to really help imagine, tell better stories, and and really help them win in the market. Alright. Sounds great. Taylor, welcome to you as well. Good morning. I'm Taylor Stanley. I've spent about twenty plus years working at that kind of intersection of business strategy, brand strategy, and product strategy. And I think one of the things that we've, Bob and I have learned along that journey is that finding the right problems to solve is more important than the actual act of problem solving in many cases. And one of the things that's most important in that is understanding that the people important to our success have real needs and desires and outcomes that they're seeking. And when we organize ourselves around that and engineer for those outcomes, we can change the equation. So many organizations struggle to, really see that traction in their business, to build a stronger business, to build a stronger brand, to define what they do in a way that matters to the people important to their success and bring it to life. And that's what Bob and I help organizations do is close that gap. All right, well, let's get right to it then. Taylor and Bob, our webinar today is about designing for adoption in financial services. And our conversations leading up to this discussion have really centered on the idea that financial service companies are falling prone to a common pitfall, which is assuming they know what matters to customers and misaligning business investments as a result. So how pervasive is this assumption problem and why are financial services companies so prone to this common pitfall? Taylor? It's a significant problem, but it's also a huge opportunity. We've we every year we do a massive global study where we look at not just financial services, fintechs, banks, credit unions, regional banks, you know, globally significant banks. And what we study is the study is called the c x twenty, and it's research that we do in waves. And what we found this year, and it's consistent with past years, is that seventy nine around seventy nine or eighty percent of financial services leaders believe they're meeting or exceeding customer expectations, their customer's expectations. But only about twenty five percent of those or twenty six percent of financial services customers agree. And that gap is consistent over time, and it's actually consistent across like industries as well. As for why they have this problem, one reason is is that curse of knowledge, the curse of knowledge because financial services firms and the people that work there are true experts in banking and finance and and in their niches, which leads them to make a lot of assumptions about what people need and want. And when banks want you know, banks are seeking to be that trusted adviser and to provide those those cues that help people live their best life and gain that their financial stability. And what they're really missing is, what is it people need to feel confident in their decisions, informed in their choices in a sea of options where you become the best option available to them? So they're not doing a great job of guiding people to what they need and making them feel confident in that choice. Yeah, and another reason this happens a lot, and it's not necessarily exclusive just to financial services or banking firms, is their internal structures keep them from creating success. So they fight over who owns a customer. They have different definitions that they're working from, and they don't really define what success is. And and so that ends up in something that has been around for a while that I call one nav item per VP, where everyone's kind of has to have their voice in there, and it's all coming from that internal structure of the company. So what happens is you build something that works for the company, but not for the customer. And and so this is the other problem, which is again what Taylor was talking about, that curse of knowledge and the not understanding what customers truly want and need. And so it ends up exposing the complexity of the bank instead of solving the problem of the customer. Great points there from both of you. And and how much is that happening actually? You know, how often are financial services firms building products or features that customers do not ultimately engage with, you know, as well as expected. Taylor? We see this across, we see this across industries like the failure rate of new product innovation or new product launches is relatively high and relatively consistent. And it's it's around between seventy and eighty percent consistently. And when you work off of of those assumptions that you know what the solution is or internal ideas about what the solution needs to be, it it really creeps up into the eighty percent failure rate, twenty percent success. But when you work off of of understanding what people are trying to do and the and the needs that and designed for adoption first, it flips where it becomes an eighty percent success rate and a twenty percent miss rate. And I think that makes a huge difference. And it speaks to the biggest problem that we see across industries is, you know, many firms, many organizations, big and small, still struggle with realizing that return on transformation investment. And I think when we look at what separates the winners and losers and that return on transformation discussion, it's people that are really designing around the needs of their customers versus their internal ideas. Yeah, and you mentioned that flip. So how can financial services companies flip to understanding and satisfying their customers' needs rather than just providing them with products and features? Bob? Yeah, the way we talk about it is reframing. And it's about what happens is someone comes up with an idea, they think it's a good idea, they see someone else doing it, and then they go out and build it, but the problem is they're gonna end up solving a you know, doing a great solution for a problem that doesn't necessarily exist because they've invented it or they see someone else doing it so they're copying it. So for example, we were approached by a firm that said, Hey, can you build us the best mortgage calculator? Great, yeah, absolutely, but hold on, let's take a step back and let's really look at what the problem is. And they were getting like one percent conversion or something on that. And so we said, let's think about it differently. Let's actually talk to your customers, understand their needs, and really think about it. And what came out of it kind of sounds almost too simple, but people don't want a mortgage. People want a home. So by reframing it into the process of buying a home, there's other things that go along with the mortgage calculator that are gonna help you buy a home. That's a piece of it. But by connecting that whole story and reframing it, we had ways of helping them through the whole process of getting a home, and with that end goal in mind of having a home instead of figuring out what your mortgage is gonna be, it changed everything, and it shot up to seventy percent adoption rate on this. And it's just those subtle things make a big difference and they get skipped over all the time. Yeah, true there. Let's dig more into that reframing idea by exploring the four keys you've identified for making a mindset shift to designing for And the first key is beginning with outcomes. So how does that differ from the way financial services companies are starting initiatives today, Bob? So, well, as in that last example, they're starting with a solution, and they're assuming that they have it, and so they're basically defining the outcomes with something pre built. There's a lot of companies out there that are gonna say, Oh, we have this product that you can do, and if you can do it, everyone else can do it, and a lot of times those products end up having way more than you need, so you end up not using them, they don't get adopted, Again, it goes back to that lack of definition of what the true need is and what the true market is. If you can stop and define what are the outcomes that we seek, and how can we deliver on those needs? So you don't want to take and bring someone, like we want more customers. That's what everyone wants, more customers, right? But you don't want to bring them to a process that's broken. So it's more important to fix the current process you have and build on that, and we think of this a little bit in terms of a of a way we think about this is quality times adoption equals impact, and what happens is a lot of people, quality always, everyone's gonna get quality out of their solution and everybody wants impact. That middle piece is like a magic wand that everyone says, oh, it'll just happen. And no, you have to design for that adoption by really going in there and understanding customers needs, wants and desires, understanding what you wanna get out of it, and combining those two things in ways to achieve the success. Yeah, and I think like, you know, beginning with outcomes, the outcomes that matter to the business and the outcomes that matter to the people who are important to your success, whether they're customers or employees, is about ensuring we're solving the right problems from the start, that we're fixing, improving, or innovating around the right problems to solve in the first place. And when you do that, you you kind of enter this territory of outcome design and engineering, where winning by design becomes what you do as a group. And Bob used that metaphor of a magic wand. Well, adoption is a is a magic wand. It's already in your hand because you do know your customers. You do know your people. You do know the processes. And when we look at what the needs of the people who interact with our systems or our our tools are, we can become much more powerful at creating offerings or services or products that are de risked when we launch them. We are going to drive that return on transformation. So there's a big truth in anthropology that I always come back to, and it's, you know, people are you know, they always want freedom from something, so they have freedom to do something else. Like and that's the nature of the need. Like so what is it that people the people important to your success, whether they're customers or employees, what is it they need freedom from in their lives so they have the freedom to do something else? That's a fundamental question to ask because it leads you towards what they're actually what you need to make possible to simplify, guide, and empower them to what they need to accomplish. And that really matters, and that changes the calculus. Yeah, and I would say the key to building great solutions isn't starting with what's possible, it's actually starting with what's needed. Well, that's perfect. Yeah, great thoughts there from both of you and that leads us, you know, to the second step, which is revealing the goals behind the stated goals. So how can financial services companies uncover those? Taylor? Yeah, the key is to determine the goal behind the goal for the organization first. You know what? Bob used the example of everyone wants to win new customers. Great. Well, you know, we think about it's about win it's about keeping and winning new customers. So what is the goal behind the goal? You know, we have a process and a framework for doing that. It starts with structured interviews and continues with making you know, taking the qualitative insights from that and turning them into quantitative elements that we can then map what people need freedom from and freedom to do. What is their is their job to be done? What are their what are those need statements that align with that job to be done? And then when we map those, we can quantify where the opportunities are. And when you understand those, you can start designing things that are going to set you apart in the market, and you can stop chasing what, the new fintech did or what a competitor did and start innovating in a way that makes a connection that's true to your brand and is unforgettable to your customers so you can keep the current ones and win new ones more easily. Yeah, and, you know, obviously everyone wants to keep their customers happy and increase revenues and make shareholders happy. Those are the internal goals. What we also want to find out is what are the goals and the outcomes that your customers seek? As in the example of, I don't want a mortgage calculator, want a home. You need to kind of figure out what those are, map those, and then figure out the best ways to achieve those, the best ways to prioritize those based on your current state of technology in terms of what's viable and what's actually gonna be able to do so that you can basically figure out what is the outcome you seek and then go for it. And most people wanna start with jumping into execution. And what we're talking about here is waiting, taking a step and looking at truly what those needs, wants and desires are. And it used to be that that would take months and months. With the advance of technology today and the way things are being done, a lot of that you can do much quicker and it gives you that better foundation and that clarity that you need to act and move forward with success. Yeah, and what about mapping stakeholders? How do you uncover who the real stakeholders are and map those appropriately? Taylor? Oh, man. This is such a great question. You know, so often, when we go into work with firms, the loudest voices are the ones that carry the furthest. So uncovering who the real stakeholders are in an initiative, whether those are customers, employees, you know, mid level implementers or the actual buyers themselves is is fundamentally important. It takes looking at who actually needs to implement, deliver act as the point of contact with the customer and so on. You know, it's it's fundamentally important to to get all those voices and and start aligning them rather than going forward with the loudest voices opinion. Yeah, and I think some of that is when we talk to the, you know, every company has things that haven't worked and there ends up being a gap between strategy and execution. And what we try to do is understand from the key stakeholders what they believe the needs are, and then you can put out a more of a quantitative study to putting the needs in a certain format and a certain way that the responses you get back help to inform that, so it's not just that loudest voice or the highest paid person in the room. And one of the things that happens is a lot of people don't they don't end up voicing their opinion because they maybe they're new there or or whatever it is, and we wanna make sure we can pull those out. And even sometimes once you start to execute, you see that there's resistance. And Chip and Dan Heath have a a great quote in their book Switch, which is what looks like resistance is often just a lack of clarity. So what we're trying to do is identify the key people that we can talk to, the real stakeholders, but also make sure that those that maybe aren't willing to voice their opinion can also have a chance to be heard. And then that brings data that you can now have a conversation with those stakeholders to say, here's why we're doing it, and it becomes a discussion. So it's not just, you know, one person's voice, but it's actually everyone coming together on what are the true needs, what are we really trying to accomplish, and that kind of it makes success. Yeah. I love I love that point. Yeah. Go on, Taylor. So it's it's kind of what we're really trying to prevent people from doing is building, you know, quality solutions, but quality defined as meeting the requirements that were defined internally that aren't necessarily gonna drive that adoption. So beautiful solutions to the wrong problems effectively or problems that don't matter to the people important to your success. Because when it's that equation Bob talked about, the quality of the solution times adoption equals its impact. And when we do this, it it changes everything, and it is a shift in mindset. It is a shift in mindset within the organization as well, and it gives them new tools for realizing what they already have and a new framework for making progress faster. Yeah. Great points there. Prototyping before you build is the last step of this mindset shift to designing for adoption. So how does this help financial services companies uncover gaps earlier? Bob? Yeah, I always believe that there's more than one right answer. And so you have to kind of test some of those things out. We're also talking about something that when you're doing something new or innovative or different, it's scary and you want to make sure you can feel as confident and minimize that risk and increase your chance of success. A lot of that is done upfront by really understanding those needs, and so now you're gonna have a better focus and you know what to prototype. So if you have those outcomes defined, now you can figure out what are ways that we can test to see if this idea, this hypothesis, this understanding of a need, want or desire that we've come up with is actually going to ring true and work the market. And so that's where you have to kind of build and test. Obviously technology has made that a lot easier today that you can really spin up something like, Hey, what would that look like? And it you a kind of a look of what's possible, and then you can talk to some people. And it's just a matter of you want to get out of assuming something's gonna work, and really kind of what can work and doesn't work. And so if you wait too long, the longer you wait, the harder it is to make those changes. So yeah, you want to kind of figure out what are the ways we can prototype to see if this idea we have is going to get us to the outcome that we've outlaid in the earlier stages. Yeah, and prototyping is about tuning. It's about understanding whether it's on the mark or it's two degrees off or ten degrees off. What kind of and it's the perfect thing that allows us to make those course corrections to increase that, know, remove the risk and increase those the likelihood of success. Excellent. Great points there from both of you. And I want to think about some real world examples here. I think this is helpful to our audience to always hear some real world examples. So what are some projects that reflect this designing for adoption approach? Bob? That comes to mind is we were doing work with Commonwealth Bank in Australia and they were basically had created a startup within the company is really how they were thinking about it. And what they wanted to do is they wanted to help their customers that wanted to manage their own wealth, self directed wealth. And what it how you got because this was a startup, the team was growing like tremendously week over week. There was new people coming on and you had to make sure they all had the same view of what you were trying to build as everybody that had been there for months. And it started with a story. And it started with a story of two people sitting around a kitchen table thinking about we have this extra money. I don't want to call the bank. I don't trust them. I want to do it myself. How can we help them? And that story then led into, okay, well, in order to do that, the research was done and out of it came some guiding principles. And these guiding principles became very powerful. So that story, with the guiding principles, which were simplify, guide, and empower. We need to make this simple enough that when they come into the situation, they understand it and don't feel afraid just from the get go. We need to guide them along the way because they're not experts, and we are, so we can guide them with, you know, editorial content and how tos and tips, And then we needed to empower them to feel that they could do it themselves. And so having those guiding principles and having that story is basically taking all that stuff of understanding what are people trying to accomplish? What are their needs? What are their desired outcomes? And how can we put together solutions that will manage that and help them basically, you know, become, you know, become adopters of this platform. And it also helped internally because now instead of someone saying, I don't like that, they could say, you know what? It doesn't really feel simple for me. Or I don't feel Can we add more guidance in here because I think this is a confusing thing? And so it helped make the product better in a number of ways by understanding what those needs, wants and desires were, and thinking about not just building something of quality, but building something that would be adopted. Yeah, that's a perfect example of reframing, right? And it's a perfect example of embracing what the real needs of people were. And I think in really competitive industries like banking or telco credit cards. You know, everyone seems to be chasing the same advice around the same best practices and winding up with similar solutions or similar products. And it's a race to parity that customers don't really care that much about. It's really difficult thing for teams to overcome because according to established playbooks or the the big consultancies, white papers or design firms, they're they're doing everything correctly, but they're still winding up with something that doesn't actually move the needle because they've lost sight of what truly matters, which is helping the customer and making it easier for the customer to buy into what you're offering. And that's about helping them understand their alternatives. And that that idea of simplify, guide, and empower, I think, is almost universal for this industry, especially when dealing with consumers. You know, for example, the design Go ahead, Bob. No. Go ahead, Bailey. No. Go ahead. I was just gonna say it it it makes me think of, like, if you think about it this way, your business is complex. Your customers don't care about that complexity. Yeah. And so you need to figure, get out of your own head and get out of your internal processes and and think about what what the needs are, and that's what's gonna drive adoption. Not what you think is best, but understanding what they need and then figuring out what you think is best. And I think that works also for internally, right? It's not just about customers. When tools work for teams, teams don't have to work for the tool, and that often happens, right? An example, we were using this approach to help a telco company shift from, you know, with their their current process, they described internally as a for the past five or ten for the past ten years, it had been a daily miracle to use their broken system to build their business clients, where it had, like, ten handoffs and five different systems. And I think when you take a look at what people actually need to accomplish and then smooth that out, it's not just about removing friction, but it's about, like, enabling them to to, to be in more in a state of flow and create more value and work with more satisfaction. Yeah. Excellent thoughts there. We're nearing the time for our audience Q and A, but I wanted to ask you both a couple more quick questions. What are the best next steps you recommend audience members take here at this point? Taylor? Yeah, ask the hard questions. And I think the hard questions are actually the smart questions, which is what are the real what is the outcome you seek as an organization? Don't just stop at the easy answer. We need to win more customers. We need to sell more x. What are you really trying to accomplish? Where are you going as an organization? How does your strategy link to this execution? It's about closing that strategy to execution gap and elevating an experience to the point where it's ownable, and that's done by understanding people's needs. Look for where those real opportunities are, where the real problems are. You know, I was speaking at a credit union conference, and I was talking to the these leaders of credit unions, and they're obsessed with chasing parity with many of them are obsessed with chasing parity with fintechs and neobanks, and they're losing sight of their own strengths as safe harbors of trust and integral to their communities. Following what others have already done that may or may not be working for them is not necessarily the best thing you can do. So go back to the needs of your customers and go back to what you're actually trying to accomplish and an engineer for those outcomes. And I would also look across the organization have you seen projects that aren't achieving their desired outcomes? Are there things that have failed? Are there things that you've tried? And why weren't those successful? And also look for those ones that have been successful. What are those areas where it has worked and what did they do differently? So you can help reframe those ones that maybe aren't working or take that reframe into your current situation. And one of the things that always works is again, what is that goal behind the goal? What is that outcome you truly seek? And again, a lot of times it will be, you know, like shareholder happiness and success and increase revenue and grow whatever, but use the five whys framework that exists. Keep asking why. Like, we wanna grow revenue. Why? And dig down and use the five whys to figure out what the true thing is that you're trying to accomplish, and then figure out how to make that happen and what has to be true for that to be a success. Yeah, and how can Amdoc's experience in Digital Engineering Studio help here, Bob? Yeah, I mean, and part of this is, you know, again, people will be thinking, oh, that sounds long and expensive and it doesn't have to be like, again, as I was mentioning with technology, a lot of this is about, how can we accelerate your your chance of success and how can we minimize the risk and increase the opportunity that you can innovate or come up with something that is really gonna work. And when you see that happen and when you take the time to do that little bit of work upfront, that's where we can help, is we can help you reframe it, we can help you understand the true possibilities, we can help give you that clarity that then you can take forward with your team, and we can help build it too. And so whether we help build it or you help do it, or we work that together, and we're finding more of that of collaboration of people wanna have the ability to do it in house because you wanna make sure that that's last for a long term, but they don't necessarily have all the expertise in house. So we can partner with you to make sure that not only are you set up for success for the beginning, but we can help you achieve that success and accelerate that success a lot of times. Yeah. And I think the one thing that sets that is a difference for us is we're inherently practical. Like our whole reason for being is a very simple thought of what works for people works for business. And that's why, you know, our whole reason for being is is we're an outcome design and engineering studio. Like, that's our focus. It's our positioning we seek to inhabit and to make our goal is to make businesses more intelligent about how they go about more intelligent and more efficient and more powerful in how they go about making their customers successful so they could be successful themselves. Everything we do is structured around this idea. And, you know, we're developing the tools and systems that the where design comes you know, the design comes before the engineering. So when we're designing for those needs, we're setting you up for success before we start building anything. We're not trying to force it. Yeah. No. No, that's great. And just wanted to thank you both so much for a great discussion and points here. I did want to get into some questions from our audience. So I'm going to shift to some questions here. Let's jump right into this first one. It says, what's an example of assumptions getting in the way of building the right product? That's a great question. Who'd like to take that one or start on it for us? I can take that one. I think I have example. This was a high net worth individuals. And we went out and did some research and like you would think, oh, they have the most sophisticated tools. They have everything they need, right? It's like, or they think they're using all these tips and techniques and tricks. And when we went out and visited with those individuals, they would get together as a couple, this one example I have in my head, and on their dining room table, they would spread out all the papers, and they used the free calculator they got from the bank and they did it by hand because they, again, they weren't trusting of a lot of technology and they wanted to know and they kind of did it themselves. So if you were to build a amazing online tool for these high net worth individuals, it wouldn't get used. So you would have built something that was great and you thought it was fantastic internally and everyone was high fiving, and then you'd roll it out to the market and it would fail spectacularly because they don't use that. So that's why you need to go out there and kind of understand. Don't go in with the assumptions. Those will get you into trouble all the time. So take the time to understand the needs and refine that before you jump. Yeah, great answer there. Thank you for jumping on that question for us, Bob. Okay, another question here. What is the best way to compete with fintechs and neobanks? I'd like to take this one. I'd like to take this one. It's really leaning to your own strengths and lean into your own background as a brand. Lean into your your relationship with your current customers. Think about like that what success looks like probably doesn't mean, copying what a fintech or a neobank is doing. It doesn't mean adding crypto or chasing it the latest trend in or adding it the latest technology. It's about figuring out what people are really trying to accomplish and having that conversation over and over again with them so that you can close the gap between strategy and execution by leaning into, like, what makes you different. We use the example of the of the credit unions. They're trusted parts of the community. Their structure is slightly different. Lean into that. Lean into what has made you successful so far and the type of relationship you have. Yeah, great thoughts there. Thank you for jumping on that question. All right, another one here is what are the biggest blind spots you see in your work with banks? Interesting question. Who'd like to take that one? Yeah, I'll take that. I think a lot of it is the internal silos and the lack of communication across silos and even perverse incentives within inside silos where you may be rewarded for getting people through the website the quickest in one group, and then the other group is rewarded for answering customer calls the quickest. And what happens is the speed to take out something on the website causes more calls to the call center and they're resolving. So everyone's doing their job, right? People are getting through quicker and they're resolving calls quicker, but they basically created their own problem because they're not talking to each other and they're not understanding. And then the other one I would say that's a big one is the, you know, step one, choose technology. Step two, we don't know. Step three, profit. And designing from technology or choosing something that is feels like magic usually isn't. And so do the work to understand the customer needs, what your true outcomes that you seek and what true outcomes they seek and design back from what the impact you seek, how are we gonna get adoption and then build it as quality. Excellent answer there and excellent answers from all of you. And that's all the time we have today. I would just like to thank our speakers, Bob and Taylor, a great discussion. We appreciate you sharing your insights and expertise with us. I'd also like to thank our audience for joining us today. Remember today's webinar will be available on demand. You will soon receive an email with a link so you can rewatch or share with your colleagues. We hope to see you again soon. Have a great day.