In recent days several colleagues have asked me to pull together my thoughts on this topic. These requests come from the work that I've done in developing online financial services and re-designing the associated Internet user experience. Many financial services companies find they must continue to invent and create products that fit their online target market. To answer these questions, I'm sharing lessons I've learned in developing online financial services that work.
Key #1: Be Clear On Your Goal
Do you want to keep the branch or contact-center as your main distribution channel, but offload some interactions to the web? Do you want the web to enhance the phone interaction with visual stimulus? Do you want complete channel inter-operability (customer chooses, one is as good as another)? Or do you want to lead with the web and become "web-centric"? Will this vary by product or division? A common choice is to have the web be the information-gathering vehicle for shorter rep interactions on the sales side and on the service side reduce costs and eliminate paper by providing interactions that start and finish on the web.
Whatever your assignment, a clear objective is essential. The entire project plan will proceed from it.
Key #2: Measure, Measure, Measure and Test, Test, Test
The beauty of the web is that there is lots of data. But there isn't often a lot of good information. Challenge the technical people and analysts to make sense of your click streams and unique visitor counts so you can always improve. Link the visits back to transaction systems. Is there ka-ching? And there is no substitute for constant usability testing in a lab setting. Outfits like Fidelity Investments are masters of this.
Key #3: Design the Customer Experience from the Outside In, Not the Inside Out.
Too often you can read a company's organization chart from the main navigation bar on the web site. Rarely does that conform to how customers think and make their choices. The best way to design a web-site is to talk to sales and service people who deal with customers everyday. Get your best customer-facing people to walk you through the most common conversations they have, and design your website accordingly. Then test, test, test! Getting the right intuitive logic can be far more important than any graphics!
Key #4: Provide the User Carrot and Stick Incentives to Promote Use of the Website in the Ways You Want.
The biggest carrot is a great experience on the web that will keep people coming back. The next biggest carrot is a lower cost web offering. The next carrot - number three - is getting people on the website when they call the contact center and then working with them.
On the stick side, customers can be re-directed to web kiosks in the branches or simply denied access to a rep during a session with the voice-response unit (VRU). Instructions can then be given on how to get to the web site. It should be noted that "sticks" are usually customer dissatisfiers and are best reserved for money-losing, channel-abusing customers that the firm does not mind losing to a competitor.
When Fidelity priced web trades at $15, and phone trades were still $60, a dramatic shift in volume occurred after just a few months.
Key #5: Use the Technology Product to Get Management Attention, Then Pay Even More Attention to People and Process
Usually a major site upgrade - especially if transaction capabilities and interfaces with core systems are required - can be costly and need high-level internal champions to make the technology queue. That means getting management attention. Use that attention to:
- create a bi-monthly steering committee
- keep to a timeline and keep on budget
- spend 20% of time on technology and 80% on people and process
- use the technology development time to design and train new process
- set expectations and adjust when requirements change
- keep requirements in lock-step with the business
These steps will increase the probability of a successful outcome dramatically.
Results
That is how we broke through a ceiling in customer satisfaction at Fidelity Investments - 80 to 93% very or etremely satisfied. That's how we relaunched brokerage at Fidelity Investments and recovered market share from #5 to #2. And that's how we increased the take-rate in Lincoln Literature four fold.
For more information, call or e-mail. 978-223-8341. shipley@shipleymunson.com.
