Why human-centered thinking proved transformative for a global bank

“The fundamental desire was to put a truly human lens onto the design of their KYC and AML processes,” says Mark Coombes. This became the heart of the bank’s transformation strategy – in particular for SME customers – with a focus on reducing the burden on customers rather than just streamlining back-office processes.

This meant that rather than focusing purely on the regulatory compliance requirements, Ernst & Young LLP and the bank also aimed to create experiences that reflected how customers actually used their banks – and what they expected from them. Regulatory requirements were, naturally, still vital – but the challenge was to integrate them as seamlessly as possible, in ways the customer would barely notice.

Introducing the CX toolkit

With the help of EY, the bank came to utilize a customer experience (CX) design toolkit that would help it optimize the design and implementation of new products and services, while meeting compliance processes.

The toolkit was based on EY Seren’s Agile Service Design Tool Kit, an approach to creating a better customer journey, and included tools, templates and project frameworks that can help the bank’s teams create an enhanced customer experience and detailed customer journey.

This was originally inspired by the principle of human-centered design, which involves seeking to understand what customers want at each stage of the journey – and, crucially, why – as well as involving them in testing and validating new products throughout the development cycle.

The qualitative research techniques allow for rapid evaluation and insight to be applied to improvements that can then be prototyped and tested with real customers to validate improvements and benefits quickly and cost-effectively. In some cases, co-creation sessions with end users can get to tangible results and improvements that can be implemented immediately. In one example, interviews with clients sharing their experience identified a pain point in how information requests were parceled up into smaller requests. We were able to recommend changes almost immediately in how information requests were made that improved the customer experience and reduced application times and costly, incremental reviews and re-work.

Another critical success factor was the application of an essential service design tool, the Service Blueprint. The Service Blueprint brings not only the customer experience and customer journey to life, but also connects changes in the front stage experience across channels and interfaces, to the operating model, business processes and technology platforms required to support the solution, along with, importantly, the risk, regulatory and controls required, and therefore the measurable benefits they would create. Using Service Blueprints, business sponsors from different markets enabled a quick agreement on priorities and created actionable backlogs of improvements. This led to the elimination of over 1,000 internal processes which both improved customer experience and reduced cost.

The Agile Service Design Tool Kit was built to work within virtual collaboration environments. Which means during the lockdowns of 2020, the tools and methods proved useful in ensuring progress could be made to continue to improve experiences and shift demand for digital channels. According to Mark Coombes, Financial Services Director, EY Seren, when you develop a capability in any organization you define and build it up – eventually the aim is to let it go and release it back to the business.