BRANCHLESS BANKING RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
CATEGORY
Service Design
CLIENT
Capital One Commercial Bank
MY ROLE & SCOPE
Design & Research Leader
Oversaw design team
Impact across entire line of business
No prior or existing services
ACTIVITIES OVERVIEW
– Primary Research
– Empathy Interviews
– Themes & Insights
– Co-Creation Session
– Concept Categorization
– Prioritization
– Testing & Learning
– Product Strategy, Roadmaps
– Pilot Programs
– Implementation
OPPORUNITY
As a Commercial Bank, we realized the value of branches to our customers in the current times but wanted to think toward the future and evaluate the true importance of our brick and mortar presence–What will the branches of tomorrow look like? Will we have as many? What are our opportunities for self-service? Is that something customers want? What will our customers do without branches?
APPROACH
I drove research and co-creation efforts in which customers were surveyed at branches, interviewed within their offices, and various usability testing was done when it came to new, innovative tools we were working through as a cross disciplinary team. The research was mean to inform product strategy and roadmapping that would drive our approach to branches moving forward.
OUTCOME
I not only drove research strategy, but helped teams organize around research insights. Through a co-creation session I facilitated the cross disciplinary team came up with 52 concepts that they later combined, refined, and broke into parts and pieces for roadmaps. Work continues today based on the research, co-creation, and strategies discussed within these very early sessions.
Scroll down for a detailed look at the process and assets created throughout the project including :
RESEARCH
CO-CREATION
CONCEPT PRIORITIZATION
TESTING & LEARNING
PILOT PROGRAMS
RESEARCH
I drove all research efforts associated with this work–from initial empathy interviews in person all across the NYC, New Jersey area to recommendations around surveys and usability testing.
Interviews were 60 minutes, one on one, within the client’s working space, and included clients within Commercial Real Estate, Insurance and Parking. I facilitated them all alongside volunteer notetakers, and lead synthesis. I put together themes and insights to be used within a co-creation session with a cross-disciplinary team of sales, product, relationship managers, and tech.
Additionally I advised on a co-creation session being run in parallel to interviews in NOLA by a product partner–insights from that session would be brought into the session I would facilitate in New York.
CO-CREATION
I planned, organized, facilitated, and ultimately drove all prep and and post work associated with a co-creation session across sales, product, relationship management, and tech partners.
I presented insights, had teammates more deeply discuss to draw their own conclusions, and then I ran the team through various ideation activities to diverge as well as converge on key concepts. From there, I helped the room force rank concepts to hone in on a few to pursue ongoing.
Once concepts were force ranked, I had the groups put together three “mega concepts” or simply identify one concept to flesh out in more detail. These concepts later went into product strategy, roadmaps, usability testing, and two of them launched with clients.
CONCEPT CATEGORIZATION
& PRIORITIZATION
Although I force ranked concepts with the team within the co-creation session, I also wanted them to be able to go back and reference the rest of their ideas on an ongoing basis as this work was a part of a longer term effort within Commercial.
I grouped all of the concepts created into categories for the team to continue to reference as needed.
52 Concepts Grouped by Category
TESTING
A handful of concepts made it to usability testing, and from there even fewer made it into product strategy and roadmapping conversations. The further along in the process, the fewer but more refined the solutions became.
ROADMAPPING
It was exciting to see product and tech teams take the research insights, themes, and co-creation work into long term product strategy and roadmapping conversations that continue into today.
There was so much we identified within those early sessions that spawned continued work.
PILOT PROGRAMS
There were two big bodies of work that ended up being client programs and products: online account opening and escrow express. These tools both helped clients through process, paperwork, and generally completing tasks associated with opening accounts and escrow.
Both products allowed for self service that had not existed before and/or required a client to go into a branch to conduct the work with an associate.
Online Account Opening
Escrow Express
