Business Account Opening - Design

A Formative Research Opportunity

What research challenge was I asked to solve?

As the bank continues to further refine the origination process for business owners, an increased need to provide a consistent experience that allows bankers to foster deeper relationships with their customers and to provide more customized recommendations was identified.

The Sales Process team had created an account opening tool to help address these needs. The key to maintaining and expanding relationships with business customers is to provide an efficient, informative, guided and relevant experience that speaks to their need to grow and stabilize their businesses.

The User Experience Research team was asked to get a wireframe prototype in front of business bankers and test its usability to identify what worked and what needed revised.

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obscured confidential information in this case study.

Actions

What was my plan to address this?

After gathering information from our business stakeholders, a research plan was used to summarize the reasons and background information for the project. I covered the goals, scope, user types, and defined the research deliverables, as well as, time-line.

business goals

The Business and Sales teams engaged User Experience (UX) Research to test specific interactions between the new business tool and the banker. They wanted to ensure the tool facilitates the banker’s workflow as easily as possible.

UX activities and deliverables focused on addressing the following:

Understand the business origination experience from the banker perspective using the new business tool as an integration to the process.
Identify and fill knowledge gaps including areas of opportunity for overall interaction and process improvement.

research questions

Do bankers understand the score board (calculator) and how it works?
Do bankers find the score board (calculator) valuable?
Is the ‘live update’ version or the ‘calculate when ready’ version of the scoreboard preferable?
Is it helpful, does it make sense to talk about the Treasury Management (TM) services before getting into recommendations?

Research Methods

About the Study

I conducted remote 60-minute usability/interview sessions with Branch Bankers within the RB III, RB IV, and Bank Manager levels of experience.

These were done to assess:

The new business tool’s functional interactions with bankers in the context of the business account opening process.
The banker reaction to the business tool.
Perceived value of the questions and customer data being carried through the process.

Participants

A mix of ten (10) bankers were recruited for this study. All bankers that participated at that point in time were opening business accounts.

Banker participants:

“I think [new business tool] it’s fantastic. It needs tweaking, but It takes the guesswork out of it for me. I rarely have a quality conversation with a business owner because I don’t know what to ask. This gives me all the questions I need to ask.”

— PID 7 (RB3)

Findings & Recommendations

In order to synthesize the research sessions, I listened to all 10 recordings, making notes in Excel along the way. I was interested in capturing each bankers’ feedback first by prototype screen and then by specific areas of each screen that related back to the research questions. This helped organize the data I collected.

A sampling of how the objectives, findings, reasons and corresponding recommendations were reported, are displayed below.

A Finding from the initial Interaction Questions

Research Question:
Do bankers understand and value the scoreboard on the TM Services and Recommendation pages?

Finding:
The scoreboard is valued and should travel on each screen in order to be visible.

Recommendation:
Because several bankers initially forgot about the scoreboard’s existence (since it went away when they scrolled down), we recommend making the scoreboard sticky like on the Recommendations page. At the same time, ensure that it travels with the use of a horizontal scroll, or is responsive in order to fit smaller screen real estate. Reason being, four (4) of the ten (10) bankers with small displays were unable to scroll horizontally to see the right side of the sticky scoreboard (possibly a prototype issue only).

Sample of a research finding with supporting reasons, from the Initial Interaction Questions section of the detailed report.

An example from the additional Interaction findings

Finding:
Position Business Deposit Expert sub-questions immediately following selected answer.

Recommendation:
Position these sub-questions under the selected box keeping the content contextual as was done in the Retail Tool.

Sample of a research finding and supporting reasons from the Additional Interaction Findings section of the detailed report.

A finding from the additional topics explored.

Finding:
Provide clarification about the Cash Flow (TM) Services page.

Recommendation:
Because bankers had different assumptions about the services listed and different ideas as to the intended purpose of the page, clearer labeling and/or training may help to clarify what the content and overall purpose should be.

Sample of a research finding, supporting reasons, and a recommendation from the Additional Topics Explored section of the detailed report.

“For a brand new business, no, these services don’t really apply yet. Plus new business customers will be overwhelmed by this list of services. For more established businesses, yes, it would make sense to talk to them about it prior to getting into a product discussion.”

— PID 3 (RB4)

Results

What were the results of the work?

It was with this research effort as with other past studies, I probed deeper into established research topics and explored additional questions in order to make the most of the time participants spent in the research session. In doing this, I was able to provide more insights than business stakeholders expected to receive, such as the additional questions business bankers often ask their clients.

Additional questions arose out of this research effort that we look to explore in the near future. For example, capturing the business customer’s expectations for account opening, and their experience with the new process. Another is to continue to research how business customers think about goals, and determine the difference between the way customers define goals and how the business tool presents them.

Lessons Learned

What did this project teach me about research, design, or myself?

I always find it interesting to conduct usability studies. Giving the participant a task and just watching what they do is so revealing. I tested two different versions with participants. One that calculated the input fields after the user clicked off the area, and the other had a button labeled “Calculate” for the user to control the calculation action once they were finished with the input fields. I alternated which version the user experienced first, and then the other second.

I primarily focused on what the participant did, more so than what they said about the interaction following the tasks. The majority of users naturally clicked off the input fields area - usually without them being aware that they clicked off - and noticed the automatic calculation based on what changed on screen as a result. The participants that got the version with the calculate button in the first round, were distracted by it even before performing the task, wondering what its purpose was.

The version without the button was clearly intuitive for users, where as, the version with the button caused confusion for users from the beginning.