Customer experience management
BBVA have developed a ‘crowd-inventing’ team that works across departments and even countries to bolster customer experience.
improving general customer service and making internal processes more streamlined, for instance via automation, the chances are it’ll improve the bottom line too.
DZ Bank, for its part, started down this path as early as 2016. Known as the ‘Innovation LAB’, the new department supports various development teams, using agile methods to build prototypes with expert engineers, then testing them within three months at the bank’s prototyping and data labs. From 2016 to 2020, in fact, this system has helped over 60 teams craft and prototype new ideas. As Dirk Elsner, DZ Bank’s senior manager innovation and digitisation, puts it, innovation at the German bank is based on three core ideas. “The first question in each lab,” he says, “comes down to usability: does the idea solve a user problem? If the answer to that is positive, the second question is viability: does the idea benefit the company? The third question is feasibility: is the idea realisable?” Crucial here is a concept known as ‘lean start-up’ – defined as providing a scientific approach to creating and managing start-ups and getting a desired product into a customer’s hands quicker. The Innovation LAB, for its part, liaises closely with the bank’s departments and group companies. No idea will be accepted into the Innovation LAB without the active participation of at least one department that actually deals with customers on a day-to-day basis. “We do not see the lab as a closed store for the innovation area,” explains Elsner, “but as a platform for the entire group.” Six years on and the bank has inevitably learned a number of lessons – not least in terms of how to change things over the years ahead. “When we launched the lab, we started with the Prototyping LAB,” says Elsner. “We then learned from the feedback that this doesn’t cover all the needs of the departments.” Typical of this approach is the so-called Trend LAB. When DZ Bank launched the project, it was intended as a way of understanding the broader implications for trends and technology visible in the
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market for DZ’s business – and to derive actionable solutions from there.
Among other things, the bank has used the
Trend LAB to explore everything from NFTs and the metaverse to tokenisation and digital cryptocurrencies. The Innovation LAB, for its part, is closely supervised by the bank’s board of directors. On the one hand, each batch of topics the lab works on are presented to executives in advance. At the end of each batch, the board receives a report on outcomes. At the same time, staff at the Prototyping LAB also pitch their results to the board and receive feedback on how to proceed.
“The teams in the lab are always a mix of business units or group companies on the one hand and colleagues from the Innovation LAB team on the other,” says Elsner. “In addition, an IT architect accompanies the teams from the Prototyping LAB. And we bring in special external expertise for UX, business analysis or special technology topics.” Elsner argues the bank is already reaping the benefits of this multi-layered approach, pointing out that projects have already contributed tens of millions of euros to the bottom line. Another positive development has been a reduction in so-called ‘malinvestment’ – whereby certain projects are abandoned or prove too costly to succeed in practice.
Transferring knowledge More generally, the Trend LAB has an advantage in that, at its core, it isn’t a study – but a broader transfer of knowledge across the business. From there, thoughtful decisions can be made about how to deal with new ideas. Crédit Agricole’s La Fabrique by CA, on the other hand, takes a slightly different approach. As a start-up studio, it designs and creates digital companies that contribute to the bank’s overall strategy. These are mainly fintech companies and include, among others, Blank (a neobank supporting the self-employed), Yapla (a payment and management platform for companies) and Khome (supporting people buying a new home).
Dirk Elsner, senior manager innovation and digitisation at DZ Bank.
Laurent Darmon, CEO, La Fabrique by CA.
Pascual de Juan, innovation labs director, BBVA.
The approximate number of banking insiders that believe alternative digital transformation strategies are vital to improving customer service.
9in10 The Financial Brand 37
BBVA; La Fabrique by CA; DZ Bank
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