A major UK bank wanted to understand how their consumer onboarding process in digital journeys compared to their competitors. By conducting the assessment they hoped to determine if any changes were required to improve the customer journey and if they were more or less exposed to regulatory risk than their competitors.

A framework for the use of behavioural economics in journeys

The client had designed a framework to internally assess its own digital journeys, but was looking for our help to better understand the use of Behavioural Economics (BE) in journeys.

We first proposed a framework to assess the use of BE in digital journeys. Whereas some of the other themes in the framework could be assessed in a straightforward manner (e.g. the presence of a certain feature); the use of BE needed to be assessed in a holistic way, taking into account how different aspects could affect customer behaviour as a whole. The assessment also needed to take the context into consideration because the same information can affect customer behaviour in a different way, depending on their circumstances.

Our framework assessed the use of behavioural traits on two levels:

• Base level: There are no blockers or confusing elements in the journey that could lead to poor outcomes.

• Advanced level: Full consideration is given to most behavioural traits enabling customers to choose the best fitting product and not steering customers towards a certain product.

Closing in on the competition

We were able to determine how our client compared to its competitors. In particular we determined the key areas where its offer was strong and the areas that had the greatest room for improvement.

As a result of the work, the client felt comfortable that its digital onboarding journeys were customer-centric and made good use of BE compared to competitors. The client took several of the areas where we identified scope for further improvement away to be considered with their respective teams.