Like many organisations, our banking client had siloed departments whose insight and reporting needs prevented a whole-of-customer understanding that was driving up business costs, undermining improved strategy and hiding customer problems. 

The question was how to create an integrated insight framework that delivered what each team needed to achieve their objectives, provide improved insights into customer experience and needs, and reduce costs.

While achieving this objective was difficult enough, each team had their own budgets they wanted to protect and perspectives that needed inclusion.

In designing a new approach, we worked closely with stakeholders to understand what was at risk from change, what they needed a new framework to deliver, and what was missing from their current approach.  In addition, marketing controlled access to customers to prioritise their campaigns and research over other areas.

It became clear that each area was so focused on their needs that key information was not captured, and real customer experience was not understood.  While there were multiple surveys, these rarely overlapped with the same customer, leaving large gaps.  For example, customers who had struggled through complex documentation and long processes were giving high satisfaction scores to staff for solving the problem when the client had created the problem!

To deliver an improved framework, we moved from a siloed and independent survey framework to an integrated framework.  With this framework, instead of customers either being sent multiple survey invitations close together or being asked to complete a lengthy survey, they are invited to complete an initial survey and then are invited to complete a second survey that matches their profile, and also asked to join the client’s research panel. Essential information is passed between the surveys and to the panel to eliminate the need to ask these questions again.  Using separate surveys motivates customers to assist but stop if they feel the survey is irrelevant.  Linking surveys reduces the number of survey invitations and provides the ability to understand how different areas impacted customer experience and outcomes.

By using linked surveys, we were also able to amend surveys more easily than if they were in one survey, adjusting over the year as needed.

Coupled with changes in the survey approach, we also developed a suite of live dashboards and detailed reports that integrated survey responses, giving teams flexibility and timely insights.  By reducing survey lengths, the number of unique invitations, and using a research panel, we were able to reduce costs by 30%.