Here’s How mBank are Constantly Evolving their Branches to Meet the Modern Customer’s Needs
We sat down with Slawek Koziol, Head of Branch Strategy at mBank and Piotr Sobiczewski, Branch Transformation Strategist at mBank to find out more about how branches are evolving to meet customer needs. Here’s what they had to say…
How have in-branch customer preferences and behaviours evolved over the past few years?
More and more customers are actively using digital and mobile, however, even in this digital era the majority of customers still count access to branch network as a key factor for deciding their main bank. We have observed that a great majority of young customers (aged 18-24) choose to start their banking relationship at a bricks and mortar branch. Customers still seek human assistance in emotive episodes– be it the start of the relationship, more complex financing of important life decisions, or the resolution of complaints. Routine episodes, like basic transactions and simpler financing needs are increasingly done via remote self-service digital channels.
How do you make sure your branch formats and services are responsive to changes in customer preferences?
As customer needs evolve, so must the branch format and service model. To make sure we are constantly improving, we need to be testing new technologies and business ideas with customers in multiple locations, and making sure they are monitored, refined and rolled out as soon as possible to minimise time-to-market.
The key role of branches is and will remain the facilitation of human-to-human contact. We do not believe in 100% self-service branches, it should always be about human interaction. We strongly believe in the transition from a full customer service model where advisors fulfil requests, to an assisted self-service model, where advisor and customer sit together, and work together on one shared screen. Branches should provide a space where customers feel comfortable asking for help. The tools should be subtle and always encouraging human interaction – functional without being flashy and intimidating.
In the mid-term we see a strong focus on customer digital onboarding and the educational role of branch staff. Digital onboarding should help to move low-value-adding activities to self-service channels, freeing up some of the advisors’ precious customer-facing time. In the mid to long-term, advisors should focus on more complex and high-value-added activities such as higher-ticket personal loans, more complex mortgage and investment products and strengthening relations with the most valuable customers.
What approaches do you take to help design and test new branch concepts?
We use a variety of techniques and tools to gather feedback and support the development of new branch concepts, mostly deriving from agile, design thinking and lean approaches. It is very important to identify the particular element of customer experience that we would like to improve, and then quickly prototype and test the solution.
One could argue that because of its specific nature, branch design can only be done in waterfall approaches. This is only partially true. While some of the design and construction phases require waterfall methodologies, most of the functionalities of the particular branch format can be developed with more agile approaches, be it the customer waiting experience or the workstation and tools for customer-advisor collaboration in assisted self-service model.
Being able to measure the result and the customer perception is critical. This approach allows us to test fast, fail fast and consequently learn and improve fast. One could also argue that testing in a live environment is a risky business, however, working in relatively short sprints with incremental improvements minimises this risk – the changes can quickly be improved or rolled back if they fail.
How are you using your branches to offer customers services that create a sense of community?
We are very fortunate to have relatively young and active customers, who naturally engage into conversation with us and provide us with feedback. This community evolved around our strong digital channels, so we strive to create a uniform experience across all channels. One example of this is that we service customers at branches using the Internet Banking service and Mobile App that they are all used to, instead of the default core banking system terminal. Our branches are natural extensions of the digital experience we’ve created for web and mobile.
At branches we also promote digital education with particular emphasis on digital security. All our customers receive a complimentary CyberRescue service, with expert assistance and advice on prevention and rescue from cyber threats. We also create and sponsor digital security campaigns where we try to increase awareness of cyber risk and reinforce behaviours protecting against cyber-attacks. We believe this is critical to building trust and driving digital adoption among customers.
What are the key factors to consider when creating an omnichannel banking experience which leverages customer data?
It is important to clearly define the particular role that each channel should play in order to provide excellent customer experience and create value. We strongly believe that the role of human-assisted channels should be to support customers in more complex and emotive scenarios, while the simpler and more routine scenarios should migrate to digital channels.
Customers who visit our branches are introduced to our digital channels and educated on how to use them. Active customers leave digital footprints, and it’s the job of the analytical CRM team to look into this data and decide which channel should follow up on which leads. This can create significant synergies. We are effectively using this approach at mBank and we feel that perfecting this data-driven approach is essential for banking of the future.
