Modern user journeys: what does good look like today?

Who’s delivering the best user experience in financial services right now? There’s no easy answer to this question, given that UX is often such a subjective, personal thing. But surely there must be some way of separating the good from the bad and the bad from the ugly?

To better understand where user experience innovation is heading and who might be leading the charge, we gathered together experts for the latest instalment of Marqeta’s API Chronicles series.

Payment gurus Mark O’Keefe, Director at Optima Consultancy, and Hannah Hilali, Senior Strategist at Kin + Carta, chatted with Bitsul Founder Jas Shah in a fascinating session titled UX showdown: who’s winning the battle for customer experience supremacy?

UX versus UI: does functionality beat features?

The conversation started by clarifying the difference between user UX and UI, with Hannah making the succinct point that “modern looking doesn’t automatically translate into good UX. The question is, does it help me achieve what I want to achieve, not just does it look pretty”.

Mark added that smartphone apps were now “almost replicating” the face-to-face interactions people had in the past. The big questions, he said, now centred around how the experience made the end user feel and whether it enabled people to achieve what they wanted to achieve.

Mark also recalled a personal user journey following the theft of his phone. He described how he was able to seamlessly transfer all but a few of the cards into the digital wallet in his replacement device. The user experience fell down, however, with those financial institutions that required him to make phone calls.

The discussion then delved into the banking sector’s progress on building app functionality. Hannah felt that while features such as savings goals and transaction roundups were now commonplace, there was still some way to go before the financial services industry could say it was helping people to truly manage their money.

Mark reinforced this argument. “Open banking is a great example. Many of the banks now will bring in your accounts from others. But how many of them won’t even add those numbers up. Great that you can bring in three accounts now but I’ve to do the maths and add up the three balances. I think there’s a difference between doing it because they want the tick box - yes we offer that now - but the reality is they're not delivering a good user experience,” he said.

Our panel’s favourites: who’s doing great things in UX?

So, having explored some of the imperfections in banking user experiences, Jas, Mark and Hannah looked at the many positives, citing their favourite innovators in this area.

For Jas, Wise’s end-to-end UX was a winner, thanks to its wide ranging customer support and due to the fact that its approach to user experience is driven from the top with clear vision and mission statements.

Hannah is a big fan of Australian fintech Up - in fact she went as far as saying that she was having a bit of a “fintech crush” on the business, delighting in its approach to product build and philosophy of helping customers to get jobs done. Up’s model turns buy-now-pay-later upside down by helping people to save towards specific purchases, she said.

Mark, however, admired lots of businesses for different reasons but when asked to choose, he opted for Starling. Later in the session, he applauded the bank’s customer service processes, which enabled people to switch from web chat engagement to a phone call seamlessly.

Cultural differences: can and should banks compete with fintechs?

The panel also pondered the reason for varying approaches to innovation between long-established banks and fintech startups.

Obvious cultural differences were a key factor here, Mark and Hannah agreed. For example millennial-oriented startups might not have to worry about designing user experiences for 87-year-old customers. But banks would have to consider hundreds of years of hard earned reputation before implementing changes.

An interesting insight came from Hannah, when she described the response of banks during meetings. “If I highlight how fintechs are innovating, the common response is ‘now show me how banks are doing it’. The banks want to see examples of companies that have the same challenges, customers and issues,” she said.

Another angle considered by the panel was that of inertia when it comes to account switching. If you’re going to convince people to switch to a new provider, “you have to offer something faster, cheaper and remarkably better”, Hannah argued.

Mark echoed this point, adding that innovation was actually beginning to trump financial incentives when it comes to luring customers away from their existing provider. “Account switching tends to be a money grabbing game among the bigger banks but the likes of Starling and Monzo don’t offer any reward. They’re growing their customers based on features offered and this shows in the gains they’re making.”

The human touch: can robots ever own customer service?

However, the consensus weakened when the discussion moved on to AI-led versus human-powered customer service.

Mark offered examples of how businesses were removing tasks with intelligent AI and felt that fintechs were perhaps more likely to be early adopters in customer service functions. Hannah, meanwhile, cited her experience with an AI financial adviser that she used to optimise her finances ahead of buying a property. While the service was useful, she was of the opinion that there will always be a need in some services for human assistance.

The discussion then moved on to how each panellist might approach designing a winning UX strategy. To find out what they had to say on this, watch UX showdown: who’s winning the battle for customer experience supremacy here.