scottrade and understanding the customer journey: when segmentation isn’t enough
DESCRIPTION
Presented at Engagement & Experience Expo 2014 by: • Gina Bhawalkar, assistant vice president of user experience and accessibility at Scottrade • Lys Maitland, senior user experience designer at EffectiveUI By nature, Scottrade, Inc., a leading investing services firm clearly focused on numbers, had ample data and information on its clients from a UX and marketing research standpoint. As the company worked to enhance its strategic vision for client experience and add new services and solutions, company leaders knew they needed to not only bring all of their customer research together, but also fill in some gaps to gain a deeper understanding and get a full picture of its audience – both current clients and potential clients they are looking to attract. Working in close collaboration with user experience agency EffectiveUI, Scottrade embarked on a comprehensive ethnographic study, interviewing 36 people in their own environments to uncover what trading and investing meant to their lives overall, how Scottrade fits into this, the tools they use, where they need guidance or help and how they feel along the way. Scottrade came away with a better understanding of its clients and what they needed beyond what the company’s segmentation models provided. Scottrade is now actively working to turn what they learned into action and tailoring its tools around its audiences. This session will provide the following tips to customer experience professionals who also want to really know their customers: • How to start the process of embarking on a large research project, including how to make sure stakeholders are on board • How to combine ethnographic research with quantitative research for the best understanding • How to bring participant stories from the research to life for team members who were not involved in the interviews • How to effectively socialize personas and journey maps throughout an organization • Using personas and journey maps to drive actual business decisions and initiatives • Taking the next step in monitoring and addressing the customer pain points uncovered in the journey mapping processTRANSCRIPT
Scottrade and Understanding the Customer Journey:When Segmentation Isn’t EnoughGina Bhawalkar Assistant Vice President • User Experience & Accessibility • Scottrade
Lys Maitland Senior User Experience Designer • EffectiveUI
Brokerage products and services offered through Scottrade Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC.
Disclosures
The materials presented are being provided for educational purposes only. The information presented or discussed is not a recommendation or solicitation by Scottrade or its affiliates.
Scottrade and its affiliates are not offering or providing any advice, opinion or recommendation of the suitability, value or profitability of any particular tool or investment strategy.
Any specific securities or tools shown are for demonstration purposes only and should not be considered investment advice.
EffectiveUI is a third party vendor not affiliated with Scottrade Inc. Third-party websites, research, and tools are from sources deemed reliable. Scottrade does not guarantee accuracy or completeness of the information and makes no assurances with respect to results to be obtained from their use.
About Scottrade
Scottrade Financial Services, Inc. is a privately-held company that includes Scottrade, Inc., Scottrade Bank, and Scottrade Investment Management.
Founded in 1980 to provide investors with a better way to invest and take control of their financial success.
Our mission: Improve lives by helping people overcome barriers to financial success.
Headquartered in St. Louis, MO with more than 3600 associates nationwide.
About EffectiveUI
EffectiveUI is a UX-focused technology agency that creates transformational digital products
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Denver, Colo.
We adapt technology and systems to human behavior (versus the other way around)
Services include customer insight, strategic services, experience design, software engineering and engagement management
The company has received more than 150 industry awards for innovation, design, and technology
Why we took on this research effort
Existing segmentation models weren’t telling us enough about our clients.
Existing personas were project level and based on assumptions.
We’d planted the seed, obtained buy-in, and the timing was finally right.
We’d found the right partner in EffectiveUI.
Understand who you are working with
Core UX Team
Stakeholders
Company climate
Leverage existing research
Research objectives
Uncover goals, behaviors and motivations for investing
Understand expectations
Discover needs across channels and their ecosystem of financial service providers
Identify moments of truth for customers
Collect qualitative data to feed personas and journey maps
The numbers
36 interviews 2 hours each 3 cities 3 weeks
The ethnographic study
In their workspaces…
seeing their processes…and their tools.
They even shared their pets
Core team participation
Sharing what we heard
Storytelling sessions
Analysis & Synthesis: Don’t ‘go dark’
The Journey Maps
July 17, 2014
Socializing personas and journey maps: The first step to putting our research into action
Take a strategic and tailored approach
Started with teams who could immediately apply them (e.g. UX).
Purposely refrained from sharing with some teams.
Tailored delivery that gave teams tools to apply to their area.
Poured a lot of time into doing it right.
Get personas out into your environment
Get journey maps out into your environment
Find ways to help people keep personas ‘top of mind’
Tap into peoples’ emotions
“…you see, I’m still trying to refine my trading strategy. I put a lot of time into researching stocks I’m interested in, and I plan out my trades before I execute them. But still, I struggle with knowing the best time to get in and out. I’d love to learn more about technical analysis, but I’m struggling to find good educational materials that help me understand what different indicators mean and how traders use them along with other research to make decisions. I think if we can partner together I can really figure this out…”
Play games, literally!
Bring the personas to life
Socialization Do’s and Don’ts
Do clarify how personas are to be used, and how they differ from segmentation models.
Do be thoughtful in terms of who you socialize with first – find your champions.
Do find creative, culturally appropriate ways to embed personas in your environment.
Don’t employ a ‘one size fits all’ approach – tailor your delivery to each team
Don’t forget about new hires.
Don’t share once and expect they’ll take hold – continually re-surface and re-engage.
July 17, 2014
Putting Personas and Journey Maps to work: Changing how we make decisions
Updating our design process
Example: Design Briefs and Elevator Pitches
Example: Tying Pain Points to Project Requirements
Prioritizing Pain Points
Inform future state experience maps
Recognize what you don’t know
Putting Personas and Journey Maps to work
Update your design process and evolve deliverables to leverage these new tools.
Prioritize pain points.
Inform future state experience maps.
Recognize what you don’t know – keep evolving!
Five final words of advice
1 Understand how the research will be used ahead of time.
2 Be patient with the process – it takes time.
3 Keep re-introducing your personas in new ways, and have fun with it!
4 Put your personas and journey maps to work – don’t let them sit on a shelf.
5 Pick the right partner and stay involved throughout.
Thank you!