ING Spain - rapidly researching to improve the digital experience

UserZoom enables ING Spain (ING) to rapidly research changing user attitudes and behaviors to uncover pain points online, then allows them to design and test concepts that help to improve the digital experience, customer satisfaction and encourage channel shift to more profitable customer service channels.

The problem

• A high number of calls to ING’s contact center were from users unable to use the self-service website or app to achieve their goals. This was impacting costs, profitability, and user satisfaction 
• A significant number of users were unable to find common banking actions, such as transferring money or downloading payment history
• While the ‘My Account’ self-service product page on the ING Spain website matched global brand values, many users struggled to understand the content displayed

The solution

• By getting feedback from a variety of sources ING was able to quickly add the most pressing usability issues to their design and development stack
• ING used UserZoom to test Information Architecture, including Card Sorting and Tree Testing, to reorder and regroup key product journeys
• Using Click Testing, ING was able to understand users first impressions of content and triangulate this data with their behavior

The results

• Only 0.7% of app users call the call center to complete their task, and this number continues to fall over time 
• A redesigned information architecture and the menu structure has reduced the number of calls and complaints related to findability
• ING has iterated new designs of their product which retain their brand identity, while significantly improving users first impressions and understanding of account information 

Improving the digital experience in response to changing behaviors

ING Spain is the Spanish arm of ING, a multinational banking and financial services provider with offices in more than twenty countries.

Rapid changes in online and mobile technologies have driven changes in customer behavior and increased user expectations over the last few years. At the same time, ING has, like many other banks, identified that traditional approaches are slower and more expensive than digital banking, and are being used less frequently by customers. 

Due to the complexity of maintaining an outstanding and evolving digital banking experience, the UX team at ING Spain turned to UserZoom to help improve the success of its digital products.

Gaining insight from customer feedback

ING's digital team works within an agile framework. Within their fortnightly sprints, they focus on collecting feedback; analyzing and prioritizing feedback; conceptualizing and test; validating, and deploying. 

ING deployed a range of methods to gain insight into improving customer experiences, including sources originated outside of the UX team such as Voice of the Customer (VOC) surveys and Contact surveys. Across all interactions, ING Spain captured Customer Effort Scores (CES), which they use to track how customers feel about their recent interactions. CES figures are monitored longitudinally, enabling ING to track progress.

By combining and cross-referencing these approaches with web analytics, ING is able to both understand customer behavior across their digital platforms and understand common pain points which can then be prioritized and entered into their design, research, and development stacks.

Keeping pace with Agile

The UX team at ING had in the past relied primarily on lab-based research. However, with the focus on Agile, the slow pace of in-lab research became an issue. 

UserZoom provides the speed and agility ING needs to carry out impactful research while keeping pace with other parts of the digital organization. Additionally, UserZoom enables scale, and ING are able to test with large numbers of real customers in their natural environment using their own laptop, tablet or mobile. 

ING is able to repeatedly test new iterations with the same participants over the course of only a few months. ING is able to select specific demographics of their own customer base that use specific digital products, and invite them to take part in research. Live users can also be targeted to take part in UserZoom studies as they exit their session, either on web or on mobile.

This dual approach enables ING to collect hundreds of responses in only a couple days. Large sample sizes add statistical significance to ING’s research, which not only provides the UX team confidence in their results, but is also very useful when stakeholders need to be persuaded to enact changes.

Conclusion

UserZoom enables ING to build studies, collect data using the most appropriate method - or combination of methods -  and combine qualitative and quantitative outputs for analysis and reporting across all of its digital properties. 

ING Spain can reliably and easily employ increasingly complex UX testing methods, and that they can react at an earlier stage to user feedback. They also found that the scale of the results enables them to make decisions on product changes quickly and with a higher level of confidence. 

UserZoom is the home of their UX insights. It has enabled ING to continually update and test their user experience while keeping pace with the digital organization’s 15-day sprint cycle – a testimony to UserZoom's flexibility, speed, and ease of use.