“Good services are verbs, bad services are nouns,” the UK Government[1] states. “To a user, a service is something that helps them to do something – like learn to drive, buy a house, or become a childminder. Notice these are all verbs.”
For a variety of reasons, the financial services industry is not traditionally associated with values such as user experience, transparency,[2] and innovation[3]. About 78%[4] of the time that customers spend on offline banking services is wasted. It’s as big of a loss for the customer as it is for the financial institution.
As for online experiences, relatively minor attention is given to UI/UX design at the top level, leaving financial products at a stage of layering text over text, complex structures, transitions and other rather repelling features. Some estimates suggest that abandonment rates for online banking applications are somewhere around 97%[5]. Others report that one in three consumers is abandoning the process of opening a new account because it is too difficult or takes too long[6].
The complexity of the formal financial sector is often translated into the complexity of consumer touch points. In short, banks have long been a live proof of Conway’s Law[7], which claims that any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.
Fortunately, gradual transition to mobile-first, digital-everything experiences in the financial services industry and beyond is forcing businesses to revise customer journey road maps with an emphasis on building effective, efficient, and, more importantly, delightful experiences with financial products.
