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Challenge
[Financial services company] provides short-term financing (BNPL) for the furniture and consumer electronics lease-to-own industries. The company wanted to move into banking services and planned for a bridge offering. My role involved defining the product vision for this offering while at the same time developing a repeatable process for the company's innovation lab.
Approach
Research
A prior consultancy had defined a target segment for banking services, specifically for a credit product, and I worked with marketing to recruit research participants matching this segment.
I interviewed participants to understand their experiences concerning credit and found it was common for individuals to know nothing, having not been taught at home or in school. They were unaware of their credit score until they tried to purchase a large-ticket item (typically a vehicle) and received a denial, and this started them on an unsuccessful credit-improvement journey replete with unreliable advice and unscrupulous services.
I mapped the customer’s core jobs and current relief strategies. I then created a market landscape of credit information providers and credit rebuilding services, breaking down their offerings, processes, and profit models.
The consumers tried to do the right thing but were continually thwarted.
Synthesis
Distilling the research, the need for financial education was obvious, specifically around credit scores and rebuilding credit. The current alternatives for consumers were unsatisfactory. I compared the defined customer segment against the general population to determine a market size. The opportunity was enormous. I presented the research POV to leadership and got the green light to proceed.
The was a need and it was a large addressable market.
Exploration
To solve the challenge, I gathered stakeholders representing various areas in the company and held a 2-hour ideation workshop. The session delivered a handful of evocative ideas but generally served as an alignment exercise for how to service a new offering operationally. The prioritized concepts included access to financing, personal advisement, and credit score education.
In developing a solution, I looked at analogs — companies servicing similar concepts for different industries — and created a list of potential features, especially around behavior modification and coaching. I also developed a set of guiding principles (customer expectations) around the experience, mapping to the initial research.
The base of the solution was a combination of a low-interest, low-limit credit product that incorporated a chatbot-based financial coach, gamification, and videos. I created a narrative for testing these concepts and worked with a designer to translate these into UIs. I then built a storyboard deck for testing.
Feature concepts were compared to analogs and parallels.
Evaluation
To test the solution, the client gathered another group of customers who matched the segment, and I ran a demonstration with the test deck and then conducted a questionnaire. The concept scored exceedingly well. Customers were enthusiastic about the solution, saying the offering of a credit product “to train on” was the driver for their participation.
Along with the findings from validation testing, I went back and mapped the new features to the old journey map, showing how they countered the most problematic pain points. I also created an implementation roadmap and a risk assessment for the clients’s long-term goal of consolidating their customers’ banking relationships.
Feedback was collected as the storyboard was presented to customers.
Outcome
My consultancy’s engagement ended before the solution went into design and production. However, considering the message my CEO received from the client’s head of innovation, the project was considered an astounding success by leadership, and the process model I provided was exactly what they wanted for their innovation program.
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