Establishing HCD Culture for a 115 Year Old Bank

Daphné Repain at UXDX Community: LatAm. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=662TogL1uZo

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Bringing human-centred design to a 115-year-old bank

[00:00:00] Welcome today to this talk. My name is Daphné Repain. I'm French, I've been living in Ecuador for seven years now, and I'm happy to share with you the journey we have had within Banco Pichincha for three years now: how we've been establishing a human-centred design culture within a really old Ecuadorian bank. It was quite interesting, because in 2018 Banco Pichincha wanted to transform itself digitally, and they called me to see how we could manage the implementation of a human-centred design culture within this bank.

[00:00:43] It was quite challenging, because if you think about Ecuador, it wasn't necessarily really advanced regarding human-centred design culture, regarding customer experience. So we had really huge challenges there, and I think it was quite fascinating also. You can think that if a really huge bank like Banco Pichincha, which is taking care of all the different kinds of clients you can have, from microfinance to huge companies, could change the way of designing its services, could change the way of thinking and working by being centred on the human, it could have a really fascinating social and financial impact for the people, for the country. So that was quite fascinating.

A vision for the design team

[00:01:45] When we started the challenge there, we started with a really small team of designers. We were five or six, and the idea was to start with: okay, what would be our vision as a design team within the bank? We wanted to impact the bank culture to build inclusive products and services. We wanted to make sure that through systematisation, democratisation and socialisation of people-centred design practices, we could generate a social and positive impact for the country.

[00:02:22] That was quite interesting, because getting that vision helped us to really think together and to be super, super motivated, and to guide and start working with multidisciplinary product teams, to make sure that those new squads could start working with that vision. The idea in this first year was to start with three squads and to design an onboarding, a human-centred onboarding obviously, so that people could start working understanding the needs of the people, the context of the people, the information they need to investigate about business, about process, about people, to make sure that we could redesign a better solution, better products, better services for our clients.

The two-week onboarding

[00:03:19] Here you have, for example, the double diamond, which is a really famous framework of working in design. We haven't invented anything. We just started enhancing it and trying to see it as well, because you don't have so many topics, so much content, in Spanish. So we started to homologate a toolkit, so that people could get access to that knowledge and use that knowledge, being a bit autonomous about using it.

[00:03:47] The interesting thing here is that during those two weeks of onboarding that each squad had at the beginning, all the multidisciplinary team, the architects, the product owner, the designer, the DevOps, the front-end developer, all of us, we went to investigate with clients in real context to make sure that we understood the reality of our clients. This helped us a lot to change the way of thinking, to change the culture, and to make sure that people could start building something together.

[00:04:22] The idea of the two weeks onboarding was: okay, I'm going to investigate to define a good problem, and then I will think with my stakeholders, with my team, with clients, what the solution could be, and iterate it with clients. The idea was at the end of the onboarding to have a gallery walk with stakeholders, with the C-level of the bank, to share all this user-centred vision, so that people could understand why we are making that kind of decision and why we should go and prioritise that way of designing this product or this service. It was quite fantastic to sensitise our stakeholders, to share knowledge with the client point of view, and that was the first time within the bank. It was quite fascinating.

Growing too fast

[00:05:14] At the beginning we had the 100% assignment model. It's a bit the perfect model, when you have dedicated people for each team. So we had, for each squad, one UX and one UI. This is fantastic at the beginning when you have small teams, and it worked really well at the beginning because we had three. And you have to think that within the bank we had a two-year roadmap to implement, with a vision of nearly 15 squads within two years, to get them in shape, to make sure that people could start redesigning services and products.

[00:05:55] The thing is that we were so efficient that the first year we did the two-year roadmap in just one year. So we grew really fast, and we failed so much regarding so many things: for example, about how we could get people onboard within the design team, how we could share knowledge about research. We really had a strong barrier between us, because we were so many teams in parallel that it was going really fast, and it was really difficult to share good knowledge between all of us.

[00:06:36] To start sharing better, to start getting a design chapter working properly, we started with one hour of community of practice within the chapter, and we had each week one topic to share. Okay, look, I'm good at research. I just love these sketching methods to ideate, I just love the Crazy Eights or the ticks hearts [?] methods or whatever. And look, I've just learned about nudge, or things like that. We were sharing each week one topic to make sure that we were learning together.

[00:07:10] The thing is, by growing so fast, we understood that we had design debt, research silos, a really huge complexity of design system adoption and things like that, and we would need more time for the design chapter to make sure that we could scale in the future and be more efficient all together.

Results, and the talent challenge

[00:07:33] What we learned: the first year, the second year, we understood that we had great results. For example, before, to open a bank account with many documents, it could take one week; you had to go to the agency and things like that. Afterwards, just seven minutes digitally, wherever you were, you could manage it. So regarding financial inclusion, it was quite amazing. Also, if you think regarding sustainability and the use of paper, physical documents, it was quite interesting to reduce the impact as well in that way.

[00:08:11] The customer satisfaction regarding all the products was quite fantastic. For example, we had before, in all apps, which were with an external provider, satisfaction of the users in general within the store of 2.2 or things like that, and afterwards we were starting to be the best app within the country, and we wanted to compare ourselves with the best ones in the world, and started to get a score of more than four within the store. So that was quite amazing.

[00:08:48] But on the other part, we understood that we had many challenges, for example to recruit people within design, within advanced analytics, within technology: 20% of our talent comes from abroad. Not necessarily the academy within Ecuador was ready to respond to the labour market, and so we really had to face that kind of thing. We learned that we had to support the local and regional ecosystem to develop talent, that we had to be a partner, to develop partnerships and alliances with universities, with bootcamps and things like that.

[00:09:37] We also started to design our own trainee program. We started with a design training program, and the idea was that within four months, six months, you could enter with us within a squad. For example, you're going to be always with one mentor: if you've chosen the UX design program or the UI design program, you're going to be with the adequate mentor full time within the squad during four or six months, to make sure that you could start in the future a junior role within our company or in another company. But it was to make sure that we could provide talent and respond to the needs of the market.

[00:10:22] We also started to build our own experience academy within the bank, so that people could reskill, and this is the new one that we are going to experiment with in a few months. So it could be quite fascinating to present it at another event.

Explaining design as more than the front end

[00:10:41] Something that was really, really fascinating to get people onboard with us was the way of communicating. Many times people think that design would be graphic design, or getting a really nice interface for the clients, and just see the front part. But at the end, you really have to think about the back part. Here, for example, I just love the metaphor of disappearance [?] explaining design with a donut. Design is how it works.

[00:11:11] You have to think about the product design, and you have to think about the user experience design, about the user interface design, the service design, to really think how things are fluid in the back, to make sure that people will have a really good experience. And all of this is going to make the experience design: the experience you're going to have, the emotions you're going to live when you interact with our company. This was quite interesting, because it allows us to understand that each of us has a role to play to rethink how we are working, how we are operating, how we are building new services, new products, and to get everybody onboard.

The experience centre of excellence

[00:11:57] As I said, at the beginning, in nearly one year we did the two-year roadmap, and we went from three squads to 15 squads. We had many, many challenges to face to make sure that we would provide a really good experience for our clients, but also that we could have a really strong design team, motivated, always learning and things like that, and to make sure that people would be more efficient as well to really design the services and the products. And we understood that within the bank, before, we had a customer experience area and a design chapter area, so we had to think how we could manage to get everybody with the same vision within the company, to be the ally within the company to always think about the customer.

[00:12:55] So in 2021 we built the experience centre of excellence, and the idea here was: okay, at Banco Pichincha we want to build our experience vision. We want to be a simple, close, human bank that provides sustainable relationships and memorable memories, and we want to generate a positive impact on people and society. That was our vision, and to make sure that this vision could start building within the company and outside the company, we started to structure the new area, which is the CoE.

[00:13:37] We built it at the beginning of the year. It wasn't like that in March, it was also different in June, so this is the new structure we built in September. For example, we have a customer experience squad, which is going to focus on measuring, listening to the voice of the customer, which is going to understand how we could rethink the experience and make sure that we reduce those pains people could live when they are interacting with our brand.

[00:14:10] We have a multidisciplinary team there. For example, at the beginning of the year it was just customer experience designers, and we understood really quickly that we needed experts in analytics and data engineering, experts in measuring and things like that, to make sure that this could start to build a better knowledge of the clients, and to make sure that all the teams which are redesigning, or all the areas which need to get better customer experience, could have insight from the customers.

From squads to tribes, with pools of designers

[00:14:43] On the other part, we had to rethink the way of working from the 100% assignment model we had before, and think: okay, now we're going to work not with squads but with tribes. One tribe could have four squads, eight squads, depending on the size of the tribe. So we had to think: okay, each tribe will have a pool of designers. Each pool of designers for one tribe would have, for example, a chapter of UI, a chapter of UX, a chapter of DesignOps, regarding the topics they have to manage, to make sure that we can work better together to get a better experience and customer experience at the end.

[00:15:30] Here it's quite interesting, because each quarter or each six months we're going to think about how we should rotate people regarding the needs of the clients, of the organisation. Here you really have to always think about how you should prioritise which person would fit better with which product or which service or things like that. It's quite interesting, and you really have to think how you can always evaluate the strengths of your teams. For example, which topics do I have to make sure that people learn during this quarter, so that we could provide a better service for the organisation in the future, or things like that. So it's really challenging about developing, about enhancing the way people are working, the knowledge of our teams, the motivation of our teams and things like that.

Twenty percent of time for chapter work

[00:16:30] As I said before, at the beginning we had one hour a week of practice to get a community of design within the bank. We understood that the design system couldn't build itself, because we don't have a team for the design system yet. We couldn't build, for example, a design system in one hour a week. So we negotiated and we experimented with other chapters: what would happen if, instead of getting people nearly full time within the squads, we had 80% of their time within the squads and tribes and 20% of the time doing chapter work, sharing knowledge or things like that within the chapters, to make sure that we are building at the scale we wanted to get?

[00:17:22] We have been experimenting with that with three chapters within the bank, and it was quite interesting, because the results were good. The knowledge we were building was better. We could build, for example, the playbooks, the toolkit. We have been experimenting with a repository of insights. We're starting with design clinics, with design critiques, things like that. It's quite interesting, but also you have to think, because many times it's: okay, but why are you doing so many things?

[00:17:56] We always have to think how, regarding the strategic vision of the organisation and the strategic vision of the centre of excellence, what should be the initiatives we should prioritise as a design chapter in each squad. This was quite a learning also for us, because design teams are creative teams, and we want to do everything and things like that. So we have to focus, to be constant, to be better and stronger, and to make sure that we could stay in the future.

[00:18:34] For example, this quarter, as we know that in the future we will have other tribes too, and we are starting with the first three tribes within the bank, we are evaluating the strengths of our people and the knowledge of our people, to make sure that we could start a practical community, we could get better knowledge transfer, to make sure that people will enhance their competence and respond to the future needs of the organisation.

The customer experience squad as business partner

[00:19:07] Also, in parallel with that, with the customer experience squad, the idea is to make sure that we are positioning ourselves as a business partner for the organisation, to make sure that the organisation is going to empathise with customer insights, and to help the organisation to be more autonomous in improving the customer experience. We have a multidisciplinary team which is working on customer analytics, customer improvement, customer success. This is transversal, in collaboration with different areas of the organisation, to understand the pains of our clients and to guide the organisation regarding the redesigns we should consider and prioritise, to make sure that we could provide a better customer experience.

[00:19:56] Each month we have a service committee where we are always looking at the pains and the reasons for those pains, to make sure that we understand the good problems. From this committee we have two opportunities to manage our customer experience. One would be orchestrating and prioritising initiatives that enhance the customer experience. There the centre of excellence is just an area which is going to help the other ones to map the pains, to map solutions, to define and prioritise moments in which, for example, in January this will be done, in March this will be done, and things like that, to make sure that we are going to get impact. And here you have a continuous loop where the customer experience squad is going to measure the impact in the future and the outcome, to see how it's evolving.

[00:20:54] On the other part, we are starting with a new way of helping areas which don't necessarily have people who are experts in experience. There the idea is to have, for example, two mini squads of customer experience designers, which are going to work on interventions to redesign things within the organisation. The idea here is a bit using the onboarding model that we've seen before: to get in shape within the area, to share knowledge about customer experience, to get the vision of the area centred on the customer, and to get a backlog of initiatives within the area. But those mini squads are also going to be part of the redesign of these initiatives, and help those areas to provide a better customer experience.

New challenges: decisions and experience metrics

[00:21:55] These are the learnings we had and the things we've been experimenting with for nearly three years now within the bank. And now we understand that, as we're going to continue to evolve, we have some new challenges coming. For example, to guarantee that we get better decisions made at the different levels of the bank, from operational to tactical to strategic, and to make sure the client is always included there, as much as business or technology or whatever variable we would be using to prioritise.

[00:22:42] Also, we really have to guarantee that we start to drill down the experience metrics across the entire organisation. When we are thinking about the experience metrics, for example, the bank is focusing on the NPS at a global level. But we have to think that maybe all the areas need to focus on other kinds of indicators, to be complementary and to make sure that we're going to move the experience for our clients. Sometimes it could be satisfaction, customer effort, process satisfaction between areas or with providers. It could be first contact resolution, because you have so much churn, or things like that. You have so many indicators that can help you move the NPS, so we have to make sure that each tribe, each area, has this clear, to make sure that we're going to get to a really good Net Promoter Score and a really good experience for our clients.

Learning from each other

[00:23:47] At the end, something that I really want to share with you: I think a really good way to continue to evolve and to learn from each other is always to think that we are so many building the same kind of teams, the same way of working, within our companies. All of us have different contexts, a different culture and different knowledge, and we've all been experimenting within our companies. For example, we are collaborating regularly with Rebel Bank [?], we're starting with DirecTV recently, we've been sharing with PayPal, with IKEA, with Cochi Bank [?]. The idea is to guarantee that we continue to transfer and experiment together, because I think that the community is huge and people are always happy to share, so it's quite interesting to think about that.

[00:24:43] Thank you very much for listening to me today. I hope it was useful and that you've learned some tips and tricks, maybe, to build a better customer experience for your clients and also to develop a better human-centred design culture within your organisation. If you have any question, if you would like to share any topic with me, or also if you would like our teams to start thinking together, I would be happy to connect with you through LinkedIn. Thank you very much.