[Recap] Tech & Customer Experience in the Financial Sector
On 14th of September between 6pm and 8pm, about 90 people gathered at the iHub for a panel session titled “Technology and Customer Experience in the Financial Sector”. This was Nairobi Design Community’s second event after the one that was held at Metta Nairobi back in July.
As the title suggests, the focus this time was on how financial institutions are using technology to improve service delivery. Our original panel was made up of a representative from a large bank (Eddie Ndichu — KCB), a smaller bank (Alvin Mokaya — DTB), an expert in digital financial inclusion (Jacquline Jummah — Microsave) and a fintech company representative (Milka Kanzi — Tala).
Of speed bumps
When planning an event, you worry about two key things:
- Will all the panelists show up?
- Will people find this interesting enough to attend?
Unfortunately a day before the event, Alvin fell ill and couldn’t attend. We were okay with going with three panelists only. Unfortunately, at 15 minutes past 6pm on the event date we were informed that Eddie wouldn’t make it either. Panic mode activated!
We quickly reached out to our backup panelists (yes, we always have backups) but they weren’t available either :-(
At this point we were about to give up. Luckily our moderator, Caesar Tuva, had struck a conversation with one of the attendees Agnes Muthoni. Agnes describes herself as a curator, innovator, thought leader, and a banker. She currently works as the Group Sales Effectiveness & Marketing Intelligence at Letshego Holidings Ltd. Letshego provides underserved customers with access to simple, appropriate and accessible financial solutions. We couldn’t have found a better replacement.
Next, we reached out to the Founder and CEO of Kocela — Abel Masai. Kocela specializes in building digital solutions in the financial sector. They are best known for building East & Central Africa’s most downloaded banking app — the KCB app. Luckily he agreed to join to panel on such a short notice and proved to be a great addition to the conversation.
What was covered
Caesar had five key talking points that he hoped the panelists would address:
- How do you define customer experience?
- What are the financial interactions that have elevated by technology?
- Are fintech startups creating new market segments and reaching new users, or at least expanding existing markets? How are traditional banking institutions responding to their entry?
- How are traditional financial institutions such as banks embracing the user-centred approach to building digital solutions? How are they adjusting their culture to make this happen?
- Beyond the launch — how are financial institutions ensuring once digital solutions like apps are launched they are actually used by the target market. Are there any growth frameworks in place to improve adoption?
The highlights
On the definition of customer experience:
Customer experience is the entire journey starting from discovery all the way to your user achieving what they intended to do. It combines both the physical and digital aspect of it. It is the sum of all interactions the customer as with the company offering the service.
What then makes for good customer experience?
When talking about why technology hasn’t improved customer experience as expected by many players in the financial sector the following gem by Jacqueline stood out:
Additionally, customer experience being viewed only as a front-facing task is holding bank traditional financial institutions.
What happens when a traditional institution like a bank tries to change and be user focused by recruiting design talent?
From the conversation, it became obvious that traditional financial institutions have to change a lot to be user-focused. Abel shared their experience working with these types of institutions.
Milka shared the approach Tala took. To them, customer experience is a daily activity and data helps them shape their product. This led to the observation that banking will always be needed but the same doesn’t necessarily apply for banks.
We also had time for questions.
We had a question about how you get people to adopt a solution that they might not be very familiar with. The response — show the user the pain/problem you are addressing in a clear and compelling manner.
There was also a question on what the future of the finance sector is.
Before we knew it was already 8pm and we had to vacate the premises. Before we left we thanked:
- The panelists and especially Abel and Agnes for stepping in and doing such a splendid job
- Caesar for doing such an amazing job at moderating
- The iHub for being such gracious hosts
- The NDC team for organizing the event. Well done Emma, Maryann, and Kirui
- And last but not least, all the attendees
You can check out the rest of the photos from the event by visiting the Facebook post for the event.
What next?
We are contemplating doing a workshop early October. We will keep you posted!
We are looking for contributors:
We are looking at building a community of people solving problems using design in Kenya willing to share their stories. Interested in publishing here? Reach out to us on our social media channels Twitter, Facebook. We will publish the contribution guideline in the course of this week but don’t let that hold you back. Thanks Kimenye for being the first contributor!
