Reflection Assignment - Storytelling

Challenge & Selection

Storytelling has become a powerful tool in the Organization where I work. BANK OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS is a Fintech  solution aimed to Mom & Pop Shops that need working capital aid to replenish their stores. On the  other hand, this solution is also aimed to FMCGs that need to increment credit they give to these  stores where they sell their products.

The complexity of our market environment resides on the diversity of our store customers and the  technological breach of both our customers and distributor agents that sell the products. Our store  customers are from very different generations and they have different needs so defining what is the  best for our customer is complex.

We usually spent a lot of time trying to think what the main goal is besides having a working capital  that our customers want to fulfill. On the other hand we also have to think on how to create an app  or a digital product that is easy to use and helps the operations of our FMCGs Distributor Agents  partners to generate the credit and to give the product in an easy and fast way. We have made  several interviews and received numerous feedbacks of what the experience is. With these results  we have create storytelling paths that can help us detect and match the aspirations that our  customer wants to fulfill.

Application

A story of application is when the team decided to redesign the Onboarding process to make the  customer more self-served. In a first iteration our main hook to create and detect new customers  was the FMCG Distributor Agent that convinces the Customer of the product and then he calls our  call center team. These whole processes were slow and difficult to manage.

Through the interviews of different customers and agents we discovered specific quotes about what  is good about the product and paint points, also in these interviews we let our interviewers to be  able to talk in slangs so they would be able to feel comfortable. Like the video lecture from Mars  said we needed a story that is designed for the audience. From the interviews we select and detect  several needs and we were able to create meanings about those needs and detect conclusions and  insights of what is a gain or a pain point during our onboarding process.

Insights and Approach

The insights that we were able to detect during the story telling process were able to help us  redesign the whole onboarding experience and create interest for our customers. We thought on a  first iteration to migrate to an app that will help the customer to be able to onboard. However,  through the storytelling we detect that most of the customers had mid to lower range phones and  also have their memories full because of all the pictures and video they download while the store is  open and they wait for clients. Also, we detect that baby boomers’ customers where not so keen to  interact with an app because of insecurity and resistance in the operation.

We create two solutions, one that is quick and easy to use mounted on a chatbot that could be  interacted through Whatsapp. This solution creates a story telling that is more colloquial and was  guiding the customer through a conversation to give documentation, interact and agree with terms,  etc.

For users that where more technological and wanted to interact with some other features we design  an app, we also create a referred program to help our FMCG Distributor Agents being able to refer  a customer through a module that we built for them on the app. This solution creates a story telling  that was based on steps and was more environmental because we guided the customer through the  process with breadcrumbs and images or icons that he can relate.

The onboarding process was reduced from weeks to two days and we detect that our signup base  increased dramatically just in the first weeks of launching the program.

Despite having a Computer Science background this tool helped me and the Product Management  team that I am part of that defining a product in an empathic way and iterations are keen to succeed.  In the following iterations or in the implementation of new digital process we would like to explore  a mix of a storytelling approach with mind mapping or learning launch. I think this tool helped us a  lot, however I think that the results can better, and we can be able to create specific segmentations  about our customers.

