Assignment – Learning Launch

Challenge  I work in the SME Department of a financial institution. My team and I want to understand  better the nowadays needs of the customers that use the online banking interface. We are  currently making an event where all our SME customers are invited to generate new ideas. In  this event we want to interact as much as possible with our clients, so we can generate some  ideas for a better service.

We are a team of eight employees who directly work with the customers face-to-face. So the  advantage is that we know our customers, and can interact with them easily to integrate them  in our innovative ideas. The project will be in one full day event, were more than 100 clients  have confirmed attendance.

Selection   We chose the learning launch tool because we want to learn more about what are the needs  of the SMEs and then improve our approach to them. As a financial institution we have plenty  of data gathered through surveys and by watching how customers’ behavior, but what we are  missing is a closer insight toward our customers´ actual needs. The idea is now to show all our  ideas like in a museum and interact with the managers to see what are their thoughts and real  needs. Which new service they choose and why. Learning Launching is a tool that will work  perfect for our little experiment. After this event we would like to have some ideas embraced  and ready to put in the market with some of the relevant clients and then when there is a  positive outcome, to expand it to all the customers of the SME Department.

Application   We focused on the real need of the customers in our learning launch. In particular, we wanted  to see how they would picture themselves when using the different services/products that we  are meeting the customers´ need. The key assumption to test here is if we understand the  SMEs problems and can offer a solution to that. For that we need them to interact with our  hypothesis and help us test our assumptions.

Our team through this Day Event, will go around trying to interact with each person and take  them around the different proposals and see which catch their interest, and after understand  why they decide for one and not another option.

With this information we will be able to choose what seem to be needed for our customers  and make a small test with a selected number of customers, and then, when it works, extend it  to the rest of the SMEs.

To make sure that our assumption are confirmed or not, we decided to make a survey with the  people that attended to our event, to make sure what their view of the process worked, and  their ideas regarding the services and products proposed.

Insight   We stated our hypothesis, stated our key assumption, and let the potential customers go  around and choose their best option. Then we try to understand the reason behind choosing  that option and finally making a survey to confirm or disconfirm our data.

With the results gained on the Event, we are able to make a test of the key assumptions with a  small group of SMEs, to then spread it to all the customers.

Our actual results were what we anticipated: while our customers where going around the  event and getting the insight of future services, they felt more engaged in explaining why they  see success or not in those ideas. Expressing their real needs help us understand not just what  they say they want but their real need.

In just one day, we were able to test our assumption, and have a more clear view on where to  direct our efforts.

Approach   The results obtained with the learning launch were very compelling. The only thing we were  missing is a more vivid image of our ideas. In our next event we will try to make each idea  more a story for the customers, so they can get more attached to them and not just look at the  ideas as cold processes. But more as a solution to their problems, something that they can feel  and imagine easily. Next event we will try to make a workshop where customers can tell us  their ideas and that we can also take them as hypothesis for future development.

