Learning Launch – Cards Requisition and Delivery Process

Challenge

I currently lead the Business Process Reengineering department of a financial institution and we  have had serious issues with card requisition and delivery from our mobile banking application.  Customers who request for cards do not receive these cards within the agreed time due to  various reasons. The leadership of the digital group entrusted the responsibility of revamping  this process to my team within a 60day timeline. The key deliverables were to ensure that cards  are delivered to customers who apply from our mobile app within a maximum of 5working days  as against the current occurrence of 10working days or more. Furthermore, the scope of the  project includes ensuring that through the customer journey for card requisition, there is  visibility from end to end.

Selection

Following several engagements among the team members, we decided to adopt the learning  launch tool in order to test our assumed most feasible approach and come up with possible  prototype that can then be tested in selected branches and replicated bank-wide.

Application

Our first task was to completely walk through the existing solution and process, identify the gaps  and reasons for persistent delays in the cards production and delivery. This generated a number  of insights which were critical factors in our decisions for the proposed solutions. We held  stakeholder sessions with key process owners, performed sample card requests as customers to  have first hand experience of the actual outputs without any interference, studied the system  along every stage of the request till the point of delivery.

Insights

Based on our findings, we discovered that there were many handshakes in the card production  process, requiring transfers from one organization to another up to the final delivery to the  customer. We also discovered that in the process of applying for the cards, some customers do  not provide proper addresses for their delivery locations, which in turn impacts on the ability of  the delivery company to locate the customer. Furthermore, several stages of the process were  not captured in the solution, which makes it difficult for staff to track card requests and provide  adequate information to customers when necessary.

We then initiated a revamp of the Cards Management Portal, identifying every leg of the process.  We also created a dashboard to monitor requests and created an escalation rule. Thereafter, we  redesigned the card production platform (inbranch) to be able to issue “in-app” card requests.  This would help us leverage on the existing infrastructure and enable customer’s requests to be  fulfilled in minutes rather than days. By this, we redesigned the process to ensure that  customers who indicate branch as pick up option can get their cards within 15mins while  customers who indicate home delivery option can get their cards within 24hours. Upon  submission of card request by customer, this request flows to the closest branch for production

and immediate dispatch. Thereby, eliminating external vendors who were involved in the  process.

Approach

In testing this proposed solution, we selected one of the bank’s main branches in order to have a  reasonable sample size. We programmed a sample request to flow to the selected branch, while  the Customer Service Officer issued the card using the existing Instant Card Issuance machine.  Card was then activated in-app and we attempted some transactions. A key learning for us was  that while the inbranch machine was used to issue the card, the card activation platform was not  compatible with the type of cards. Hence, the first set of cards we issued and activated using the  inbranch card activation platform were not able to perform transactions and the chips of the  cards were damaged. A second trial enabled us to correct this issues and we activated the cards  in-app and was successful.

Next plan is to begin a phase by phase rollout of this solution across various regions and  monitor impact on process efficiency and customer satisfaction.

