Published on the 25/09/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Westpac has announced its new mobile-first strategy, unveiling its re-engineered banking platform that puts the customer front and centre…
The bank’s mobile-first strategy, which offers a newly-built banking platform, is its response to global banking trends and Westpac’s own experiences. Cisco’s research shows a fast-increasing willingness of customers to bank online, while predictions from Juniper Research say 200 million customers will make banking transactions via tablet by 2017. Westpac itself has experienced a 457 percent increase in mobile logins in the last 12 months and now has more logins via mobile in a day than calls to its call centre in a month.
General manager of retail banking, Ian Blair says, “Like many traditional business models, banking is changing at a million miles an hour and customers have got new needs and behaviours that are evolving all of the time. And a lot of that is being driven by the uptake of new technology.
Westpac is not only picking up that new technology and implementing it as customers are driving the needs but is actually embracing it and creating opportunities for customers to change the way they are behaving.”
The result is a $15 million, 18-month programme aimed at delivering customers the best digital and mobile banking experience in New Zealand. Blair calls the platform “very ambitious” but is confident. “Our strategy is to be different to our peers, but only because we believe that is the way that our customers are interacting with us more and more and we want to deliver the best digital solutions for them.”
The “different strategy” is a centralised fully responsive platform, meaning no matter what internet enabled device customers use it will have access to the full capability of online banking including all transactional activity, payments and can acquire and amend products and services. It is a first for Australasia and Westpac is one of the few banks globally to offer it. Currently browser-based, the platform will also be available as a wrapped banking app, eschewing the need for a multitude of task-based apps. In addition, the contextual platform has moved away from the traditional task-based model, and puts customers’ top requirements such as a transaction timeline and quick payments facility just two clicks away from the home screen. Searching transaction information or contacting a real person at Westpac are also made incredibly easy, thanks to smart technology including a decision engine that can triage customer contact and route it appropriately.
The aim, says Simon Pomeroy, head of digital banking and customer experience, is to create a “seamless and frictionless” customer experience that can start in a digital channel and move smoothly to a one-to-one human interaction where required.
The first stage has already been released to 5000 staff and a staggered rollout to customers will begin in October and be available to all Westpac customers by early 2014. The platform is being developed by the newly centralised 60-strong IT team using agile development techniques. New features will be added to it every six to eight weeks in response to customers’ needs and feedback. It already integrates with accounting programmes Xero and MYOB and functionality in the pipeline includes live-chat, budgeting tools, a fully-integrated and NFC-enabled mobile wallet and the ability to personalise the view so customers can enjoy as much or as little detail as they are comfortable with.
So far there has been strongly positive feedback from Westpac’s staff, who are also its customers, and Pomeroy says “they feel it is a game-changer”.
