𝟺. 𝙸𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗

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CHOOSING A PATH

After creating these two basic prototypes, we decided to pitch #1, the idea of contacting customers who leave negative survey feedback. We liked that the the customers receive a direct, personal interaction with a banker, and felt that this would show that KeyBank cares about them. Additionally, KeyBank can solve issues that the customers bring up. While the digital updates could be beneficial in improving personalization, we decided that the changes would be too complicated to easily implement. There would need to be a whole new team dealing with responding to and solving the problem reports. We do not want to have to hire new employees at Key, so this solution was put back on the shelf. Prototype #1 will be more straightforward to develop further, and we truly feel it has the potential to be successful.

IMPROVEMENT

After giving our Shark Tank pitch in mid-November, we realized there were many aspects of our product that needed improvement. First, we needed a name. The five of us quickly generated a list, all of which included Key or KeyBank. We finally settled on "The Key Connection," as our solution was designed to connect customers to the bank. Now that the easy part was over, we went about tackling the other feedback received. Below is a list of things brought up during Shark Tank, or that we thought of soon after. Each item is followed by an explanation of how our solution is evolving from these considerations.

What will we do in the situation of unsolvable problems? First, we needed to truly gain an understanding of what an unsolvable problem is. An unsolvable situation arises when the KeyBank representative cannot solve the issue that the customer has. Examples of this would be a customer who doesn't qualify for a loan, the presence of overdraft fees, and maximum loan amounts. When an employee reaches out to a customer, they cannot say "sorry, there is nothing I can do to help in this scenario." That will not help improve customer satisfaction or NPS. Instead, we decided that when an unsolvable comes up, the Key employee's goal will be to stay positive about the situation and provide helpful advice to the customer. Whether this is how to improve their credit score or recommending taking out a different type of loan, the representative will do their best to make good out of an unfavorable scenario.
What if a customer doesn't want to talk about their experience? We feel that most people who take the time to fill out a survey will be willing to discuss their responses. However, there is the chance that an individual would prefer not to be reached out to by a Key employee. To account for this, we decided to add a question to the end of the KeyBank surveys. This final question will ask "would you like to be contacted to talk about your results?" Following this, the choices would be "no," "yes, by a phone call," "yes, by email," "yes, by text," and "yes, live in a local branch." This way, we will ensure that The Key Connection is not creating more detractors from contacting people who do not want to participate, and also is providing flexible contact options for those who do.
How do we know KeyBank doesn't already do this? This was one of the questions brought up in the KeyBank Q&A session. Key said that they have tried reaching out to survey respondents, but they have only done so on a very small scale. They didn't mention anything about how they've gone so far, and they were almost hesitant to answer this question. One of the main parts of The Key Connection is that the bank will be reaching out to every single survey respondent who leaves unfavorable responses. After receiving this answer from KeyBank, we were confident that our solution is unlike their current proceedings, and has a high chance of being a top choice as they aren't against reaching out to the respondents.
How will you make the interactions not an inconvenience to customers? Once the KeyBank employee has reviewed the survey responses, they will reach out to the customer by text or email to coordinate a time that works for the customer. Our goal is to make this as painless for the customers as possible, so having them choose the time for the interaction to occur will help achieve this. It also shows that the bank cares about them and their time.
Will you need to hire more employees? The way we envision it, KeyBank will not need to hire any additional employees. However, they will need to train current employees to properly handle these scenarios. We want the representatives to be based out of a branch or the headquarters instead of the contact center. The higher-paid employees will be better equipped to deal with such situations after their training and will be able to resolve any outstanding problems efficiently. Additionally, they are more qualified to provide advice than the contact center employees. One of the many goals of The Key Connection is for the bank to learn from the problems the customers are experiencing, and solve them the right way. Over time, there should be fewer and fewer negative surveys being submitted, meaning fewer and fewer Key Connection interactions will need to occur. Because of this, we do not want to hire new employees because as issues get resolved and Key fixes the causes, customers will ideally have fewer problems. This would require less customer experience specialists down the road, meaning hiring more employees should not be necessary.
How will the problems we learn about be properly solved? After finishing up a customer interaction, the Key employee will have takeaways from the call. These include but are not limited to: details about the issue, whether it was resolved or not, the type of advice that was provided (if applicable), and any customer feedback. We decided that this valuable information needs to be recorded in a place where other employees can access it. The best way to achieve this is a shared, easy-to-use database where the representative can record their takeaways after each call. We also want the problems to be solved in the best way possible. It is safe to assume that multiple customers will be complaining about similar issues. The KeyBank employees will be able to analyze the shared database to find this information. Since the solutions should be created with the customer in mind, Key can hold incentivized focus groups down the road with customers who experience the same problem. The participants can discuss the issues and brainstorm ways to solve them, which will benefit both the customers and the bank.

RISK

This solution was a bit of a risk as we are not completely sure of how Key is currently reaching out to customers who leave negative survey feedback. In the Q&A session, they did mention they tried reaching out to some customers at one point but had no definite answers of what happened or if their problems were resolved. They also didn't sound certain on whether they are still doing this or not. We found it quite disappointing that KeyBank isn't committed to learning about the issues that their customers face. For this reason, we decided to stick with this idea, as it has the potential to achieve many things. The Key Connection will show the bank cares about their customers, it will help resolve issues, advice will be given to those who need it, the bank will learn about the issues the customers face, and they will be able to solve them in an effective and logical way. Clearly, KeyBank isn't already doing all this, as reflected by low net promoter scores and overall scores for customers who have to deal with problems. Additionally, we did not want to create a solution that was too "wild and crazy," as Key is a rather conservative Midwest bank. The solution needs to be feasible and relatively easy to implement, and we feel The Key Connection meets this criteria.

FINAL PROTOTYPE DETAILS

After taking the time to review the feedback from Shark Tank and analyze the product from many different angles, we created the final prototype of The Key Connection. At the end of every KeyBank survey, there will be a question asking if the customer would like to discuss their results, and if so, through which means of communication. For those who say yes, a trained KeyBank employee will take the time to read over the survey responses and get a general understanding of the customer's reasoning for the low scores. Next, they will coordinate a day and time that works for the customer to discuss the situation through the preferred method of communication. The Key employee will listen with an open mind to the customer's explanation and demonstrate that they are listening. Next, the employee will share the action plan to resolve the situation or provide helpful advice, depending on the circumstances. Finally, the employee will ensure the customer is satisfied with the result, and end the interaction. The employee's two main goals are to keep the situation positive and demonstrate caring toward the customer.

After this interaction, the employee will record the takeaways of the call into a shared, easily accessible database. Once this database has had many entries, KeyBank employees will be able to analyze the data and draw conclusions about problems that customers face. If they see trends in this data, they will organize incentivized focus groups to gain a better understanding of the problem and help develop a solution that the customers want. See below for a journey map of this process.

The Key Connection solves our problem as it builds personal connections with customers, solves their issues, and will prevent issues from occurring in the future. The Key Connection also solves KeyBank's problem, as customers will have a better feeling about Key, the amount of detractors will decrease, the amount of promoters will increase, meaning their NPS will see an increase.

IMPLEMENTING THE KEY CONNECTION

The Key Connection will not be very difficult for the bank to implement. First, Key will have to add the new final question to their surveys. Next, they will need to decide which employees will be taking on the roles of dealing with customers. Preferably, it will be individuals who already work with customer experience. KeyBank will have to train these employees on how to properly handle these scenarios. Next, KeyBank will need to create a new database, or modify an existing one so the employees can easily input their takeaways from the interactions. Additionally, the database should be set up in that the information is easily accessible to the individuals who will analyze it. Once this is done, Key can start contacting customers and learning about improving the banking experience!