FST Media: Bankwest was recently named Australia’s top provider in an industry survey on customer satisfaction ratings. Clearly Bankwest’s new search-driven website launched earlier this year has been well received. What were the most important factors in the redesign?

Muirsmith: The redesign was a new public website in combination with an upgrade to our online banking platform. First of all we looked at the financial services landscape in Australia and internationally in combination with feedback from our customers gained through focus groups and online surveys etc. We really wanted to focus on the customer journey and build a research platform. Our belief was that by the time people came to our website, they had already visited a number of sites to do their homework so it was important to treat them like an intelligent consumer.

We really didn’t want to shout marketing messages through the website, we wanted to provide a platform where people could quite easily and quickly find the product they wanted and compare it. We sought inspiration from those who already did this well online.

For example, we thought Samsung in the US was terrific in the way they enabled the customer to compare products by the attributes that matter to them, then save the product and share it with people that matter in their lives. We invested a lot in the search engine that is very prominent on the homepage and spent considerable time thinking about the navigation, the scheme and the way that worked. The home page is very simple, but as well as adopting some of the retail shopping concepts, we also deliver a homepage experience based on your last log-in or where you visited last time. So, if we know you’re a retail customer, you will get a retail home page rather than a shared page that doesn’t mean anything to you, and the same for our business customers.

The project took a fair amount of discussion internally, because in days of old there was a tendency to clutter the site with banners etc. Ultimately though, we looked at metrics, at best practice and at what we could bring from outside financial services. The result is something quite different and feedback has been enormously positive.

FST Media: How are you measuring this feedback?

Muirsmith: On launch we had a spike of 40 per cent in unique visitors in the first month. Now it’s levelled back to a 20 per cent up-kick than what we had previously seen based on unique visitors. Interestingly, the number of page views actually scaled back slightly, which told us people were finding the information they wanted a lot quicker.

We also conduct online surveys for a deep dive on various sections depending on the product as well as at a more generic broader level.

We have an online support centre through which we get weekly reports and feedback from customers on things they do and don’t like. That in turn gets fed into our development life cycle and our ongoing investment in the platform.

FST Media: You have spoken of making the new site more a research tool than a marketing platform. Has that required a change in how you staff and manage the site?

Muirsmith: Because of the growth we’re seeing in the channel, I think it would be fair to say there is a more conscious focus on what is happening online and that’s not only in my department. There has been a change in the way we support the online channel. We implemented a completely new Content Management System on the back-end which allows tailored content, so if you’re in Western Australia, you’ll get different rates and fees associated with stamp duty etc. compared to New South Wales. The different content and customised experience based on where you are located is a new task within my team. In the same way, we continue to evolve Search in terms of both the organic and managed elements.

In addition to keeping content customised and current, there are obviously changes in products and regulatory requirements making it highly desirable to invest in the people that manage the online experience for the customer.

FST Media: Do you believe in customer research before development, or do you subscribe more to principle of developing ideas internally, actioning them and then soliciting feedback, particularly given customers are now quite comfortable using online?

Muirsmith: I think for the big-ticket items you do need to talk to the customer, particularly around navigation schemes, performance issues and the bundling of content. What you tend to find though, is after four or five customers you start to get some very common themes. After around six to 10 around a particular theme, you start to see the message come through pretty clear. In saying that, when we are doing small enhancements or changes we do test and learn as we go, because that is part of the cycle. We try changing elements within the site, see how many clicks we’re getting, see how the page is behaving  and see if the customer is ultimately then either buying the product or coming back to the page.

However, with a project of the size and scale of the redesign, it was imperative we had the customer voice help define that journey, otherwise I don’t think it would be the quality product it ultimately became.

FST Media: What were the changes you made to the online banking platform?

Muirsmith: Online banking has been more iterative, so we did a refresh of the user interface. We’ve invested in the infrastructure to improve performance so it loads quickly and is reliable, which has produced dividends in customer statistics. In online banking, other than online security and accuracy, one of the most important things to customers is response. Obviously in mobile, the ever-growing demand for an improved mobile experience has been part of that journey as well and we continue to invest in that online banking platform, whether it be through the app or the mobile enabled version of online banking.

FST Media: Given online is quite a mature channel, do you think there is still room for innovation, or do you think we’re now at the refining stage for this platform?

Muirsmith: I guess I probably wouldn’t say it’s mature at all, to be honest. I think we’ve come a long way in the last two to three years particularly, but in the banking sector there is still a world of opportunity, it’s just about picking the right horse. I still think there’s a wealth of opportunity here and if we make the smart investments that matter to the customer and make their life easier, we’ll really succeed.

FST Media: You mentioned Samsung earlier. Is it to these kinds of retail brands you think banks should look for inspiration and ideas on customer service and delivery?

Muirsmith: Some banks are great for learning, for example Wells Fargo in the US do some terrific things in social media and Citibank in the US do some terrific things in mobile. But for example we also looked at the automotive industry; I think they were ahead of their time in leveraging online as part of the overall purchase cycle.

On some websites you have a virtual car you build to customise your experience. It means you build your own car online, so you can understand what you’re buying and share it. Just the engagement aspect, so not rather than again, it got back to building a research platform, it gives the customer tools which are valuable to them.

We certainly looked at a number of what we thought were some of the best sites in the world and plucked what we felt would meet our customer needs and hopefully surprise and delight them in the method of delivery.

FST Media: It seems a lot of banks are stuck in the situation where customer service hijacks social media and it becomes hard to execute a cogent strategy. What has been your experience at Bankwest? Are you mainly using social media for customer service and is this your aim?

Muirsmith: I guess we are being largely customer-led in social media but that was the approach we wanted to take. What I will say though is it’s an enormously efficient channel to service customers from a back-end or resourcing standpoint. On our website, we have quick-chat, which is both proactive and reactive. By that I mean the customer can elect to chat, or we pop up and offer a chat if we see they’ve been stuck on a section for quite a while – Getty Images was one of the sites in the US that did it particularly well. This has been very successful as it gives the customer the space to read and do what they need and engage with you on their terms, but an agent can also be having four chats plus a number of social media interactions in one session, which delivers organisational efficiency.

FST Media: In terms of the way banks use social media, do you see more of the actual transactional functions of banking moving into social media in the future as opposed to it simply being a customer service platform?

Muirsmith: No-one’s got the silver bullet answer for that yet. What I do think is customers will want more and more meaningful conversations in those environments on their terms.  Whether that is about a particular credit card or a personal loan or bundling some products together, I think customer expectations will continue to rise. In terms of transactions, at the end of the day I think they will still always reside in the online banking platform, but may be delivered in different ways. We’ve seen that through the booming demand for apps. In terms of that happening through social media – the jury is still out, I think. We’ve seen some minor attempts at delivering account balance information through social media but at the end of the day no-one has really cracked the nut yet.

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Andy Weir, Chief Information Officer, Bankwest