Experience Banker

Bank accounts are traditionally difficult to explain to customers, you can’t see or touch them, yet they require pages of brochures, and forms to fill out.  Jyske Bank in Denmark has a different approach to merchandising its bank accounts.  Use a box.

The outside of the box shows the marketing and information like interest rates and key terms and conditions. There is enough space to include the most important information, that’s readable at arms length, but not so much space that it becomes filled with boring waffle and jargon.

A boxed product offers the design principle of affordance, basically, it looks familiar and you know what to do with: pick it up, read it, buy it. Such tactile engagement is important to the buying process. It allows consumers to consider the product on their own terms, and gives them a chance to understand before having to talk to anyone.  In this video from Jyske Bank you can see the box concept (at 53 seconds).

But the “box” concept can be taken a step further. As we mentioned in our last post, Tesco (UK’s biggest supermarket) plans to provide full retail banking services in their stores.  Joining bank-in-a box merchandising with a supermarket environment where people are already in “buying mode” (and add  ATM cards and cheque books inside the box) may create a fresh banking experience that is:

• Easy to understand.  Only the most important information is shown on the box
• Immediate. Customers can “buy” and activate an account on the spot
• Convenient. No need to wait for forms to be posted or go back into a branch to validate ID.

With immediate business benefits including:

• Zero abandonment. Most customers who abandon account opening do so after they have completed the form, but perhaps don’t post it or go to the branch to validate ID.
• No mistakes on the form, everything is checked in store.
• Immediate usage.  Customer’s can start using the account in the store

We’ll be following these trends in merchandising closely over the next few months. We hope that this simple concept  will offer easier, useful and enjoyable banking experiences plus a  powerful challenge to traditional high street banking.  Tell us what you think.