Redesigning Scotiabank’s Loyalty Program

Led research influencing the redesign of Scotiabank Peru’s Loyalty Program's key feature in partnership with cross-functional teams, aiming to improve user satisfaction and drive customer retention.

Company: Scotiabank Peru
Domain: Banking
My role: Lead UX Researcher  | Team: Alexandra Chávez (UX Designer), Franco Bermúdez (Design Lead), Theo Sauvager (Product Manager)
Skills: Generative research, evaluative research
Timeline: 8 weeks

As a result of confidentiality requirements, I am unable to provide complete details about this project. However, with the consent of my team at Scotiabank, I can share an overview of my process without divulging specific findings or project details.

Scotiabank

Scotiabank is a Canadian multinational banking and financial services company with a global presence serving over 25 million customers. In 2019, Scotiabank took an innovative approach to digital banking by creating what it calls a "Digital Factory." The Toronto bank set up five such factories, one each in Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, where 1,200 full-time employees develop new digital features for the bank, while adding specific functionality that's unique to each country. From 2020 to 2022, I was a part of the Design Team in Scotiabank Peru’s Digital Factory.

As the Lead UX Researcher of the project, I was responsible of designing and executing a research plan in the timeframe that was established. After selecting the research methods, conducting research and analyzing the data, I closely collaborated with the UX Design team sharing users’ pain points and needs, nudging the the experience redesign. Once the new version was designed, I conducted usability tests on the prototypes to identify usability issues and continue to gather research feedback.

Contributions

Challenge

The main goal was to incorporate the loyalty value proposition for the retail customer, enabling them to easily access comprehensive information about their benefits, promotions, and loyalty programs, while ensuring consistent communication.

After conducting an initial Discovery process on Scotiabank's Loyalty program, the Product Team decided to shift the focus and explore further the possibilities associated with a particular feature within the Loyalty Program.

Research

Roadmap

Phase 1: Discovery

After being approached by the Loyalty team with the mission to identify business opportunities in Scotiabank’s Loyalty Program, I designed a qualitative exploratory research plan in order to gain better understanding of the problem space, specifically learn about Scotiabank’s current offer and positioning in comparison to other competitors. The exploratory phase consisted of semi-structured interviews and a benchmark of national and international Banking Loyalty Programs.

I was facilitated access to data bases that portrayed the behavior of thousands of users in relationship to their participation with the Loyalty feature.

Goal: Identify trends in the data to understand user behavior in regards to the specific Loyalty feature.

Behavioral Quantitative Analysis

Alongside the UX Design team, we set a benchmark with over 15 Loyalty Programs in the banking and additional fields, both local and international.

Goal: Evaluate the current state of Loyalty Programs and gather information and inspiration about their current offerings.

Benchmark

I called the bank’s call center and solicited information about how the Loyalty feature works.

Goal: Evaluate the current service Scotiabank is providing to test for consistency and identify opportunities of improvement.

Mystery shopper

I used Medallia and Quantico to learn about what Scotiabank’s users (and their competitors) were saying in relationship to the the Loyalty feature.

Goal: Get insight about users’ perceptions and preferences related to loyalty programs through conversations and discussions happening on social media.

Social Listening Qualitative Analysis

Phase 3: Evaluative Research

I moderated usability tests with the existing version of the Loyalty feature with both power users (x5) and eligible non users (x3) of the feature.

Goal: Identify existing problems in the experience with the feature, uncover opportunities and learn about our target users’ behavior and preferences.

Usability testing (Pt 1: Current version)

I moderated usability tests of the redesigned version of the Loyalty feature with power users of the traditional feature (x5) and eligible non users (x4).

Goal: Evaluate the usability of the new feature, user satisfaction, and identify any opportunities for improvement.

Usability testing (Pt 2: Redesigned version)

I conducted 7 semi-structured interviews with users and competitors probing about a specific feature and its characteristics.

Goal: Learn about the value and experience of users with a particular feature, identifying opportunities for improvement in Scotiabank’s experience.

Semi-structured interviews

Finally, the last phase of the project consisted on evaluative efforts. Through moderated usability studies, I evaluated the existing digital experience of the feature both with power users and non-users, identifying several usability and design opportunities. After the UX Designers worked on the redesign of the Loyalty feature fed from the results of generative research and the first usability studies, I moderated another round of moderated usability studies to evaluate the new redesigned experience.

I conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with users and competitors probing about the unique, subjective, experiences of participants with Loyalty Programs.

Goal: Learn about customer experiences, benefits, and areas for enhancement related to Loyalty Programs offered by Scotiabank and its competitors.

Semi-structured interviews

Phase 2: Generative Research

After presenting initial findings and opportunity spaces to the Loyalty and Product team, the Product Manager opted to prioritize our efforts in one specific Loyalty feature the mobile banking experience offered. In order to gain further understanding about the specific feature and identify ways to enhance the current experience, I designed a generative research study plan consisting of a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods.

Results

Several artifacts were used to best communicate our research findings to our stakeholders.

As a result of the several user research methods employed, I was able to craft a series of insights for the team uncovering information about the experiences, perceptions, and expectations of the loyalty feature and program in general.

Insights

In order to better understand the journey our customers were going through when using the Loyalty feature, I crafted a customer journey map based on the crowdsourced experiences of 15 customers. In the journey map I was able to communicate the biggest pain points and moments of delight throughout the experience.

Customer Journey Maps

Based on the information we learned from our customers, we were able to craft four personas. Through them, we detailed the relationship they had with Scotiabank and the Loyalty Program, their needs, pain points, and specific opportunities for each.

Personae

Based on the information gathered from the 8 usability tests conducted on both power users and non-users, and their respective follow-up interviews. In close collaboration with the UX Design team, I gathered several observations and identified a series of opportunities for the redesign of the loyalty feature.

Usability testing report

Outcomes

Nudged by the research findings sourced from the user interviews, quantitative behavioral analysis, social listening and usability testing, Alexandra, the UX Designer I was lucky to collaborate with redesigned the end-to-end experience of the feature gracefully integrating the identified opportunities.

A second version of that experience was iterated after conducting 9 usability tests on the new redesigned experience. After that, the solution was evaluated internally for security and architecture issues. The Product team did an impact evaluation, and the whole feature was sliced into multiple user stories with the support of the Engineering team. Finally, it was successfully moved to the prioritized backlog of validated solutions for next releases.

Feature and experience redesign

The research findings of this project identified a series of quick win and mid/long-term opportunities, and were socialized with the respective teams within and beyond Digital Banking, all the way to the Vice President of Retail Customer Segmentation and their team.

Additional opportunity mapping

A new Digital Banking team solely dedicated to Loyalty efforts

As a result of the numerous opportunities that were uncovered to generate revenue and improve the users’ experience, Scotiabank’s Digital Factory opted to invest in a new Loyalty team. This team is the first team in Digital Banking to be focused solely in executing efforts to improve Scotiabank’s Loyalty Program’s offerings.