Reducing onboarding frictions for prospective clients
Tangerine Bank
Role: Senior Manager, Service Design
Duration: 5 weeks
Let's call her Julia. Julia was looking for a new credit card and saw a promotion on Tangerine's website. She began the application process eagerly.
Little did she know that this would be a long process because Tangerine requires you to onboard as a client first and set up online banking credentials before enrolling in products like credit cards or savings accounts.
She finally got to the credit card application. Knowing exactly which credit she wanted, she selected the Money-Back credit card. She was prompted to upgrade to a World Elite Mastercard due to her high household income. She accepted the offer but her application was abruptly submitted. Confused, she called Tangerine about her application and spent an hour on hold.
She got a confirmation from the call centre rep that her application was, indeed, submitted. She thought, fine, at least it's done.
A week had gone by, she hadn't heard anything. Her application status continued to show as "Submitted". She called multiple times throughout the week to check her status and was told it was still in progress.
Here's a true story
"This is the longest I've ever spent on a credit card or any banking product in general."
— Julia, 2024
A huge adoption risk
While Julia's experience is in more recent years, this is not a new issue at all. With the new credit card launch getting closer, I was concerned about the potential for a high risk of low adoption rates due to our challenging onboarding experience. As the resident Service Design leader, I had to help stakeholders understand the risks involved in launching a new product with such a poor client experience. They would not meet the business targets they've set.
Supported by CX analytics data, business metrics, and speaking to stakeholders, I mapped out the end-to-end customer journey, outlining the numerous exit points and discovering even more:
Prospects are asked to jump through too many hoops
Customers face many points of friction through this process. They’re made to set up a Tangerine profile, create banking credentials, and essentially onboard as a “Client” first. Before any product enrolment can happen, they’ll have to face potential failures with remote ID verification, potential anti-money laundering restrictions and hopefully not get incorrectly flagged as a fraudulent account - yeah that’s happened!
Clients are disrupted during credit card enrolment
They are presented with different options, such as upgrading to a different card or opening a savings account during credit card enrolment. They distract from the task at hand and create the feeling of a never-ending onboarding experience.
Clients feel that Tangerine's credit card approval is random and unexplainable
Clients don't understand the reason why their application was declined despite holding credit cards with other financial institutions. Numerous complaints on social media and through our own CX tracking give us a bad reputation for having a "random credit card" approval.
But these friction points are not unique to credit card enrolment alone
Tangerine’s onboarding journey is rough for customers. As I talked to the different product owners (credit card, chequing, savings, etc.), I began to realize that the difficulty is compounded by having too many different product offerings and a clunky, disjointed, and tedious onboarding experience. Here are some of the more prominent CX pain points that we’ve heard, and opportunities to improve them:
Onboarding feels like multiple different experiences pieced together as one
What can we do?
Unify and simplify the disjointed experiences to not increase Clients' cognitive load; making it one cohesive experience rather than multiple.
Clients are surprised because we lead them down unexpected paths
What can we do?
Accurately anchor Clients to where they are in the experience. Guide them so they understand the process and aren't surprised by the outcome.
Our onboarding experience is inconsistent across products and channels
What can we do?
Onboarding should be consistent regardless of the starting point. Familiarity creates efficiency so Clients know what to expect even if they go through different product onboarding.
"I have just opened my account with Tangerine. To start, the process was not easy. I had to call and was told I had to verify by mail. I will see how the process is but I do not have high hopes. My first impressions of Tangerine are not good. I must say I am disappointed so far."
— Client Feedback, 2023
This is a big problem
We need an overhaul. We need a plan. We needed more buy-in from business leads.
We start by showing everyone how well our competitors are doing in onboarding
Paired with the pain points and opportunities identified, the competitive analysis offered inspiration - that we can solve client pain points by being innovative (and reflect on how clunky and tedious our own experience is). Incorporating Tangerine Experience Principles, we've curated examples that fit the following principles:
Simple and convenient
With as little friction as possible in the context of onboarding
Trustworthy and reassuring
Build trust with clients early and often, so that they feel confident in providing enough information to move forward.
Clear and transparent
Set clear expectations upfront and be proactive in preventing mistakes.
We're getting traction
Business leads are listening and agree that we need to be ambitious with our new onboarding experience. As they worked on their business strategy, we began putting a work plan together on how we could get to a better client experience.
Create a fully digital, best-in-class onboarding experience aimed at supporting acquisition growth and mitigation of fraud and regulatory risk
Our Vision
Designing the onboarding experience - The Tangerine version
The Incubation plan
There are many great examples out there, but how do we design an experience that makes sense for Tangerine?
Working with the product and business teams, my team and I put together this incubation plan to present back to senior leadership.
At the end of this incubation, we would be able to deliver a validated solution that would:
Reduce dependency on Canada Post for ID verification and enhance our existing digital experience
Improve funnel conversion
Refine key product enrolment experience by addressing client pain points
Mitigate fraud and regulatory risk
On Hold 🥲
Although the project was put on hold, the groundwork we laid created a clear path forward for the future teams. Our work provided:
Discovery work that helps us understand the current state
A data-driven approach to reducing drop-off rates and improving all onboarding journeys
