A bank offering a portfolio of working capital products to business customers noticed that a particular product was underperforming, despite having significant numbers of customers who could have been better off on this product than their current one.

The challenge was to understand why the product was underperforming and to identify effective solutions to address this, without changing the product design.

Understanding how staff and customers behave during the sales process

We combined behavioural data analysis and interviews with customer-facing sales teams to identify how customers and staff behaved through the sales process.

Based on this, we used the nine behavioural traits to identify targets to change (e.g. the habits and loss aversion of staff to sell simpler-sounding, more popular products)..

In creative workshops with the client team, we identified and prioritised over 70 ideas to test - from positioning on the website to changes to staff guidance and training.

The drop off point was often earlier in the process than the product team had expected. This meant that the product was excluded from consideration often in the first few minutes of a sales conversation.

The bank’s communications (on the website, brochures and face to face) were framing the product as more complex and more expensive than it actually was.

Sales were as much driven by behavioural traits of the staff as those of the customers.

Behavioural economics insights becoming the new norm

Many ideas to reposition were quick wins that the bank could easily implement  (e.g. changes to language and framing on the website, simple tools to help staff improve the advice they give).

Others, such as staff training and changes to the face to face sales process took longer to be trialled by the client.

As a result of the work, the client team implemented insights and methods from behavioural economics into their regular product review processes.