FNB’s Vision for a Future Built on Contextual User Experience

NOTE: This is a raw transcript and contains grammatical errors. The curated transcript will be uploaded soon.

Cameron Calder: Hi, everyone. I’m Cameron CEO of Hype Digital. We are a conversion optimization agency generating 35 million in revenue for over 136 plus clients. Today I’m excited to talk about the future of contextual user experience with Maria Elvis and Ty Riley.

I’m super excited to have you guys with me chatting about this. It’s an exciting topic. Especially just talking about in general, uh, what contextual user experience is. And obviously we’ll get into the nitty gritty of the exciting details of research and, um, some really cool topics.

We’re going to jump on. I think it’d be great just to start off with some introductions. Everyone knows who exactly we’re speaking to and all the amazing work that you guys are doing. So time, do you want to kick it off?

Okay.

Tye Riley: early on in my internship, I was approached by a Uh, and offered the opportunity to shadow under the UX design consultant at the time, for which I’m eternally grateful because I ended up in a profession, which I feel is perfectly suited for my skills and my personality traits and in my time at FMB. It’s been a rather inspiring journey to collaborate with Maria and the rest of our talented team together. We’ve championed the importance of research and shaping our digital experiences. So it’s been incredibly fulfilling to see the impact and research and the insights it generates has had on product development and innovation within the business.

So yeah, I think with that, I’ll hand over to Maria.

Maria Alves: Thank you, Ty. Hi, everyone. Hope you’re well. Um, yeah, my name is Maria.

I am the head of UX at First National Bank, and my journey started at the bank as a UI designer. We were a very small team of two whole individuals. So we were responsible for the design, the research, the The UX best practices, everything that needed to be established for a UX team. Um, so I’ve spent the last 18 years dedicating my time building up this capability within FMB.

And we’ve gotten to a point where we’ve developed systems and developed educational portals for users within the business to educate themselves on UX and actually do the research themselves, but then again, feed it back to us so that we can continuously improve. So it’s been quite an exciting journey, a challenging one at times, um, especially when you’ve got to educate stakeholders on the importance of actually speaking to your customers.

Cameron Calder: Yeah, thank you, Maria. Just super privileged to be on the call with you guys and I think there’s going to be some some amazing insights from all those years and you know, Maria from your side to grow the team from. Two people to now what it is today and all the amazing work and imagine all the, all the loopholes you’ve gone through and all the work to, to build an amazing culture within that team and to kind of hone in on one thing can be quite difficult, but I think it would be great to just explain, you know, from your side when we speaking about, uh, contextual user experience, um, and, and what that means to you and how you perceive that specifically in, in the specific vertical that you guys are playing in.

Silence. Silence.

Maria Alves: expect us as a business to fully understand where they are in their journey and how best we can service them for that. So it is important for us to work continuously on building context and speaking to each user as an individual instead of as a team. A, you know, one in a million. Um, so simply put, you know, we need to take the time to see what our data is saying, see what our users are, how they behaving, and then most importantly, talk to the users because often it is difficult to decipher what the data is actually telling us.

Um, and then from there, we actually going to look at creating experiences that are bespoke to you, speak to you, and more importantly, help you make the decisions.

Cameron Calder: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s, Specifically relevant to the user that we have now that we kind of dealing with versus, you know, 10, 15 years ago. And I think the, the key word that I would use is this relevancy where, you know, a user’s arriving with an expectation. And if you can meet that from a relevancy perspective, you’re ticking, ticking a big box from them. And, you know, from your side, there’s lots of different users from someone who has a thousand random, they have bank accounts versus, you know, 200, 000 rand.

And those people have very different expectations. Um, and you know, when, when we talking about this, we, uh, from our side, specifically from hypers, you know, we very much focused on this personalization and how you can run personalized campaigns to, to match that we have all these different user types and personas. And as they arrive on the site, you, you need to speak with a different message. And a lot of that is driven from.

Uh, this these research insights that you can pull where you basically understanding these different segments Interviewing them seeing how they navigate through the sites and creating these these different audiences And I think maybe a question for you tyers, you know obviously you very focused on how we can bridge that uh that gap between research and ux and how that That, um, whole ecosystem can be applied and just the same as how you create insights based on this personalization and how we create these unique experiences per users, how do you see these two disciplines like, you know, research analysis and this UX design working together for you and just your whole perspective on it?

Silence.

Tye Riley: interconnected, driving each other in a continual cycle of improvement. So at its core, research is about developing a profound understanding of our users, you know, their needs, behaviors, motivations, etc. And this understanding is the foundation upon which effective design is built. So research serves as the guiding light for our design process.

It equips our design team with the insights they need to create experiences that really resonate with our end users. And so without this research, design would be based on assumptions rather than actual evidence, which leads to increased risk and potentially misaligned solutions. So in essence, research and design are two sides of the same coin where research uncovers the what and the why, while design brings the how to life. It’s important to recognize that Research serves a role beyond just informing design, and it’s also part of, uh, strategic, uh, business decision making, um, to identify gaps and needs and, and, you know, predict future trends as well.

Cameron Calder: Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. You said about the research methodology, and I know Ty, we’re going to speak about this a bit later about the various frameworks that you, you guys use and are super excited about, I think, you know, specifically from our side, we work in multiple verticals across whether it be B2B or B2C, um, all the different verticals in general, and what we found is that As you work in these different verticals and using research to identify different user types, their insights, all these hypotheses that you can implement across these user experiences. They’re all very unique.

And, you know, Maria, from your side, you’ve been in the industry for so long. Um, and you understand these unique nuances that are very different to other industries. And we’ve seen in ourselves, if you’re working in an e commerce environment versus, you know, a B2B SaaS environments, there’s, you have to deal with You know, sales cycles versus an e com. It’s just a one stop purchase up front.

So there’s no kind of qualified lead or anything like that in, in your space. Do you, do you see these nuances and, you know, you’ve been in the game for so long to know that your specific vertical, when we’re talking about banking and financial services and insurance, how do those kind of differ to something like e commerce?

Maria Alves: Yeah. So I suppose, you know, our dream is to be e commerce and we were one of the first banks to launch online applications that allowed you to apply without going into a branch in under 10 minutes. But the fact of the matter is e commerce is very different. Um, I mean, we can mirror some of the, Mechanisms they have, but when you do look at e commerce itself, it’s based on speed and gamification.

And often that is what drives the primary experience. Banking users have a different demand because it is financial. There is a financial impact on you if we get it wrong. And trust is one of the key features when it comes to banking.

And we’ve got to make sure that we build that in throughout that sales process. And then. You know, I think when we look at some of the verticals on the financial sector, they very closely resemble something like healthcare, you know, where trust is not a non negotiable, right? If you’re not trusted, you’re out of the game.

Um, and I think, you know, an example, if we look at the healthcare system, if they misdiagnose you, there are severe outcomes. Similarly, if I give you the wrong credit product, I could put you in debt for For years to come. So there’s a little bit of a balance we’ve got to play here. Although you can take some of the UX and experience from e commerce, like maybe how you display certain products, it is fundamental that we progressively disclose every little detail that you fully understand what you’re getting yourself into.

So I think just to sum up, um, it is. Important to understand what motivates the users. Highlight those key features so that they can make an informed decision.

Cameron Calder: Sure. And being an F& B customer myself, uh, this is not a uh, brand feature, but, um, it must’ve been the trust that, that pulled me in for, uh, for you guys to become a customer. But I think. You know, it goes back to what are these levers that you pull in order to drive This customer to sign up and and once they’ve signed up How do you keep them for the long term and build that that loyalty?

um And we use a very similar framework where it’s called the levers framework, which basically we take Yeah, trust costs, motivation, usability and comprehension. And these are the kind of leavers that we need to pull in specific verticals in order to get a user to take action. Um, and it’s interesting to see over time that you see users leaning towards one specific lever and, you know, obviously with all your experience that, that lever kind of tending towards trust. As a, as a lever that gets pulled in, in that vertical is very exciting because there’s loads of opportunity in that specific lever.

Um, and you know, it’s very crucial just in the specific vertical, but when you’re building trust, there’s. With a lot of opportunity and a lot of creativity being kind of honed in on one specific lever, there’s things that could be detrimental to the business from an acquisition perspective where you, you know, you’re heavily focusing just on trust and then maybe that’s to the detriment of the acquisition funnel that you have. Um, and finding that balance between the two, I would imagine over the years that you’ve been working in the company has been something that’s just You know, something that gets refined over time with yourself and the team.

And I’m sure time from a research perspective, how do you guys balance that and you know, what’s, what’s the perspective there? Silence.

Maria Alves: to apply not only a prevention lens, but also an education lens. I mean, the more we spend time educating customers and helping and empowering themselves, the easier it is for us to secure them. Um, so I think it’s more of about how do we. Make it in simple enough terms that they understand and can protect themselves.

But then also once we build out those flows and insert those security mechanisms, you’re not sitting there going, what just happened? What must I do? So we need to make it quite seamless and Something like two factor authentication in transactions gives you that sense of trust. But we’ve also got to make that two factor very easy so that anybody in any demographic can look at it and go, Oh, I know exactly what you need me to do here.

Furthermore, I think, you know, enhancing all the security and trust, you know, we find that it is important, Or giving users, should I say, more the option to control the security themselves. So, um, it is something we’re working quite hard on. That, you know, it’s one thing for us to go, we’re going to put in all these security measures and you need to jump through. But we also need to give you some control.

You know, maybe you’re not quite up for Going through all the hoops and you feel a little more comfortable because you’re in a specific spot every time Um, you know, and it’s really giving you a little bit of control there as well. It’s not just dictating

Cameron Calder: Yeah, it must be something that’s, you know, uh, consciously in the back of your minds as you’re going through each process. I would imagine time maybe from your side is once you’re going through that, we’re speaking about merging the two disciplines of research and usability. Is that something that sits at the back of your mind, you know, as you’re going through, whether you’re interviewing users or whether you’re making a specific change? The kind of maybe I wouldn’t call it as far as legal side, but you know, the trustworthy side, is it playing a big part there as you’re going through each stage of that, that research and, um, potential changes or design elements that you, you’re messing with?

Is that something that sits quite closely each time you’re going through those processes?

Tye Riley: Yeah, a hundred percent. Because as Maria said, you know, trust is the foundation upon which, uh, everything we build upon. Um, so obviously try and enter the research environment, um, unbiased, but we are all humans, uh, so I try not to focus too much around leading the users to indicating whether something is trustworthy or not, but rather just Letting them organically, uh, express how they feel about certain things. A

Cameron Calder: Yeah, it makes sense. And, and as you’re going through those, those frameworks and methodologies and all of that. Um, we’ve as we spoke about, you know, before, um, the session is that, you know, you’re very excited about these various frameworks that can be applied to research and obviously, in some scenarios, you might be researching a specific user flow, or maybe you are researching a specific user segment or just It might be trust as a lever. Um, are there specific frameworks that that you apply or, um, just that excites you that can be applied to the research process?

Tye Riley: hundred percent. So there’s four main frameworks that we use to understand our users and the environment, which we operate in. Uh, but before we can choose a framework, we have to, uh, set out to clearly define the problem statement and what we aim to achieve with the outcomes of the research. And then based on this, we can select the appropriate framework.

So first off, there’s the inductive framework. This approach starts with a specific set of observations. and then builds towards general theories. It’s particularly useful for exploring new phenomena and generating fresh insights.

So some of the methodologies we’ll use in this framework are ethnographic studies and end user interviews. Uh, and these will help us, uh, generate these insights. that are connected to actual experiences. Uh, next we have the deductive framework.

So this begins with a general theory or hypothesis, and then we test that through a specific data collection. So this is best for, uh, validating existing theories or ensuring consistency in our findings. Some of the methodologies here will be mapping out user personas, usability testing, and card sorting. Um, so one example here of how we applied a deductive framework is we tested the hypothesis that small business owners had different banking needs than personal banking users.

And we were able to validate this by, you know, testing our user personas and. The outcome of which helped us developed a more tailored business banking portal. Thirdly, we have the abductive framework. So we’ll use this when we are seeking for a best explanation for an unexpected phenomena or observation.

Uh, it’s ideal for problem solving and innovation and often, but not always. Uh, the AB objective research process is part of larger iterative, uh, research initiative, which flows from an abductive to a deductive research. Uh, so methodologies will often include data analysis, which is a kind of a going back and forth. between data and theory.

Uh, one way we applied this is when we were facing issues with the complexity of our app and its scalability. Uh, we employed this framework to help us, uh, devise a simplified experience. That balanced our extensive business model and offerings with user friendly design. And then lastly, uh, there’s the mix framework, which is kind of just a mixture of, of all of the above, uh, very versatile one for, for, when our objective or problem statement doesn’t exactly fit into, uh, only one of these frameworks.

So it gives us more versatility when I’m trying to solve a problem.

Cameron Calder: I guess that, uh, abductive framework’s quite important. And I think a lot of times there’s, uh, you might have something like a huge spike or dip in a month. And, you know, everyone’s having this massive panic across the board being like, what’s, what is happening? Um, and that needs to be investigated.

I guess, you know, that’s, that’s where you guys come in and save the day. And, and that’s, that’s, that’s very important. Um, yeah, we, we kind of use. I just want to share this.

We, we use a very simple, uh, combination of this, I guess, like the, the mixed framework is a nice way to say everything kind of combined in one place, but structured, uh, in a way that makes sense. And from our side, we have kind of a top down approach in the way that we’ve, uh, built out this framework is very much on starting wide and then filtering down and becoming more and more specific, which is the nice part of research being very objective and unbiased throughout the process. And then, you know, dialing in as you go down. And just as you mentioned, you know, a lot of, uh, surveys, channels, the customer support sales, the, uh, VOC data you can get.

Full website diagnostics, heuristics, all of those things. And then the nice part is, um, as Maria, you were, um, alluding to earlier as these, these segmentations, um, and making sure that you can speak to the customer with the right message at the right time to create that relevancy. And it’s, it’s almost really great to. The way that we do this is we do a repetitive research process where we have these cycles post user segmentation.

So once you have that initial data, dialing into those specific segments and then repeating parts of the, the research, um, while still having, uh, a more tighter, uh, kind of research funnel. Um, and then going into, as you can see down here, I was mentioning the lever framework because it’s so important. Once you get down there, I would imagine a lot of your insights and data is going to fall into that kind of trust category. We have all this amazing insights, data, and hypotheses that you’re creating for impact.

And then you have this very beautifully categorized into these specific levers. And then obviously from outside running, running these, uh, implementation in the form of test ideas. And I think, you know, what’s, what’s really cool about that is you have these different segments and As I was mentioning earlier, Maria, from your side, there’s different customer segments within customer segments, within customer segments. And it kind of, you can go as granular as, as you want to until you get to a specific user ID.

But, um, I think it would be great to hear from your side, just. There’s personal banking specifically on F& B banking. I know there’s a broader range of products within the group, but how does that differ because, you know, we, we’ve spoken about the difference between e commerce versus the BFSI, how does this kind of, how do you differentiate when you’re speaking to a personal banking user versus business? Cause those are very specific segments with very unique needs.

Tye Riley: Okay. Okay.

Maria Alves: design for them. It’s also important for us to understand the goals and context on what they try and achieve. Um, so when we look at customer consumer or personal, if you like, and business, those categories are a little bit too broad for us. And as you mentioned, we do break them down a little bit further because it does make it easier for us to connect with those users.

So if we look at something like what we call entry banking, Um, they look for simplicity and accessibility. Um, and when I talk about accessibility, we talk about, you know, a simple thing like internet, internet connection. These individuals don’t have the luxury of wireless connected, connectivity like a lot of us do. So it’s important for us to build Financial solutions that are basic and easy and quick for them to rely on and that’s why our USSD channel or cell phone banking if you will is so popular with this group because we’ve given them access to banking in a simple format that doesn’t require lots of things like connectivity and also in this Group or segment if you will we’re looking at minimizing the banking jargon and make it quite simple for them Then as we move into something like a private banking user Now these guys Or girls if you will expect a little bit more personalization and they want a premium experience They want us to design something that’s bespoke for them um, you know, and they have a high want a high degree of controls because they’re managing things like portfolios And buying and selling a share so there you can already see there’s quite a big difference between those two segments Then if you move on to business again, they’ve got a wide range.

So you’ve got your sole proprietors You Which very much bank like your individuals because it’s just that person in charge and they’ve got control over every transaction and they can sign it off. But as we move into larger corporates, for example, now you’ve got to build an experience where I’m dealing with handoffs. I might start a process and then hand it over to somebody else to compete. And that really is just building in segregation of duties and helping those companies manage Um, well, mostly fraud, uh, so that they can control that.

So maybe just to sum up, you know, it is quite important to break down all these segments quite significantly and look at the data specific to those to build up those experiences.

Cameron Calder: I actually have a, uh, interesting use case on this being a customer. Um, and, and it’s quite interesting because, you know, when you’re talking about like a SaaS product, say, you call something like HubSpot, for example, you, uh, get someone to sign up for the CRM, once they’re on the CRM, then you can get someone to set up, uh, sign up for the marketing plan as a whole or get them to sign up. Uh, cross sell into the sales plan because the user types are very similar. And I went through a similar process with fmv where I signed up as business banking, uh for hype and Um, then there was a more seamless integration by setting up a user account.

So the profiles are matched and you can immediately sign up from a personal banking perspective and then that process was done So seamless to get started that I went through and, and did that as well. So I think it’s, it’s really nice to separate, but then find, you know, uh, commonalities within the two.

Maria Alves: Yeah, I think that’s very important, right? Because if you are in your case, for example, a personal banker, you’ve learnt our patterns. You understand how it operates now to change that completely as you evolve to a business customer would Literally make no sense. So we do try where we can keep those common threads so that that learning curve is less but Every now and then you’re going to have to introduce something new because it fits that context better

Cameron Calder: Yeah. And when we talk about personal versus business and, um, you mentioned you have these further drill downs in terms of customer segments. Um, I think this is a question for the both of you is, um, F& B being, you know, uh, multinational and there’s, um, you know, not just multinational, but also regional, uh, having a focus, not just from ATMs or physical locations, but also from a, uh, virtual bank perspective, are there just as, are there similarities in terms of personal versus banking versus, you know, various African countries and cultural and regional differences?

From user behavior and preferences. Do you guys see something like that? Or is it a kind of blanket approach the way that you speak to each customer regionally?

Maria Alves: how we wish It would make us easier a lot easier if it was a blanket approach, but no absolutely Um Especially when you look at our African subsidiaries that we deal a lot with they have a very different vernacular They speak differently. I mean something as simple as transfers of payments in broader africa They they don’t see it as that everything is a transfer. So some Terminologies such as payments like really threw them off. So we’ve had to relook at how we word some of the items because You It needs to resonate with them.

Um, also if you look at something like, uh, Some of the success stories in broader Africa, something like FNB Cash Plus was a product we introduced because ATMs, for example, was limited within those African subsidiaries, and basically what it allows is a store owner to act as that ATM. So you would go set up the transaction and they basically are a proxy, they would hand out the money and we would transfer that back into their account in simple formats. Something like that does not work as well in South Africa because we’ve got the infrastructure, we’ve got the ATMs, everyone knows how to use and where to find ATMs in South Africa.

So that’s just an example of how we’ve differentiated products and services specifically for those, um, countries.

Cameron Calder: Okay, yeah, I mean, that just triggered an idea and I want to have a little fireside chat about this is that there’s, you know, you guys aren’t investigating that. Obviously, you will post receiving that information. But where does that come from? Come from.

And, you know, obviously there’s the development team that would see certain technical errors that would come up, or you guys would maybe identify from a usage perspective, or there might be customer support is from a kind of synergy with teams, you know, where does that all derive from?

Maria Alves: So in the broader Africa segment, if you will, there is a dedicated CX team that assists us with those kind of insights. Um, so they go speak to you, the customers do all that research and then feed it through to us. But, you know, as you say, it’s not the only source of information we’re getting. We obviously look at all our data, we’re looking at those transactions, um, and using that to formulate these solutions.

Cameron Calder: Okay. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s not just the internal stuff that you guys are watching. You’re also looking at the, even the market trends or technology trends that can move.

Be, um, kind of like implemented in your specific sector. And I think maybe Ty, when you’re doing the research, it’s not just focused on specific, uh, areas that you’re seeing, or maybe potential opportunities that you’ve picked up from, uh, the kind of behavioral tracking that you guys have set up, but There’s big trends that are happening both locally and globally. Do you, do you see these kind of exciting trends and potential methodologies from your perspective? Have you found any amazing things that maybe you’ve applied or potentially are going to come into fruition in the next, you know, say year or two?

Silence.

Tye Riley: which is definitely shaping the future of UX research, and these trends are a symptom of a broader transition in the industry where, uh, UX research is becoming more increasingly integral to a successful business strategy, so not so much, uh, new methodologies as per se, because the, let’s say the toolkit hasn’t changed for us as UX researchers, but it’s rather kind of a shift in the industry at large. Uh, big one being research democratization, which is definitely gaining a lot of momentum, uh, where companies and organizations are recognizing the value that these markets and user research insights.

Uh, provide to kind of get a product, uh, development space and business strategy decision making where it’s empowering non researchers to engage with this user data and kind of develop a deeper understanding, uh, and connection with the user so that the products that we develop can be. start and resonate with the end user. recording And second, I would say is definitely the evolution of the UX role. So it’s extended, expanded beyond the traditional studies, uh, to include more holistic human centered inquiries.

Uh, so we’re starting to now delve into qualitative insights, uh, accessibility and inclusivity are now at the forefront. Whereas previously, uh, they were swept under the rug and then also the quantitative behavioral analytics. Um, just getting again, a deeper understanding, uh, of our users where now we have big data, uh, in our arsenal. And then, you know, the, the growing UX maturity in the market.

Um, is definitely been pushing these, uh, these evolutions in these, these trends, uh, in the industry at large. And then lastly, I would say in the UX industry at large, we’ve been moving away from, uh, Uh, ad hoc initiatives, and we’ve been focusing on, you know, this continuous research cycle, uh, to foster a deeper and sustained, uh, engagement with our users so that we can promote a culture of learning and collaboration, um, with our users and, you know, this, uh, development of research and product development. Has happened in tandem and there’s definitely, I’m excited for the future to see how these two, uh, work together and, you know, very excited for the future.

Cameron Calder: I think I think we just said that about that culture. So Yeah, I think we Interesting when it comes to these kind of forecasting trends and changes, because the, the ultimate kind of fact is that Maria, I’m sure you’ve experienced this massively as, as you’re growing the team, there’s changes, there’s external factors coming in, there’s everyone’s talking about AI and like we should change our entire system because of it. And you know, the fact is, is like, if you don’t have that team and you don’t have that culture of change and iteration, then it’s very difficult to get things moving.

From our side, working with. Uh, both corporates and startups, you know, you see a very, uh, different picture from both sides. But the, the matter is, is unless you’ve built that culture and created these key signs to entrench a culture of experimentation or iteration or research as a whole, it’s very difficult to get things moving. And I imagine from your side, Maria, when you have different stakeholders, both, you know, On the same level and also board level, as well as, you know, uh, lower management who are dealing with specific changes day to day.

It’s something that has to be a core part of the job. And I would imagine there’s a lot of creative ways that you’ve. Instilled this in the team. And, um, you mentioned in the past, this kind of masterclasses that you’ve created for different team members and, and how that has helped.

And, you know, we’ve created a lot of documentation and blueprints to kind of explain things in a way that can be understood by the person receiving it. Um, and do you have something quite similar, you know, education side for the team and bringing the team together to ensure that the insights Use the research. Effectively communicated and acted upon within the whole kind of F& B group.

Maria Alves: Yes. So, um, this has probably been a very big passion project of mine, uh, purely because of how we’ve developed, you know, from two resources, quite easy to communicate. Now we’re sitting on about 106. It’s a little bit harder to get that message across.

So, um, previously, what we would do is incubate all the UX resources and take them through, um, A month or two of training and get them up to date with our standards and how we operate and so on and so forth. But as we grow, we know that’s not sustainable. Um, it’s just very time consuming. You’ve got people starting at different times and you almost land up teaching.

Somebody new every week. Um, so what we did focus on was building a repository of all that data centrally. Um, we’ve coined it our hero Academy, and that basically allows anyone, any UX resource to go on, go through the material, understand it, they do have access to any of the team members to ask questions if it’s unclear. Um, and then after that, they go through an accreditation process and that very obviously bespoke to F and B, but that just helps us instill those, um, core principles into each resource.

Then we’ve got continuous meetups with every resource in the bank, um, in order to tell them what’s changed, what we’ve picked up from research. And it’s not just, um, My team. So not just time telling them what’s changed. We actually have other researchers within the business that also bring back their feedback going and obviously their lens is a little bit more bespoke because you might have someone just looking at insurance coming back and going, you know, this is what we’ve picked up and it filters back into the system.

Cameron Calder: Yeah, there’s that, um, I think a lot of people don’t address the inspiration piece behind it and getting them excited about the work that you’re doing, because they, one need to understand the impactfulness to the business and to understand actually how it works. And I think that’s, that’s an important one. And we’ve seen it firsthand with the specific people on the sales team that are chatting to our customers that we serving our experiences to that have amazing insights that they receive And unless they motivated and inspired by the project that we’re working on, they’re not going to, you know, uh, stand up and share that information just at free will.

Um, and I think it definitely comes from that, that motivation and exciting. And I would imagine from your side, having the frequent meetups where you chat to these different resources and the team that must be extremely powerful for you to hear. Different resources of feedback from different perspectives. And yeah, it’s different users

Maria Alves: Yeah, absolutely. And look, if I just use the digital banking call center for an example, There is a wealth of knowledge there. They are dealing with the customers day in and day out, and they understand that frustration because they’re on the phone with that poor person trying to help them. So, I mean, there alone is a wealth of information that we can plug into.

So we also engage with them quite a bit to see where are you having trouble? How has that changed that we just did? Are people phoning? Do we need to tweak it a bit more?

Yes, it’s very good to not just narrow it to your space, but also look at those key people that are engaging with the customer.

Cameron Calder: for sure. And yeah, it’s exactly that is that everyone’s you have to speak to the customers, customers, all the insights. But who’s actually speaking to those people on a day to day basis? Um, we’ve got quite a, we use a prioritization framework and show you guys have a similar kind of backlog for product features or roadmaps.

But that’s basically determined based on complexity and impact. And in there, we have a. Place of the source of the idea or the source of the hypotheses. And we include the actual person’s name from the company that we’re working with of who, where that idea derived from.

So it could be person’s name from customer support, or it could be someone from head of sales or just a junior salesperson who had an amazing idea, and once we see an experiment, when in a live environment that was derived by someone in the team. It’s like a weird thing to celebrate, but you know, someone gets that feedback and goes, Oh, I made, you know, 200, 000 Rand additional revenue from my idea or million Rand, whatever it is. But I think that’s iterative cycle. Do you, do you go back to the team and, you know, I would imagine once you’re meeting with the teams and going, You know, you spoke to them about the customer support insight, maybe someone brought up and then I’m sure you already lay it back to them after and go, you know, these are all the changes we’ve made.

Look, we, we kind of solved that user’s problem.

Maria Alves: Yes. So there is continuous feedback. Some of them are quick. So you give them that feedback immediately and others need a lot more unpacking, you know, surface level.

They look quite simple, but as you start digging in and realizing it impacts on a whole lot of other stuff. Um, that time frame is going to take a little bit longer for us to get to. So it’s also important to keep them up to date that we’re not, not working on your stuff. It’s just going to take a little bit longer.

Cameron Calder: Yeah. Well guys, it wouldn’t be a webinar unless we brought up the AI, because we unfortunately have to. But I know it’s obviously it’s an interesting topic. An amazing opportunity.

But, um, and, and the way that, you know, we approach it from our side is, you know, be abreast of the changes, understand why it’s happening, understand what’s out there to potentially make things a lot better and optimize the process without devaluing the work that we’re doing. Um, things like, uh, just Simplifying and summarizing behavioral analysis that used to take, you know, hours and hours of mining work to try and get specific insights can be done a lot faster. Is there, you know, from your guys perspective dealing with this? I would imagine culturally and from a corporate perspective, it’s things that get passed around internally.

Is there something, you know, advice that you can give to, uh, I would imagine, you know, people coming into the space and kind of getting overwhelmed by, uh, All the different aspects and pieces and everyone’s just latching on, um, potential AI sleeves or, or just these different AI products that can be used that could be hefty priced or could be these kind of free, easy access tools that can be used on any kind of GPT. Is there some advice that you would give these people that are looking for these options and what opportunities are out there?

Maria Alves: Look, I think I would start by saying, understand what you want the AI to do for you. What is the problem that you wanted to solve? Because it’s not going to solve world peace. We wish, but sadly not.

So you need to clearly define what it is you want that AI to solve. Then the other thing you’ve got to be aware of is no AI is quite ready to just be plugged into your system and run off and you can go home with your feet up. And there is quite a lot of work, so You’ll find while you are busy training these AIs and getting them up to speed, you still need to make sure that when that handoff happens into the rest of your flows, you’re not dropping the user into a space where they’re now confused and don’t know what to do. And so it is important that you know how or where we’re going to drop the person into a flow, and then how we’re going to recover from there.

And look, um, I think mostly I would So maybe be a little bit cautious, right? Because people still want to speak to people. So if you’re going to employ AI, put it in the right context and the right use case. Um, again, speaking to context, you need to know which customer you’re dealing with.

Because if it’s a eight year old grandpa, he probably doesn’t want to deal with a bot. He probably wants a heartbeat. So it’s important to know that because you can’t just have it solve everybody’s problem.

Cameron Calder: Yeah, I think especially in your specific vertical, you know, when you’re deploying something like that to cross. Different, um, kind of aspects of the business, then that trust factor is something that is, uh, high consideration that could be damaged. Um, I just want to finish off, uh, in, in summarizing all of this, that this has been an amazing talk and thank you so much for all the insights. I know there’s, uh, it’s hard to compress all these years, you know, tie from yourself, 10 plus years working in the space and Maria yourself building this entire team that’s, that’s kind of, The heartbeat of the business.

Um, that’s this contextual UX is extremely important to adapt by understanding the relevancy of the users and knowing exactly that you need to live on the expectations. And each year, the expectations seem to triple. Um, but that’s something that, you know, you guys are addressing through merging these two disciplines, as Ty has mentioned, you know, of, UX and, um, Creating those unique experiences that are, are backed by data. Um, Maria, maybe just to finish off, why, why would it be important for someone who’s maybe, uh, doing CRO or someone who’s working in UX or, uh, someone who’s just working in web management to focus on something like contextual UX?

What is the most important thing and why, why should they actually look at that?

Maria Alves: That’s it. I think the most important thing is that you get that conversation right with the customer because people are looking for solutions for them, not for us. It is important that you do understand that user. Start small would be my advice.

You don’t have to have contacts everywhere in every platform or every touch point, but start small and really test different mechanisms, see what resonates with your customers.

Cameron Calder: Yeah, I think that’s a great way to finish off and to end off on a high note and kind of pull ourselves out of all the nitty gritty data side of things. Um, do you guys, are you guys reading any books at the moment that’s, uh, ever excited you? Any kind of, it might even be some content that you guys have seen that could be shareable that I think our audience would, would greatly appreciate. Any time from your side?

Tye Riley: Yeah, so right now I’m busy reading, well, I actually just recently started reading the power of now by Eckhart Tolle. So it’s basically emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment and how being overly focused on the past or the future leads to unnecessary mental and emotional stress. So yeah, I’m just living in the now and, and being grateful for that.

Cameron Calder: Nice. And Maria, from your side.

Maria Alves: Look, I must be honest, uh, my day to day is filled with teaching kids to read. My two are busy with grade one. So I’ve mostly been focused on grade one books, but in December when I have got me time, um, I’m actually going to pick up Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’m quite excited for that.

I mean, who can’t do with better habits?

Cameron Calder: Yeah. I think, uh, even that, uh, atomic habits links exactly what you’re speaking to today is that there’s more incremental changes that you can make to. To improve that experience. I’m, I’m actually reading, uh, I think, uh, both of you will enjoy this.

It’s called never enough. It was by the founder, Andrew Wilkinson, who did a metal lab. So, uh, very much focused in UX and how you built the business and a lot of learnings on, on his journey. But, um, time Maria, thank you so much for your time.

This has been super insightful and valuable and just great to hear. You know how a topic that’s so important at the moment and getting more and more relevant for lack of a better word year on year, how it can be applied in a specific vertical that is highly regulated, but you guys are finding creative ways to execute in a way that enhances user experience without being detrimental to the business. So thanks so much for your time, guys. This was a great experience.

Tye Riley: you.

Maria Alves: Thank you, Cameron.

Tye Riley: wonderful. Thanks Cameron.