Bank Millennium in the world of design

Gdynia Design Days (1-10.07.2016) is an annual festival, which presents and promotes latest trends and best practices in design. It abounds in inspiring exhibitions, lectures, workshops, presentations and discussions. During Gdynia Design Days Magdalena Macko, Director of the Quality Department in Bank Millennium was talking about the use of design in designing innovative solutions to support a customer’s discussion with a bank representative about savings and investment products. This model was developed on the basis of the innovative design thinking method.

What is design thinking?
Design thinking is a method for workshop activities, which has arisen in the Stanford University and has been in use worldwide since 15 years. In Poland this discipline has become popular a few years ago. Design thinking is becoming one of the leading methods in changing and improving standards in companies and institutions. An essential part of design thinking is service design – i.e. designing services with a focus on customer experience. Service design strives to create services, which will be the most effective from the point of view of the company, while on the other hand being a source of positive customer experience. Thanks to a 360 degree view of the entire company, seen through the eyes of consumers, it is possible to eliminate problem spots along the customers – company line (vagueness, uselessness, inconsistencies, bad user experience, unsatisfied needs in various stages). This is also a tool for seeking innovation and uniqueness in the services sector.

Service design in Bank Millennium
Bank Millennium uses this method for designing i.a. analogue solutions, such as the model of an employee’s interview with a customer in a branch i.e. in very traditional banking. This is quite a different approach because as a rule service design is used for developing solutions in the world of new technologies broadly understood, mainly for creating mobile apps and internet interfaces. Magdalena Macko explained: - Banking is still largely based on relationships, on contact with another person; therefore the quality of the discussion is so important. In such organisations as ours, where thousands of people serve customers every day, we need to have well designed service processes. As regards discussions about savings and investment products, we wanted to design such a solution, which in a matter of 10-20 minutes would put the level of knowledge between the consultant and customer on an equal footing. Properly conducting the discussion and diagnosing needs in order for the customer to have good understanding of the product selected. This is what selling responsibly is all about and we are strongly focused on it. Thus a design developed through the design thinking approach, results i.a. in a scenario for a discussion on savings and investment products together with tools to support the discussion. - The developed sales model is a unique solution, which other banks do not have. The model structures and simplifies what at first sight appears to be very complicated and incomprehensible. You could say that it provides a translation from “banking language” to a simple language everyone understands – Macko added.

Benefits of the method
Thanks to the design thinking method Bank Millennium has developed a model, in which communication follows a step-by-step scenario. In result of this the customer becomes a very active party in the process. Thanks to the tools designed, each discussion can be different, at the same time giving the certainty that as it proceeds, all the important information, which the Bank’s employee must provide to the customer, will be mentioned.