David Ruiz is Head of Design and Customer Experience at Orange Bank. I spoke with David about how to gain influence for UX Strategy in a large company like Orange. This is the subject of his upcoming presentation, “Influencing the Organization to Invest in Strategic Design,” at the UX STRAT Europe conference, which will take place in Amsterdam on June 10 – 12 (see https://www.uxstrat.com/europe for more info).
Paul:: Hi David, thanks for taking time out to talk with me today. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? Your current job role, your company, a brief biography?
David: Sure, I am Head of Design and Customer Experience at Orange Bank, which is the bank of the giant telco operator Orange. I started this latest adventure in my career more than two years ago and progressively we’ve been able to create the Design strategy, processes and department. That was and is a really cool challenge. So, that’s my role today. Before that, I’ve built up a very eclectic journey with several positions at Orange teams of Design, Innovation and Engineering. My job, globally, is to conceive and grant the delivery of the best Customer Experience possible for Orange Bank customers while understanding and taking into account the business stakes, not only for the Bank but also for Orange and Groupama stakeholders. In more detail, I drive the vision and mostly provide to designers and to the company the right tools and questioning approaches to ensure the introduction of the users at the center of any experience design or business decision.
Paul:: What will you be speaking about at UX STRAT Europe?
David: This is going to be my second UX STRAT in a row, I’m really excited about it. Last year I focused the talk on how we defined and implemented the Orange Bank Experience Principles from scratch in a new organisation. It was not an anodyne adventure. Orange wanted to diversify its business and enter into the complicated financial segment with its own bank, a huge and clever stake.
For this year presentation, the Bank is already launched and we have more than 100.000 customers! And now the challenge is even greater than before as we have real customers to take care of while we continue to ensure and enhance a meaningful customer experience through all the different touch-points.
In order to succeed in both prelaunch and post-launch activities, we need to, as designers, influence Orange Bank executives to invest on Design and change the course of how the things are usually done. So in June I’ll be speaking about how we managed to put in place a Design Strategy having impact on the company’s decisions and its business. I’ll mostly devote time on the different tactics that we've put in place to influence the organisation spanning from the instauration of a user-centric model to the operational translation of the Customer Experience vision passing through how to manage and keep motivation of a Design team in such a strategic and complex project for a multinational company. A whole bank in 15 months!
Paul:: My understanding is that you’ve also had to give presentations back to the parent company, Orange, to explain why you need to take a step back from rapid product development to do strategic design. How did you get them to agree to give you resources and time for this type of work?
David: Because of the nature of the bank itself, the design team is continuously working with Orange Bank, Orange and Groupama stakeholders. We worked hard from the very beginning to try them to agree of giving a chance to the Experience Design activities and processes for having a significant impact on this new line of business. It is important to say that this culture already exists in Orange but in the bank it was a little bit more unknown. In any case, the rapid product development process was a need, a compulsory phase, we only had 15 months for launching Orange Bank from scratch so we needed to focus on the main important customers journeys and experiences. This product-oriented step was part of the Strategy too but we’ve done some steps back from it right from the beginning of the projet by taking time to define the Design Principles, the vision of which experience we wanted to deliver to our customers by means of an extensive User Research. We’ve started with that to change the mind-set.
Those first steps on the definition of a Design Strategy in-house have been supported after launching by our real customers, now we have lot’s of interesting feedback from them that help us to convince partners to devote more time and investment in Design. We show them how doing that we can have a positive impact on both customer satisfaction and business objectives. We are now succeeding on making Experience Design objectives a KPI for all to achieve. For implementing the global strategy we need also to do some steps forward by making the, sometimes too theoretical, Design Principles more operationally integrated in the bank operations and decision making processes.
Paul:: Orange, of course, has a very established telecommunications business, and you’re designing a bank. Is there a thought of an ecosystem there, or is it more just the brand is the same but the actual touchpoints don’t overlap and there’s no real cross-platform communication?
David: We’re indeed a new and a real bank, but one of the characteristics that differentiates us the most from the other banks is that we are the bank of a Telco operator. We have our own particular positioning and one of our challenges business and experience-wise in the coming months is to reinforce this position. We are conceiving how to create more links between the Orange’s and Bank’s services that make sense and create a global and coherent experience for our customers.
Today, for instance, people can, from the beginning of the bank, subscribe to Orange Bank in some Orange telecommunications shops. There are also some cross-offers between Telco and Bank when a customer wants to buy a telephone. We are still not there in a service or experience level but we continue working on it.
Paul:: Have you had any opportunity to spend time in the homes of any customers, or be with them on the road at all? Or do you mainly bring people into the office for user testing?
David: We’ve done user research and multiple testing with customers throughout all the process of experience conception. Spend time in the homes of customers ? With Orange we have done this several times, regarding the bank, our service is mainly digital, so banking customers are a little more difficult to follow and to shadow in their homes while they are using financial services in their day-to-day lives. However, we’ve done research to understand the relationship of people with money, how they share it, use it, manage it. Observing our customers to understand their behaviours and problems is a must for us.
Paul:: Are there any technologies coming on the scene in the next few years that you think might rock your world as the head of design at Orange Bank?
David: Yeah, there are plenty of technologies and changes in society that will rock our world, and I love that! In our case, for example, one main point of contact with customers is in AI. Today it is a young AI, but its going to grow up quickly and it will be able to deliver a huge part of the experience we want our customers to live. So for us, one of the horizons for Design Strategy goes through Artificial Intelligence and its representation on different devices and interactions which are not always involving a human between them. We certainly need to start defining banking experiences in which the main actors are not going to be real users. Will we need to start thinking about designing great experiences for AI’s? Will a great experience for an AI provide a better experience for our customers?
Paul:: Anything else you want to tell our readers before we sign off?
David: I hope lot of people will come to Amsterdam because I really think uX STRAT is a great conference. UX STRAT is an excellent opportunity to learn a lot by sharing experiences between all the people involved in the Design Strategy ecosystem in Europe. Designers, product owners, directors, financial people... we are all somehow facing the same problems even if we are coming from different sectors. So, the only thing I can say is : come to Amsterdam and let’s talk!