The Co-operative Bank — Proof of Account

Bank customers often need a proof of account document for things like getting driver licenses, setting up wage deposits, or receiving direct credits or benefits.

This project is about how 2 weeks of work saves 80 hours of frontline time, every month.

Problem to solve

This piece of project came out of a visit to the Lower Hutt branch. Branch staff mentioned that every week there would be customers requesting for a proof of account document for all sorts of reason. To understand the customer needs further, I have asked the Lower Hutt branch manager to note down the number of document customer request for a working week:

• Over a five day period in June 2023, our Lower Hutt branch counted 21 requests for proof of account documents. With a little averaging, that adds up to 2,100 requests per month across all our branches.

• Assuming it takes 3 mins to greet a customer, look up their details, and print their proof of account, that’s a total of 6,300 minutes per month. Which is quite a lot, and those numbers don’t even account for requests by phone or email.
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• The fact that customers must visit a branch and wait for a Co-op staff member to be available, slowing other more valuable interactions down, adds to the impact of these requests.

Data-driven decision making

Delivering the proof of account documents to customers through our mobile apps has been in the to-do pile for a while, but it wasn’t a priority until we had data that described the size of the impact. It quickly became obvious that adding this feature would absolutely create more time for our branch teams to have higher-value customer interactions. This is especially important for Co-op as we are a small local bank that has limited resources to spend on development and to put in branch.

Design solution

Now when customers tap on the “share account’ button in our app, they now have two choices: “share account number” or “proof of account”. I chose this home for the proof of account feature because it’s a natural extension of how people already use this button in our apps.

Final outcome

Over a two month period, 3,233 proofs of account were created in our mobile app, saving 161 hours of frontline and customer time (not including customer travel and wait time). That’s 80 hours per month that we can now spend helping customers buy their first home, dodge online scams, or get ahead financially.