Bringing HSBC closer to its customers

The Brief

Invoice Finance from HSBC is a range of services for businesses designed to improve cashflow by freeing up cash from invoices. It deals with everything from managing the entire sales ledger to providing protection against the risk of non-payment. However, in an increasingly competitive market where customers are savvier and demand more than ever before, HSBC need to stay ahead of the game. Which is why they engaged us.

What we did

HSBC has been one of the key players in commercial banking for over 40 years, but in the current climate, customers want more from their bank, and with new players appearing in an already crowded marketplace, we needed to understand how people are choosing a service provider – what are the barriers to selection, how do their past experiences affect their decisions going forward? What are HSBC’s perceived strengths and weaknesses? To answer these quite difficult, but absolutely necessary questions, we went straight to HSBC’s target market - the small business community. We engaged, chatted to and interviewed people who would potentially be using IF, and ascertained what they wanted. We also interviewed internal HSBC stakeholders and conducted in-context research with current, competitor and novice customers. We tested the system by signing up ourselves and conducted a co-creation workshop with stakeholders. 8 participants were then selected for more in depth inquiry based on: business size, business type, participant role within the company, business aspiration, IT literacy and IF knowledge. In short, we sought to understand HSBC’s most valuable IF customer base from the inside out. We then mapped all those findings into a visual action plan for the bank to understand and implement.

Results

The results have enabled HSBC to completely redevelop its proposition to better meet the needs of its customers whilst at the same time positioning the service more competitively in the marketplace.