As banking becomes increasingly digital, the challenge is no longer simply offering more services, but making them easier to use.
Source: Supplied. Marin Cundall, Managing Executive: Digital Experience: GoTyme Bank.
For GoTyme Bank’s managing executive: Digital Experience, Marin Cundall, customer-centricity means removing friction, improving visibility and giving customers greater control over their finances.
In the third instalment of BizCommunity’s four-part executive leadership series, Cundall discusses the thinking behind GoTyme’s new banking app, what the bank has learned from migrating millions of customers, and how feedback, data and behaviour are shaping the next evolution of the digital banking experience:
GoTyme Bank has positioned customer-centricity as central to its approach. This led to the launch of the GoTyme Bank app, which presented an opportunity to rethink the digital banking experience rather than simply reproduce the previous TymeBank app. What did you learn from customers about what needed to change, and what principles guided the new experience’s design?
The biggest lesson was that customers do not necessarily want more banking - they want banking to require less effort.
The most important things were being able to find what they needed quickly, understand what was happening with their money and complete everyday tasks without unnecessary steps or jargon. They also wanted greater visibility and control.
That guided us towards a few core design principles: simplicity, speed, transparency and security. We did not want to reproduce the previous app with a different look. We wanted to reconsider how each journey should work from the customer’s perspective.
The aim was to create an app that feels intuitive when someone first uses it but can continue supporting them as their financial needs evolve.
With millions of customers moving to the new app, what have you learned from their behaviour, feedback and questions during the migration? Have there been areas where customer feedback directly influenced changes or improvements to the app?
A migration of this scale reinforces that even positive change requires clear communication and support. Customers may understand the benefit of a new experience, but they still need to know what is changing, what they need to do and where to find the features they use most often.
We monitored how customers moved through the migration journey, where they paused or dropped off and which questions appeared most frequently across our support channels. That helped us identify where additional guidance, clearer language or improvements to a journey were needed.
It also reminded us that customers experience a product differently from the teams that build it. Something that appears straightforward internally may not be immediately obvious to someone using it for the first time. Customer behaviour and feedback therefore continue to influence how we refine navigation, instructions and support.
A banking app must be simple enough for intuitive use while offering an increasingly broad range of financial services and features. How does your team decide what to add, what to simplify and what not to build?
We begin with the customer problem rather than the feature. We ask what the customer is trying to achieve, how frequently that need arises and where the existing journey creates friction.
We also consider whether the proposed feature supports our broader strategy, whether it can be delivered securely and responsibly and whether customers will understand and use it. A feature can be technically impressive but still create complexity without solving a meaningful problem.
Data, customer feedback, support queries and frontline insights all inform our priorities. Sometimes the best solution is to introduce something new. In other cases, the greater benefit comes from simplifying an existing journey or removing a step.
The discipline to decide what not to build is just as important. Simplicity is not about offering fewer capabilities; it is about ensuring that every capability has a clear purpose.
GoTyme Bank combines its digital banking experience with physical touchpoints such as kiosks and Customer Hubs. What have you learned about when customers prefer to solve an issue digitally themselves versus when they still value human assistance?
Customers generally prefer digital self-service when the task is familiar, straightforward and easy to complete - such as checking a balance, making a payment or managing savings. They value the convenience of being able to do these things wherever they are and without having to wait for assistance.
Human support becomes especially important when the issue is unfamiliar, emotionally stressful or involves greater complexity. A customer who is uncertain about a transaction, struggling to access their account or using a digital banking service for the first time may want reassurance from a person.
Our physical touchpoints therefore complement the app. Customer Hubs or kiosks provide a place where customers can receive guidance, resolve queries and become more confident using our digital services. The goal is not to force customers into one channel, but to give them the right level of support for the situation in which they are.
Beyond downloads and usage numbers, how do you measure whether the customer experience is actually improving? Which signals or metrics tell you that customers are finding the new experience easier, more useful and more trustworthy?
Downloads tell us about reach, but they do not tell us whether customers are having a good experience.
We look at whether customers can complete important tasks successfully, how long those journeys take and where they abandon a process or encounter an error. We also consider repeat usage, product adoption, support-contact volumes, complaint themes, resolution times and customer-satisfaction measures.
Trust is reflected in behaviour as well as direct feedback. Customers who feel confident in the experience are more likely to use the app regularly, adopt additional services and complete transactions without needing assistance.
No single metric provides the full picture. We combine behavioural data with customer feedback and insights from our frontline teams to understand whether the experience is becoming easier, more useful and more reliable.
How do you ensure that customer feedback is translated into meaningful improvements rather than simply collected?
Customer feedback must feed into decision-making. We bring together feedback from app reviews, support conversations, complaints, research, behavioural data and our customer-facing teams to identify recurring themes.
We then distinguish between an isolated request and evidence of a broader point of friction. That helps us prioritise improvements according to their impact, urgency and the number of customers affected.
Closing the loop is equally important. Once a change has been made, we monitor whether it has improved completion rates, reduced errors or support contacts and created a better experience. Customer feedback is therefore not a once-off research exercise; it is part of an ongoing cycle of listening, improving and measuring.
As the new app becomes the primary digital gateway to GoTyme Bank, what is the next customer-experience problem you most want to solve?
The next challenge is to make the experience increasingly seamless and proactive as customers use more of our services. We want customers to move between everyday banking, payments and savings without feeling that they are navigating separate products or processes. The app should make it easy to understand what has happened, what action may be required and where to find assistance if it is needed.
Ultimately, the best customer experience is one in which customers rarely need to stop and think about how the banking works. It should give them confidence, help them make informed financial decisions and enable them to get on with their lives.
