Munich It’s one of the most amazing careers in the German banking scene. Marion Höllinger began her apprenticeship as a bank clerk 30 years ago in a small branch of Hypo-Vereinsbank (HVB) in Eggenfelden, Lower Bavaria. The 49-year-old has been a member of the institute’s board of directors since August of this year, where she is responsible for private customer business. There were more than a dozen stops in the company on her way from being an apprentice to the board of directors. Contact with private customers was always a part of it – whether as a branch manager in Landshut or Rosenheim, in Berlin or Hamburg.
The knowledge of the wishes of the customers should now also benefit her in the further restructuring of the private customer business. Today, Thursday, HVB – subsidiary of the major Italian bank Unicredit – is rolling out its new smart banking concept for around 1.5 million private customers in the retail sector. “It is one of the largest change processes that HVB has seen in recent years,” says Höllinger, describing the start.
Specifically, from the customer’s point of view, it may be a matter of course, but in many places in the world of banks these are still not implemented. There, like at Amazon or Netflix, customers also demand simple and short processes in customer communication, and across all channels. In banking, this means that advice or a service is equally available, regardless of whether it is in a bank branch, online, via app or voicebot. With a so-called multichannel strategy, HVB wants to convince with immediate effect.
Peter Scholz, Professor at the Hamburg School of Business Administration (HSBA) confirms that there is an urgent need to catch up in the industry: “Classic banks often do not yet meet the needs of digitally savvy customers.” Instead, their customer experience is still analog and in many places complicated.
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In order to stand out, they have experimented on many corners at Hypo-Vereinsbank over the past 20 months. There were five pilot phases, the last one began at Easter with around 500,000 test customers. During the ongoing work process, it was fine-tuned and discarded, further developed and customer feedback was repeatedly obtained.
Höllinger was involved in the process from the start. First as responsible for the private customer business under the then board member Jörg Frischholz. When he took over the chief position at NordLB in the summer, the HVB Supervisory Board decided on her as her successor after only a brief discussion. Since then, Höllinger has been doing what she has always done at the top: she looks after HVB’s private customers.
Four different starting points stood at the beginning of the considerations: On the one hand, the new customer model should offer a high degree of flexibility. If the customer has a concern, it should no longer matter which channel he uses to contact the bank. Furthermore, the entire process in banking should be simple and flexible. “The high regulatory requirements, which of course still have to be observed, were a challenge,” recalls Höllinger. Account openings that used to send pages of paper are now paperless in just a few minutes. The documents are automatically sent to the online mailbox.
Artificial voice assistant as the greatest challenge
The biggest task, however, was the development of a modern and innovative technology to get in touch with customers. The bank had been trying out a so-called Voicebot since Easter. The artificial language assistant makes service offers, advises on simple banking products and suffers from a real advisor if complex issues such as construction financing or the structuring of a securities account overwhelm the artificial advisor.
But it is also constantly developing. “Our Voicebot recognized around 300 customer concerns during the pilot phase at Easter, and today there are 400”, says Höllinger about the ongoing development of the artificial contact person. In the future, the small problems that still arise today should also be eliminated.
The last starting point in the new strategy was once again the customer, who decides when, where and how he needs advice. “The question of the branch or digital banking no longer arises, we are resolving this construct,” says Höllinger.
So much for the theory. In the tough practical test, however, HVB’s new private customer model will have to prove itself against tough competition in a highly competitive and price-sensitive market. Savings banks such as cooperative and commercial banks have been vying for private customers for a long time. In addition, there are aggressively priced online banks.
BayernLB subsidiary DKB, for example, wants to double its number of customers from four to eight million within four years. Höllinger thinks little of aggressive customer acquisition: “It’s about the customer’s main bank account, our account card should be the first in the customer’s purse or digital wallet.”
More: Hypo-Vereinsbank is the first major bank to test a Voicebot