One month before China Merchants Bank’s App 11.0 was officially launched, in the conference room, the person in charge of the App and the product managers were nearly 20 people, sitting together at one side of the long table. On the other side of the long table, the slightly sharp question was raised again:
“Has App innovation hit the ceiling?”
Scenes like this happen almost every year.
There is a voice in the industry who believes that after the wave of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain, there has not been a new thing in the field of financial technology that can attract a lot of attention and make people overwhelmed for a long time.
Since looking at the entire financial technology field, there are not many new tricks to speak of, and innovations at the level of mobile phone hardware and financial products are also decreasing year by year. The app that provides retail financial services for nearly 180 million individual users has Will the space for innovation only get narrower?
But in fact, it’s not.
Drucker once said that there are two essences of innovation. One is to make expensive things cheaper so that ordinary people can use them; the other is to make things with high thresholds low so that ordinary people can use them.
The development of mobile banking apps in recent years also conforms to this essential description.
Specifically, the description can be disassembled into two directions: one vertical and one horizontal: horizontally, the coverage is wider and more people with different roles can use it; vertically, the threshold and cost of use have been lowered repeatedly, from ” “Able to use” has evolved to “easy to use” and “easy to use”.
The iterative idea of the China Merchants Bank App actually coincides with this vertical and horizontal.
Penetrating connection between “creator” and “consumer”
Mobile banking apps are usually classified in the category of To C, but the well-known definition of To C often refers to To Customer/Consumer (consumer, individual user/end user).
In fact, the roles related to App are far more than individual users, but also include managers, operators, developers and other roles.
In the category of mobile banking apps, related roles include account managers serving customers, wealth product managers responsible for product innovation and introduction, investment managers of external asset management institutions, IT personnel responsible for development, operation and maintenance, etc.
And these roles actually belong to the category of Creator.
An excellent project or product is exactly the collection of experience of these “creators” and “consumers”.
Those successful business models in the Internet age are often inseparable from the connection between “creators” and “consumers”.
For example, the e-commerce model is for sellers and buyers, such as short video for creators and audiences. These models serve both “creators” and “consumers” at the same time.
Leifeng.com noticed that a considerable part of the App construction work done by China Merchants Bank in the past five years is to reduce the time cost and labor cost of accessing the App for “creators” of different attributes, lower their use threshold, and strengthen their Connection with “consumer”.
For example, when dealing with the internal staff of China Merchants Bank, we will continue to improve the construction of the “10+N” digital middle platform, forming ten branches of wealth, life, operation, content, audio and video, openness, security, AIOps, data and infrastructure ecology, so that The “new infrastructure” of App is growing in four directions: digitization, intelligence, platformization and intensification.
China Merchants Bank’s own technical team can use a set of high-standard background system tools to cover the three life cycles of design, development, and operation and maintenance of the entire R&D process.
In the face of external asset management institutions, China Merchants Bank intensively deployed the “Zhaocaihao” wealth open platform, successively introduced 10 Youhang wealth management subsidiaries, and 137 high-quality institutions entered the App. At present, the “Zhaocai Account” has served nearly 350 million times, and the accompanying content has covered nearly 90% of non-stock public funds and net worth wealth management AUM.
This year, China Merchants Bank’s ability to connect “creators” and “consumers” at the same time is more vividly reflected.
Take the construction of investment research system as an example: when App 10.0 was launched, Fortune Investment Research Platform was launched for the first time. Through the platform, product managers can screen and integrate rich but discrete data information such as capital market market data, institutional investment research views, financial information, etc., and “translate” the difficult professional language of asset management into a language that is easy for customers and account managers to understand; You can also import your own due diligence analysis results into the platform to form an exclusive point of view and send it to customers and relationship managers in the form of “China Merchants Bank Interpretation”.
In this year’s App 11.0, the focus of the investment research system has been further deepened, focusing on the professionalization and uniformity of services.
The relevant person in charge said that China Merchants Bank’s investment research platform has a different direction from that of general asset management institutions. While thinking about the needs of customers, it must also consider the needs of product managers and account managers. The construction must proceed along these two lines. Therefore, the usage, functions, and underlying algorithms of the investment research platform are clearly different from common tools in the industry.
Its ultimate goal is to allow product selectors and users to stand on the same perspective and “white-box” wealth management .
What is “white box”? In layman’s terms, the screening results of account managers and wealth product managers will be made public, as will the screening methods they use. Users can use this method to verify in the App, or change some model parameters in the middle according to their own situation, and re-screen by themselves.
For example, China Merchants Bank’s “Five-Star Selection”, a well-known fund service system in the industry, has been in use for fifteen years. Now, with the further improvement of the investment research system, the selection logic and indicators of the new “Five-Star Selection” will also be It is available for users to view and use on the App side.
In this way, whether it is the customer being served, or the account manager or product manager who provides the service, the service content and service logic seen can be as close to the same source and frequency as possible. “What the customer can’t see is A, we tell him B, so that the whole service will not match.”
Under the direction of the goal of the same source and same frequency of services, the connection between “creators” (bankers) and “consumers” (individual users) has been strengthened, and the cognition of the two parties is expected to be further aligned.
What needs to be pointed out here is that the trust threshold of users in financial scenarios is often much higher than in other scenarios. The cost of persuading a user to walk into a convenience store and into a bank is likely to be not in the same order of magnitude.
Therefore, all financial services have to face the same problem: how to alleviate the anxiety and distrust of users due to information asymmetry?
One of the ways to alleviate this anxiety and mistrust is to serve the same source and frequency, to align different roles as much as possible cognitively, and to eliminate the information gap between the two ends of the service as much as possible.
Use the “complexity” under the iceberg to replace the “simple” on the ice
Another iterative idea of the China Merchants Bank App is to develop in depth, make the product capabilities more solid and in-depth, and make the App function evolve from “usable” to “easy to use” and “easy to use” through many details.
Take the App “My” channel as an example. Banks usually put two columns on the interface, account overview and current month’s income and expenditure details, for users to inquire. However, the China Merchants Bank App will use some “small Easter eggs” to help users further understand and manage their income, expenditure and asset status, so that users can not only see the current status, but also pay attention to their own growth.
In the previous use process, we have noticed that the app will remind users to check the balance analysis in the form of small banners or message pushes at the beginning of the month to find out whether they have saved more money than before; or through ” “Account arrangement” reminds users to offset the refund with the original expenditure, so that the transaction flow is closer to the real income and expenditure.
The relevant product manager also told us that the app will make judgments based on the accounts habits of thousands of users, and guide users to review their own assets within a certain period. To put it simply, if you are also a user who frequently checks accounts and can reconcile accounts in detail, the app will recognize that you may need these detailed account analysis “little easter eggs”.
In this year’s App 11.0, the “Asset Time Machine” function continues this small and beautiful detail optimization concept.
This function allows users to view the asset comparison between the current moment and any day in the past, and the interface will present the asset composition, changes, and trends. (Note: The comparison data is calculated from July 1, 2022)
“I hope to jump into the drawer and sit in the time machine like Jingdong cat, go back to the past, and see how much money I have on that day, and how the money came from.” The relevant person in charge explained the design concept in this way.
In other words, in the future, users can compare whether their “wallets” are thinner or thicker at any time, what changes have occurred in their ability to earn money and spend money, and whether their investment style is stable or aggressive compared with the past.
However, such a seemingly simple function button is rare in the banking industry, and it took the China Merchants Bank App team nearly two years to complete the deployment.
The relevant person in charge revealed that in order to present the function of “asset time machine”, more than ten asset systems of China Merchants Bank will agree to execute instructions uniformly at 24 o’clock every day, mirror the assets in their respective systems, and then summarize them through data transmission.
Leifeng.com understands that in some banks, their data processing capabilities are still difficult to support real-time queries, and they can only mark “the statistical data as of a certain date and time” under the App query results. In addition, banks are involved in many types of financial products, and the requirements for data capabilities will be raised to a higher level.
The polishing and support of the details of the “asset time machine” is just the tip of the iceberg. Looking at the whole app, if you want to optimize and iterate various functions to the extreme, and at the same time ensure that many functions can be smoothly presented in a small app at the same time, the difficulty of infrastructure construction at the technical and data levels can be imagined. And know.
“The efforts we have made are actually exchanging the complexity under the iceberg for the simplicity above the iceberg.”
Specifically, China Merchants Bank has done a lot of governance work in the past year, through sufficient data construction and a visualized and automated measurement system to improve products in a closed loop , such as App startup time-consuming, flashback, page loading speed, and abnormal program operation , communication links, etc. have been fully measured, and at the same time, the functional complexity, health, path, etc. have also been fully visualized and comprehensively analyzed to ensure that the user experience is continuously improved through digitalization while rapidly iterating.
In addition, the technical ecological support system under the App iceberg is also continuously improving, and is developing in the direction of platformization and openness. While rapidly improving vertical capabilities, it can quickly provide combined capabilities in horizontal and internal scenarios, such as Various online and offline scenarios such as Zhaocai account, M+ system, corporate WeChat, head office and branch operations; at the same time, these capabilities are not only effective on the App, but are open to the whole bank’s business.
This also means that the App has become a technology “experimental field” for China Merchants Bank. New tools and capabilities can be quickly copied to every corner of China Merchants Bank after being polished by the App scene, bringing overall technological acceleration.
It is worth mentioning that the relevant IT person in charge of China Merchants Bank revealed that this year, with basically no business awareness, 100% of the app has been migrated to the cloud, and the entire cloud architecture system has also been completed . The three-year cloud migration process of the whole bank has also entered the final stage. Whether it is an advanced cloud technology system, a more efficient continuous integration speed, or refined resource elasticity capabilities, cloud apps will fully release technological dividends in the future, and there will be greater room for imagination.
An ideal state of service: companionship
Under this double tempering of vertical and horizontal, the China Merchants Bank App has continued to iterate so far. What is the ideal state it wants to achieve?
It is “companion”.
Not only in banks, but also in all walks of life, enterprises will emphasize the vision of “customer-centric” and “people-oriented”, and engrave “serving the whole life cycle of customers” into their promotional words. As for how to achieve such a vision, there is no one-size-fits-all answer in the world.
However, if China Merchants Bank is asked to answer this question, the key words on the test paper will definitely have the word “companion”.
Do customers pay for companionship? Taking November 2022 as an example, the entire accompanying system reached nearly 13 million customers on the App, and the active click rate of customers on the accompanying service exceeded 16%. Compared with all functions, tools, advertisements or information on China Merchants Bank online, this The data performance has been quite excellent.
So, how should you be a good companion? China Merchants Bank took wealth management as an example and summarized at least two points: immersive and full journey.
Immersive means that all accompanying behaviors must be strongly related to the customer’s own situation. The whole journey emphasizes covering the whole process of customers from purchasing, holding positions to after-sales.
The time span spanned by wealth management is usually not too short. The attention customers are willing to give is usually not too much. Therefore, banks need to screen and follow up on the following aspects, including but not limited to:
Among the massive amounts of financial information, which information do customers perceive and need, and which information is generalized?
There will be a variety of events during the period, such as the change of the fund manager of the fund held, the dividend of the product, and the expiration of the product. What are the key events, which are the early warnings and reminders for customers?
To this end, the relevant team of China Merchants Bank further sorted out accompanying events. One type is product-level events, which are more universal and focus on commonality; the other type is customer-level events, focusing on individuality. The timing of each customer triggering the event , The content being pushed is different. At present, China Merchants Bank has identified more than 40 key issues and more than 60 corresponding strategies for the China Merchants Bank App team to deploy in the accompanying system.
The intelligent system that supports companionship is divided into three layers of construction.
The bottom layer is the accompanying platform, which covers a large amount of financial information. Partners can enter content here, and choose the customer groups and products they want to accompany in the private domain.
The second layer is to trigger the middle platform. The construction of the intelligent event pool and the early warning mechanism is at the middle platform layer, and the content on the underlying accompanying platform will be selectively displayed on the front end through the early warning mechanism.
The third layer is the presentation to customers, choosing the channels, scenes and presentation forms that accompany the presentation. App is one of the key presentation channels, but China Merchants Bank also covers a variety of online and offline channels.
Under the protection of this three-tier system, the effect of companionship will be maximized, and there will be no repeated or excessive companionship.
The feature of companionship is also reflected in many aspects of App 11.0. For example, the continuously upgraded “Fortune Assistant” AI trick has further optimized the interaction method in App version 11.0. If AI tricks still fail to meet customer needs through machine and strategy deployment, it will be connected to the network operation service center or offline account manager in time to transfer manual services to realize the systematic customer service upgrade of “human + digital”.
epilogue
Let’s go back to the question at the beginning of the article: Has the mobile banking app hit the ceiling and there is no more innovation to speak of?
But in fact, people’s definition and discussion of innovation are somewhat narrow.
As Drucker discussed in “Seven Sources of Effective Innovation”, people always pay attention to the application of new knowledge and new technology, but they often ignore that innovation also comes from cognitive and emotional changes, and also Will come from flaws in the process and uncoordinated status quo.
This series of work of the China Merchants Bank App also confirms this point: through the practice of the accompanying concept, the technical infrastructure, and the connection of the roles of all parties involved in the App, the inconsistency, mistrust, and imperfect process in financial services can be alleviated .
From the perspective of industry development, these tasks are also very necessary.
At present, including China Merchants Bank, many banks are emphasizing “big wealth” at the strategic level. Usually the outside world also thinks that the “big wealth” strategy emphasizes the formation of a cash management-financing-financing closed loop, but in fact the meaning of “big” is far more than that.
The “big” strategy also points to a kind of connectivity, such as the connectivity between different businesses and scenarios, between different departments, and between different roles. Data and information can flow smoothly in this channel, services can be reached smoothly, and cognition can tend to be consistent, which also belongs to the proper meaning of the “big” strategy. And China Merchants Bank has gone a long way in this direction.
However, for China Merchants Bank, the long work may have just begun.
In the conference room a month ago, the person in charge of the China Merchants Bank App and the product managers looked at each other and smiled after hearing that sharp question, and replied:
“We wake up every morning and think that there is still a lot of things that are not done, and there is still a lot that can be improved. There are too many things to do now, so far away from the days of ‘don’t know what to do’ , it’s still far away.”
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