Innovation increasing mortgage sales

The task Česká spořitelna approached us with was clearly defined – increase the number of mortgages sold at its branch offices by 10%. The solution however was not so straightforward. So in February 2014 we launched and innovation project in order to find it. Especially thanks to a precise filed work and customer focus it brought and interesting concepts. The project also revealed that the biggest obstacle to taking a mortgage is a fear of payment commitment as well as insufficient consulting services. So we went on to tackle them.

The ultimate goal of this five-month project was to find new ways, innovations and approaches to increase branches overall productivity. It involved more than a dozen people from the bank, including mortgage specialists, segment and product managers and research specialists, working closely with 3 consultants from Direct People. Over these five months we conducted more than 40 empathetic interviews with clients, potential clients and  outsiders in various life situations. We questioned people from Jičín, Nymburk, Kolín, Liberec, Prague and Brno. We also did group discussions with the top mortgage sellers from Prague and Brno and a number of mystery shoppings and workshops. As a result, we got 350! ideas that we turned into 5 detailed concepts. 3 of these concepts passed were moved to the prototyping phase after a successful market verification test and further worked on by Česká spořitelna.