How Gamification Can Increase Relationship Growth

Jim Marous (0:00)

Someone's gonna walk an extra lap around the block tonight because the ring on their watch isn't closed, and no one's paying them to do it. That's gamification, and it's the most reliable behavior change tool we've built in 20 years. It also runs on the number somebody made up. 10,000 steps was never a medical standard. It was the name of a Japanese pedometer sold in 1965 Before anyone pictures badges and spinning wheels, this is about showing people real progress or something that matters to them. Your bank or credit union has its own 10,000 steps.

We call it onboarding. We ask people to fund the account, activate the card, move the paycheck over and download the app. Then the measuring stops, and where measurement does continue, we mostly track the products people use rather than the financial progress they make. Cornerstone Advisors analyzed nearly 150 banks and credit unions and found that for every digital account application we complete, another 3.36 are abandoned. That's before the account is even open.

After it opens, we continue communicating, but the customers still can't see how far they've come or what they're supposed to do next. We built the step counter, but don't show progress. So here's the question worth asking at your next marketing meeting. Where are the accounts you opened two months ago? Which step did they stop at? Most of us can't answer that. We never built the system that would tell us. I'd call that the stall step. Every institution has one, and almost no one can name theirs. There are two legitimate objections to all this. The first point is none of it is new. We've already had a progress indicator. We put on the application form. Somebody finally pointed it at the relationship instead. The second pushback I hear is that this is manipulation. Robinhood showed what it actually looks like with game mechanics, pushing behavior that paid the company whether or not it helped the customer. But look at what Fifth Third has done on theirs. A savings account, their Smart Shield Security dashboard, identity monitoring and a financial planning relationship. You can see what each of these does for you without anybody explaining it.

That's the test. Fifth Third put a price on some of what's on that list. So this was never about keeping our own interests off the bar. The question is whether the customer can name their own reason for each step. Direct deposit passes because the money shows up on its own with nothing to deposit or transfer. Card activation passes because until it's activated, they can't spend their own money without a check. E-statement enrollment doesn't pass, and most of our lists have something like it on theirs. If you can't sincerely make the customer case for a step, take it off the progress bar. There are two design decisions that separate a progress bath that works from one that becomes a monument to a relationship nobody finished.

First, where this goes after onboarding. Start where somebody already is, the step count. Did they do the things we asked them to do?

Swaystack builds a progress bar for banks and credit unions across institutions using it. They report a 24% increase in meaningful first month funding. I know that number because I spoke with Harai Kausha, their CEO on the Banking Transformed podcast. Peak Credit Union, a $4.3 billion credit union in Washington and Oregon, where CEO David Tayo uses a progress bar to nudge members through onboarding inside the Q2 Digital Banking Platform. And Think Bank in Rochester, a $2.2 billion bank running the same thing inside Kenreys Bano. Peak went live in 81 days. Think Bank in 90

Neither one converted a core to do it. And here's the part almost no one can see. Harai can look across every institution he works with. And the step most people stall on is the direct deposit switch.

Some members give up on the automated version and go copy their account number by hand. It takes continuous engagement to move that one number.

The step our customers stall on is the same step that decides whether their primary financial institution is us.

And we've never been able to see it. Now the level that almost nobody built around onboarding. The goal the customer picked. Ally let someone split savings into buckets, name them and watch each one fill. The difference between that and onboarding is who chose. Level one belongs to us because we wrote every step. The next one belongs to the customer. A goal on its own doesn't move though. The CFPB studied how people use automated savings rules in the Capital app. People preferred the roundups, the save your spare change feature, but the scheduled transfers, the boring save every payday rule, were associated with more money saved and a better chance of reaching their goal. A visible goal needs a repeatable action behind it or the bar just sits there. Then comes the level that tells you whether or not it mattered. Is their financial life actually improving? The Debbie app pays people for paying down debt and working through financial education.