Recurrent feedback raised concerns that customers were finding it challenging to locate information on our digital channels. To solve this issue, two teams that work with the frequently asked questions (FAQ) pages and the chatbot put their creative heads together to develop a new and improved search function.
“Search helps customers to quickly and efficiently navigate within our digital channels. It connects the existing FAQ pages, shortcuts, product information, chatbot suggestions and deep links together to provide a more targeted result. It increases feature discoverability for a better customer self-service experience,” explains Sami Laakso, Team Lead of Chat and Nova, and leader of FAQ Chatbot team in Hackathon 2022.
Team ‘FAQ Chatbot’ collected two out of three prizes from Nordea’s internal hackathon event and went straight on to integrate their solution into Nordea’s mobile app and netbank.
Hackathon is an annual, three-day competition-style event, organised by OneDigital and Technology. Programmers, designers, product owners, analysts and business collaborate on a project to utilise new technologies and hack tons of code from different sources to achieve their idea. Hackathon events are often centered on a theme – in 2022 the theme was sustainability.
The good idea came hot off the Hackathon event table and immediately into development – slotted in among other ongoing projects.
“The feature raised a lot of praise and interest. Like any good hackathon idea, it offers a real solution for a problem our customers are facing,” says Martin Karlsson, Product Manager of Remote Customer Experience.
“Search is a big topic, but the team proved that a first, basic version could be built utilising existing capabilities. So, it was an easy decision to make it available for customers,” he continues.
The feature was tested by customers in Helsinki who gave feedback that they like the solution and think it is a useful self-service tool. The testing session also gave developers valuable insights on how customers use keywords and sentences when searching, how they understand the icons used in the search results, preferences for using FAQ or chat, and so on.
It has been amazing to see something that started with a small idea has now become a concrete feature that will benefit our customers.
The development of this feature was a passion project for the two involved teams and an empowering experience for all involved.
“It has been amazing to see something that started with a small idea has now become a concrete feature that will benefit our customers. The goal is to develop it even further so that everything related to your banking activities is searchable,” Sami Laakso concludes.
The journey of the advanced search function is only beginning. Many more development ideas and features are already planned to create an all-embracing search feature and improve customer experience on our digital channels.