Objectives

People’s lives do not revolve around banking. DBS’ strategy is built on the cornerstone of a customer-centric digital platform which goes beyond banking by focusing on the customer’s lifestyle, their evolving needs and eliminating wasted customer time. 

DBS seeks to provide a personalized experience for each individual customer by addressing all relevant touch points. We want to create an unsurpassed customer journey that allows customers to “Live More, Bank Less”. 

As part of our constant transformation, we have embarked on a journey to achieve n=1 personalisation, achieved through the following:

• Personalised offer – based on the next best recommendation model   
• Personalised goal – transparency and clearly defined goals based on customers past engagement   
• Personalised tracking – ease of engagement   

The objective is to offer personalization, create unique customer experience and shorten the time users take to perform a certain task. It helps to increase app visibility, optimise user acquisition and increase card usage. Through our Data Analytic studies, we identified these customers’ needs: 

• Help customers manage their lifestyle by enabling easy access to information i.e. Customers can monitor their expenses via breakdown of their spending, track their credit card due date, set reminder for bill payment,
• Keep customers abreast of relevant deals and promotions that suit their lifestyle,
• Fulfil customers’ banking needs on the move with secured card services on their mobile phone, 
• Give customers the rewards they desire by offsetting recent purchases at any merchant with DBS reward points or POSB Daily$. 

Strategy and Execution

DBS has shifted in thinking, from the product-centric ways of traditional banks — selling a mortgage or a credit card — to seeing from the customer’s point of view. (‘Features’ image)

We developed the following solutions to address customers’ needs and create better personalized customer experience & journey.

• Secure login methods to allow customers to access all card services safely. (‘Login’ image)
   
• Personalized content, the app serve customers exclusive DBS/POSB cards offers based on their locations/proximity, past spending history and interest to improve user experience and conversion rate of card usage. ​ Advanced Machine Learning models were implemented to make the offers relevant to the customer – customer preference to merchants, potential for customer to diversify and grow spend, look-alike models for customers with limited spend history, etc. (‘Personalisation’ image)
• Personalized deals are recommended for each customer in the Deals For you Page based on a customer’s spend history.

• Further, spend promotions are tailored to customers’ past spend behaviour. A key element is the Promotion Tracker feature which eliminates several pain points of participating in bank promotions. (‘Promo Tracker’ image)
   
• Auto-activation magstripe, uses customers’ locations to automatically turn on the overseas magstripe when they leave Singapore and turn off when they are back at home, providing users with greater peace of mind and added security for future Card transactions.  

• InstaRewards redemption to enable flexibility and convenience for customers to use their DBS points / POSB Daily$ to offset recent purchases anywhere, anytime. (‘Instarewards’ image)

Better Customer Experience and Engagement 

DBS has rolled out contextual engagement campaigns to better customer experience, activate MCC extension and drive spend lift. The engagement campaigns were specially curated based on customer spending pattern and demographics. (‘Contextual Campaign’ image)

DBS has also launched over 30 Personalised Campaigns in 2019 which includes Lunar New Year, Groceries, POSB Everyday Refreshed, Spend & Win and more. It provides customers with a seamless experience and eliminating common pain points. Here are some top improvement areas:  

1. Registration: Uncertainty if customer is part of the first XXX to register for a campaign  
2. Mechanics: Spend goals are unachievable / Rewards are unattractive to cater to Top spender
3. Spend tracking: Cannot track spend and how near/far from the set target.  
4. Redemption: Have to wait to know if customer qualifies for the prize and have to wait again for the redemption letters – No instant gratification.  
5. Fulfilment: Must travel to pick-up prize at designated locations 

DBS also capitalized on customer spend propensity data and contextually engage them via ATL & BTL communications such as DBS/POSB website, eDM & App-Push Notification, Digital channels – Facebook/Instagram/Google, TheSmartLocal.com video/editorial, Golden Village media channels.

The integration of multiple channels allows customers to access the same offers via the DBS website and DBS Lifestyle App. Customers are not restricted to only registering for campaigns via DBS Lifestyle App. They can register via DBS website with their Digibank login credential. Upon successful registration, customers will be encouraged to download DBS Lifestyle App to continue to track their spend.

Results

What separates DBS Lifestyle App from the competition, is its ability to provide a personalized experience for each individual customer throughout the entire customer journey (from how they receive the information, perform cards services, redeem their rewards and receive instant prizes). Our engagement framework utilizes machine learning models to identify various opportunity areas. 

We engage customers contextually by leveraging on a unique algorithm (collaborative filtering + lookalike model) to cull leads by spend propensity. This has helped to achieve business goals to identify new potential customers that share similar spending patterns with customer of a specific segment which gives us massive improvement in customer engagement.

Measurable results for the bank

Comparing Lunar New Year campaigns for 2018 and 2019, we saw higher engagement, spend activations and spend lift.

• 4X higher registrations
• 5X more spend activation
• $11M increased spend lift

Summary 
Effective use of contextual & consistent targeting. 

• Greater customer engagement with personalised spend goals to drive incremental sales.  
• 5X better campaign response rate and higher fulfilment rate (traditional vs Lifestyle campaigns). 
• Effective channel to activate inactive/low spenders. 
• Drive card spend with effective customer engagement through contextual marketing. 

• Cross-selling of relevant products to increase product holdings. 
• Lower cost for operation with instant fulfilment. 
• Lower the cost to serve with self-serve services (reduction of calls to call centre team).  

Media