Telenor knew Serbian banking was very inconvenient. The branches were too far, there were long queues and plenty of paperwork.
An article on the website of the business school INSEAD explained how Serbia's first purely mobile bank Telenor Banka was about to change all that in 2014. There are three things that can be taken away from Telenor Banka’s experience.
1. You can't offer digital services to everybody
Not all Serbians were ready to use mobile banking. However, aiming at the mass market would have compromised the service, so Telenor chose to target only the most tech-savvy Serbians living in cities. They were also great brand ambassadors and promoted the new company on social media.
If they had decided to develop a service for a larger portion of the population, it would have been less innovative and wouldn’t have gained so much attention. With products designed for just a sliver of the population, you can always please the customer.
2. Don't advertise a service, but its benefits
TV commercials didn’t focus on the app. They showed people enjoying the new free time they had thanks to using mobile banking. “Visit friends, not branches” was one of the slogans used in their advertising.
Brands are even more important in the digital world. Customers today expect more, are well-informed, have more choices and co-build brands.
3. Simplify your processes
People at Telenor strived to make the product very simple and transparent. The banking experience they offered was unprecedented. Everything was easy and fast. Simplifying the business was a prerequisite.
Banks should make their clients' financial matters easy. Customers expect a seamless experience across all touch points. Banks insisting on complex processes will inevitably lose customers.
To sum up: Technological superiority alone is not enough.
-jk-