illimity

In the modern era of business, companies are facing a continuously evolving competitive landscape. In crowded markets where products and services are often perceived as commodities, the ability to innovate, satisfy customers and differentiate from competitors relies on adopting innovative approaches such as design thinking.

Design thinking is an approach that emphasises understanding customer needs and designing solutions that effectively and emotionally address their problems. Unlike traditional product-oriented business approaches, design thinking focuses on people and user experience. Within this approach, the activity of customer insight - listening and gaining a deep understanding of customers' needs, expectations, and behaviours - plays a crucial role, particularly in the context of illimity, where it is a pervasive and continuous process.

The Customer Insight activity at illimity is based on three fundamental pillars:

1. Deeply Understanding the Market and Potential Customers: In the initial stages of any business activity, it is essential to have an in-depth knowledge of the target market and needs. This can be achieved through integrated research approaches (both qualitative and quantitative) and leveraging diverse data sources (both primary - collected through ad hoc studies conducted by the company - and secondary - utilising third-party data sources). Conducting research activities such as market segmentation and identification of personas becomes crucial to define the target audience aligned with the company's strategy, to guide the design and development of value propositions, products, and services, as well as to address communication campaigns.

"​Design thinking is an approach that emphasises understanding customer needs and designing solutions that effectively and emotionally address their problems. "

2. Continuously Involve Users: To be truly effective, user involvement should not be limited to specific initiatives but should occur continuously over time. At illimity, we have built a community called "Vai Oltre La Forma" (https://vaioltrelaforma.it) even before the official launch of the bank. Today, it has more than 40,000 members who share similar interests and values regarding the use of digital financial services, the innovation in the financial sector and emerging technologies. Community participants are constantly engaged in online surveys, user tests, and insights generation using traditional research tools (e.g., surveys, focus groups, interviews) as well as more engaging and disruptive techniques (e.g., generative/ideation workshops, neuromarketing tests). However, our community is not just about tests and insights; the community has also contributed to creating a sense of belonging and connection with the brand for its members. They can feel part of something bigger and share their experiences and opinions with others. Involving "Vai Oltre La Forma" in the development of new products and experiences is an effective way to gather customer feedback and ensure that products and experiences meet their needs and desires. In addition to traditional online surveys, we have engaged our users in co-creation programs, collecting more than 1,500 ideas, and offered beta testing opportunities to customers to test new experiences before their launch.

3. Continuously Listen to Customers across All Channels: Continuous customer listening goes beyond the ideation, development, and launch phases of an initiative. Listening should extend to all sources and channels, including customer service, surveys, app store reviews, social media, and more. All feedback, comments, and suggestions collected are valuable insights to be analysed and transformed into continuous improvement actions. The effectiveness of this phase depends on the collaboration of all areas within the company, where the customer perspective must be a cultural factor.

The results of this approach in our experience have been concrete and tangible. In addition to being one of the Italian banks with the highest level of customer recommendation (Net Promoter Score - NPS), illimity has also recorded significant improvements in business performance, with steady and sustained growth of customers and continuous improvement of other key indicators, including active customer base  and customer loyalty levels.

These are some of the most important lessons we have learned over the years:

1. Listen to customers and genuinely care about their problems: it is the best way to understand how to make them happy.

2. Listening should be an ongoing process, not a one-time activity: the customer should always feel at the center of attention.

3. Customer listening is a responsibility assumed by the company, and customers expect concrete and tangible actions.

4. Always go the extra mile beyond customer requests: it is the only way to generate the "wow" effect.

5. Customer obsession, to be effective, must be a cultural attitude and a challenge embraced by all areas of the company.