More communication
and less formality
has a real business impact

Bankia solves the problem of customers navigating complex personal loans and mortgage products by introducing WhatsApp support. As a result, Bankia sees customer satisfaction soar and an increase in qualified leads. The sky's the limit for this innovative bank.

“We turned our contact hub from a cost center into a revenue generator”
Elena Serrano García  
Innovation Manager, Bankia

Key Results

3x

higher engagement on Whatsapp then other channels

11%

of increase in
qualified leads

<2

minutes of reply

+9

out of 10 NPS
score

Company profile

Bankia is the fourth largest bank in Spain.

It provides banking services to businesses, consumers, and investors, including asset management and insurance services.

Bankia differentiates itself through its customer-centric approach.

With more than 58.8% of customers managing services through digital channels and 40% of sales coming via digital, Bankia has long seen the value in being an innovative digital-forward organization.

“WhatsApp is part of a larger digital initiative to develop new ways of customer support to strengthen the relationship with our customers”
Elena Serrano García  
Innovation Manager, Bankia

Challenges

Bankia wanted to increase customer satisfaction and business impact by providing customers with a way to ask questions about complex products like insurance options and mortgages, without increasing stress on existing call center resources.

As part of its customer-centric approach to banking, Bankia understood the importance of meeting customers on the channels they prefer.

However, customers could only use the webchat if they were logged in to Bankia’s app or website. As a result, they were missing opportunities to create a frictionless experience.

The primary objective for Bankia was not to close the deals as soon as possible, but instead to increase the customer satisfaction rate while customers were researching products.

The proposed solution was to leverage a new communication channel for high-value pages that would:

Increase customer satisfaction
compared to existing channels
Improve customer service efficiency
by automating parts of the customer journey
Drive qualified leads to sales channels
for further nurturing

Solution

Bankia saw WhatsApp as a way to allow both existing and potential customers to contact Bankia without the need to log in or download an app. With messenger, the experience is seamless, personal, and in-line with Bankia's mission.

The scalable nature of the WhatsApp business API means that alongside Hubtype’s ability to integrate with critical business applications and securely centralize customer data, it would remain GDPR compliant.

Hubtype’s open-source technology provides Bankia’s team with the maximum flexibility, something that’s extremely important when starting with an entirely new set of channels.

Bankia also set up protocols to ensure that all the messages received on WhatsApp were answered promptly (under 2 minutes).

63 agents were coached on how to use WhatsApp and maintain the brand's new tone of voice, which was:

> Informal
> Concise
> Colloquial
> Human

Solution

Lead generation
WhatsApp used as a means of generating qualified leads for sales department.
Customer loyalty
The channel aimed to increase the quality of conversations and boost NPS scores.
Cost reduction
Messaging is more cost effective than calls due to its asynchronous nature.
Results

Bankia found that customers were happy to do loan applications from start to finish without leaving WhatsApp, making the channel extremely cost-effective.
‍

After Bankia opened up the service on WhatsApp, NPS increased from 6.6/10 to 9+.
WhatsApp is currently the channel with the highest satisfaction rating.

>
Scaling with success
The conversion rate on WhatsApp was so good we knew we had to expand from mortgages to add loans also.
>
The preferred channel
Customers were also willing to reciprocate Bankia's warm, friendly, conversational tone. Resulting in 90% of customers stating that they preferred WhatApp to other channels. Bankia was the first WhatsApp-verified Spanish bank.
hubtype.com