10 insights about VK and Telegram, or How we investigated banking in messengers / Habr

10 insights about VK and Telegram, or How we investigated banking in messengers / Habr

A year ago, we began to dive deeply into the topic of messengers and investigate what and how users do there. As a result, they were the first in Russia to launch banking in VK, communicated a lot with respondents and created a catchy communication design. In the article, we will tell you what interesting things we learned about messengers and behavior patterns.

Authors of the article:

Olena Svergunenko

UX Research Lead

Oleksiy Grigoriev

Art Director

Why did the bank go to VK and Telegram

We approached messengers a long time ago: with the children’s bank, we made functionality so that parents could conveniently monitor their finances. This story didn’t take off, but we’ve built up a knowledge base from Telegram.

At the beginning of 2022, iOS messages disappeared, and we looked again in the direction of messengers. Limitations encourage a creative approach. We went to look for channels of communication with the client in order to integrate natively into his lifestyle. Banking in messengers, like all our releases, went through UX research at the Alfa Research Center.

We set out to adapt to the client’s rhythm and fit the bank into a new context. Business tasks were solved with a bonus: to lower the dice, since messages are cheaper than SMS. They began to study the audience and figure out what attracts people to messengers. The designers did a great job, choosing a visual language that will sink into the heart.

We conducted in-depth interviews, emotional response testing, quantitative surveys and diary studies. Here are some examples of what we explored:

  • What notifications customers consider important and unimportant, what they want and don’t want to receive in push and SMS.

  • Is the client ready to pay for banking messages in the messenger.

  • Is there potential to create additional value for the user in the messenger.

At first, we had the idea to launch a subscription to messages. When we rolled out the draft for Telegram, we realized that it lacked value. Studies have shown that the channel should be developed into something worthwhile, and only then add messages from the bank.

Later, Roskomnadzor banned all banks from collaborating with Telegram, so we gathered our experience and switched to VK. Let’s tell you how we looked at this site.

How we conducted Discovery about finances in messengers

In-depth interviews about drivers and barriers in messengers became a storehouse of insights for us.

We talked to users:

  • our bot Jin,

  • bots of other banks,

  • VK Pay,

  • messengers within bank applications.

Julia Dzinova

UX researcher

I asked them to recall stories related to money that the respondents solved in the messenger. The most common answer is to borrow money or remind about the debt. Then I found out what applications they use: for example, the head of the parents’ committee creates lists with ticks for collecting money. There were funny scenarios. Someone discusses secrets in the bank’s messenger, so that outsiders definitely do not find the correspondence. In the final, I showed the concept of our bank in the messenger and asked to share impressions.

We learned that the audience is used to receiving personal, work information, brand news in the messenger. People are ready to bank in the messenger, because they see the advantages of solving all tasks in a single window. They expect new opportunities from work, but they would not like it to become intrusive. The advantage of the bank in the messenger can be the flow – faster than in the application.

Respondents would like to control the content and filter the type of messages that enter the bot’s feed. They were positive about the design, which resembles a banking application.

Translations took the first place in terms of the frequency of expected functions, but most respondents are wary of messengers. That being said, there is a segment of early adopters whose curiosity, trust in the bank, and awareness of two-factor security outweigh the risks.

Our insights about messengers

Now let’s talk more about the findings of our research, benchmarking and design experiments.

Insight 1. Restrictions are not always bad

For a long time, we sawed the service for one site, and finished another, but we made a top product, despite all the difficulties. Such a pivot is a perfectly normal topic for a startup.

Insight 2. The context of interaction changes on the new platform

We thought of reusing the experience from Telegram under VK. They quickly realized that the sites were completely different, and the concept had to be reinvented. The most obvious solution is to simply make a bank, but the patterns of the messenger are different from what the customer is used to in a classic banking application. The audiences of VK and Telegram are very different, as are the attitudes and trust in the platforms.

UX research helped to identify gaps in patterns and smooth them out. We figured out what the audience wants in VK, what they expect and don’t expect from the bank in the messenger. We decided to enter through a friendly submission and made financial services a nice addition.

Insight 3. Financial messengers are widespread not only in Asia

We have compiled a trend report on finances in messengers. The most famous example is China’s WeChat, but we found that African banks on messengers are popular for some reason. While “traveling” the world in search of insight, they learned about various services. If you’re as interested in this topic as we are, check out Absa from South Africa, Zenith Intelligent Virtual Assistant from Nigeria and Virtual Assistant from Equity Bank from Kenya.

Insight 4. Not everyone is ready for something serious with the bank in social networks

Some people are afraid to manage money in the messenger. We did not insist and offered to start with something simple – raffles, quizzes. It was gently hinted that there are features nearby: for example, you can send money and pay for mobile communications.

Insight 5. It is possible and necessary to talk about security in the language of design

Some of the respondents encountered hacks in messengers, so they did not trust the security. From a flow point of view, we thought out where and what to highlight in the interface, so that customers do not worry and understand that everything is under control.

Insight 6. It is easier to communicate from a character than from a brand

At first, we took the main logo and sent messages from Alfa-Bank – casual communication, which is usual in messengers, did not work. In addition, we had bank channels, which are named the same as the bot – which is an extra cognitive load. In the second iteration, the bot had a face, or rather, the face of the cat Jin. The image is pleasant, memorable, and retains the Alfa identity, inspiring trust. We invented the cat earlier, and it was logical to transfer this image to messengers.

Kateryna Khoshabova

Head of UX editorial

When developing the Tone of Voice of Jin the cat, we needed to find a balance between the character’s vivid personality and clear service. The cat does not “meow” in important functions: in translations and settings, but it becomes brighter on game screens, for example, in the referral program. Dzin is already recognizable, it binds the user to itself, creates a wow effect that distinguishes us from other robots.

Insight 7. Stickers are still in vogue

At the start, we gave users stickers to encourage them to do something and delve into the product.

The process of creating stickers looked like this

We are more used to 3D models, and we wanted to make “volumetric” figures, like on other bank layouts. As a result, they still released flat, but super beautiful ones, for which you can sell your soul. Several times technical support was covered by a wave of appeals if the stickers suddenly did not come to users.

Insight 8. Donating money in the messenger is not so popular

We took a look at Hao Bam’s digital envelopes on AliPay and WeChat. They thought that sending money as a gift would be a killer feature. Interviews with users showed that we have professional deformation, and this is not a trend. We still launched the “Red Envelope” from Alfa. Let’s draw attention to him by drawing money from the bank with a bonus to the sender’s amount.

Insight 9. Texts of push messages should be different from SMS

We made subtle adjustments to texts and styles. As a result, they added memorable emojis and chips to messages in VK, rewrote the texts from Latin to Cyrillic, and it was even shorter than in SMS. They left the most important thing: the user, as before, understands from which card the money was debited, how much and for what.

Insight 10. A big project will not happen without collaboration

We realized how important it is to bring together research, marketing packaging, text, design, and interact with the developers of a new platform for us. Every detail was reflected in the final product — remove something, and everything falls apart.

Volodymyr Yastrebkov

Customer Journey Owner

1.9 million customers have joined our Jin robot in VK, 260 thousand receive transaction notifications. 100,000 unique users enter the bot every day. 60% of users check their balance every day. Banking operations are carried out by 20%. The most popular functions are spending cashback, translating by phone number and requesting details.

Conclusion

Now we know how many researchers it takes to study a new customer touch point and screw the light bulb. Our answer is five, although previously one UX researcher worked on one product at Alpha.

Messengers became Alfa Research Center’s largest project in terms of budget and amount of research in 2022. This is a large team, large-scale Discovery research and a cool result. If you are an Alfa customer, try VK banking, you will love it.

Share in the comments which insight seemed the most interesting and what you are interested in learning about the launch in messengers.

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