TSB banks on real-time data personalization for every customer.

As the director of analysis and design at TSB Bank, Mike Gamble is passionate about customer feedback. On top of the enormous responsibility that goes with driving TSB’s three-year digital strategy, including a £120 million investment in digital channels and self-service options for its customers, Gamble takes time to evaluate every review the bank receives.

“Our digital strategy is all about serving customers well and building trust across channels, but that doesn’t mean anything if we don’t listen to the five million people and businesses who bank with TSB each day,” he says. “From online reviews to Net Promoter Scores, we take every piece of feedback to heart.”

This passion for understanding customers fuels every decision for Gamble and his team, including the technologies it uses to collect, analyze, and act on customer data. With more consumers and small businesses banking online and on their mobiles, TSB turned to Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform, Adobe Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Journey Optimizer, all powered by Adobe Experience Platform, to deliver consistent and personalized experiences for every customer whether they bank online or in-branch.

“We want people to feel confident when managing their money, and today that means delivering digital experiences that are as personalized and relevant as our in-branch service,” says Suresh Viswanathan, Chief Operating Officer at TSB Bank. “Adobe’s solutions are helping us to break down siloes between channels, bring real-time context to our data, and meet our customers’ needs in the moment, no matter how they bank.”

TSB previously took a linear approach to customer data and personalization. Teams would collect data, segment customers and prospects into broad categories, and then target each of these segments with batch marketing materials. But with people using multiple devices to bank, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, this tactic invariably led to a fragmented understanding of individual customers and generic marketing that was no longer hitting the mark.

It also meant that data wasn’t shared between online and offline channels, leading to inconsistent experiences. “The limitations of our legacy systems when it came to customer profiles and digital experiences threatened to knock TSB off course. We needed a complete picture of every person who banks with us, from their history to their needs, to how they move through the customer journey, and that meant centralizing our data on a single platform,” says Gamble.

Enter Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform which pulls together data from TSB’s online and offline channels to gain a holistic view of every customer which updates in real-time. Data that previously took 15 days to create, crunch, and transform into actional insights, can now be consolidated from multiple sources, and applied to campaigns instantaneously.

For instance, TSB customers searching for new homes online might receive helpful information about TSB’s mortgages. Being able to deliver more relevant offers and communications to customers in the moments that matter has created better experiences for customers and has also led to greater returns for the bank. TSB saw a 400% boost in loan applications just one year after going live with Adobe Experience Platform.

“We’re bringing data together from across the bank and using that data in a more innovative way to really make sure we’re meeting the needs of our customers in a way that we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.” Naomi Springate, Director of Enterprise Assurance, TSB Bank.

In addition to bringing context to TSB‘s customer data, the platform plays a central role in governance for the bank. With its eyes set on the future, TSB is moving away from third-party cookies as a source of customer data and towards first-party data strategies built on trust and consented information. Adobe Real-Time Data Platform is built with privacy and security by design, ensuring that TSB can make this transition while maintaining a high standard of data protection and compliance.

Crucially, Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform also works in tandem with TSB’s data protection services to shore up the bank’s security and fraud protection by analyzing customer interactions and notifying the team of any suspicious activity. The threat of ransomware, phishing, and identity theft rose exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic, making security even more critical for TSB as more than 90% of its customers turned to digital banking. 

One of TSB’s primary goals is to streamline and remove friction points from its digital customer journeys using Adobe Customer Journey Analytics. Online customers have little patience for clunky experiences, and with digital brands in other industries raising the standard of convenience for all online services, customers’ patience is wearing thinner each day. TSB is intent on meeting its customers’ rising expectations and has already identified several web and mobile journeys to optimize to deliver faster and more seamless customer experiences and reduce calls to call centers and application abandonments.

“When a customer completing an overdraft form or loan application on our app meets a friction point, the best-case scenario is that they call our contact center for help. The worst case is that they give up, which is a lose-lose,” say Gamble. “Adobe is helping us to spot and eliminate these drop-off points so we can optimize our journeys to deliver wins for our customers and TSB alike.”

Indeed, TSB also uses Adobe Journey Optimizer to better anticipate customers’ needs and shape their journeys intelligently. Drawing on the 360-degree customer view delivered by Adobe Real-time Customer Platform, TSB plans to orchestrate individual customer journeys at scale by intelligently anticipating every individual’s needs in real-time, wherever their journey takes them.

TSB’s investment in real-time customer insights and personalization marks the latest in an ongoing partnership with Adobe. The bank’s previous investments in Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Campaign formed the foundation of its digital experiences, and now TSB has positioned itself for long term omnichannel success.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, TSB also accelerated its roll-out of digital forms with the help of Adobe Acrobat Sign, part of Adobe Document Cloud. Where previously customers were required to complete a paper form in-branch, customers can now perform tasks such as address and name changes, loan applications, request account closures and more using its online forms, allowing customers to access the services, support, and finances they need, quickly and securely.  

At the height of the pandemic, TSB was able to launch 23 forms in just three weeks and processed more than 140,000 digital firms in the first three months, saving its customers around 15,000 in-branch visits.

In addition, TSB’s ‘Do What Matters Plan’ — its commitment to being a responsible business — includes an environmental objective to reduce its carbon footprint. With Adobe Acrobat Sign, TSB has been able to reduce its waste by minimizing the need for printed documents that must be sent through the post. As a next step towards its goal, the bank will use Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform to identify customers who are yet to go paperless and use Adobe Journey Optimizer to prompt and guide them through the quick and effortless process.

The integrations between Adobe solutions have been instrumental in TSB’s rapid evolution. “It’s brilliant how all of Adobe’s technologies work together. We haven’t had Adobe Experience Platform long but it’s already underpinning new capabilities in our mobile app, our marketing campaigns, and our offers for customers,” says Gamble.

Just as impressive for Gamble is the speed with which TSB continues to innovate. “The question I get asked the most is how we move so fast, and my answer is always the same,” he says. “We trust our strategy, we trust our relationship with Adobe, and we continue to learn and adapt quickly.”