Co-creation analysis of La Caisse d'Epargne

Résumé du document

Founded in 1818, Caisse d'Epargne is a bank which positioned itself as a local actor serving a large target: individual and professional customers, companies, associations and local communities. It provides a complete range of insurance-bank area: collection and savings management, loans, means of payment, wealth management, insurance... To foster bank relationships with its clients, the group Bank adapts to different clients' needs through a multi-channel strategy: 4,200 physical agencies, 17 online agencies, mobile solutions...

From more than a year, the company's ambition is to invent the bank of tomorrow. That's why it invested in a co-creation strategy to have a better understanding of client's expectations. They began by inviting its customers to participate in a kind of giant online brainstorming while also proposing other online animations (game contest, competition, quiz...). Few months ago, they launched their new concept called La Communauté, which is an online exchange and mutual platform where users ask questions about daily problems and the community give back answers.
Investing in a co-creation strategy is in line with the brand's DNA: the proximity with clients is its core value, hence the willingness to create a community to overcome barriers between the bank and its clients.

Extraits

[...] La Communauté is more about generating and validating ideas. Caisse d'Epargne should complete their strategy by introducing other phases: implementation, production, communication, commercialisation . First, they should not only use online but also offline tools. About offline, the idea could be to organize face-to-face meets up, in an agency for example, between selected participants and bank employees. In this way, they could introduce an emotional side to the strategy, improving relationship with participants. Moreover, participants could be involved in the implementation phase by requesting them to set up special tasks or challenges relating to bank's projects. [...]

[...] Investing in a co-creation strategy is in line with the brand's DNA: the proximity with clients is its core value, hence the willingness to create a community to overcome barriers between the bank and its clients. I. The advantage To begin with brainstorming, they created two different ones from now: The first deal with “reinvent the ideal relation with your bank” and the other one referred the following theme: “Better understand what ‘member' means to you”. Concretely, clients were encouraged to express their views freely on a collaborative online platform. The platform was well designed, explaining objectives clearly, making everybody aware of what to expect from the collaboration brainstorming. [...]

[...] Rapidity and reliability is ensured by collaborators which give an expert response if the question didn't receive any answer from the community within 24 hours. Once again, gamification is used to engage users: The more active they are, the more they will be rewarded. Based on the number of likes and the quality of response given, users win virtual badges. Thus, the top issuers are put forwards and become famous on the platform. A privileged treatment is reserved for those ambassadors such as invitations to important press conferences. II. The Inconvenient However, some elements of this co-creation strategy appear to be incomplete. [...]

[...] In addition, ideas judged pertinent from the community allowed issuers to win rewards. Then, the long overall lead time (three months for each brainstorming) provided a long-term follow-up, with several regular participation leading to more searching reflections. Finally, this project's success is based on a win-win participative approach: for example, the feedback collected has allowed relaunching considerations about an online chat and videoconference with a bank advisor, leading to their creation. However, Caisse d'Epargne could improve some aspects to have a greater co- creation strategy. [...]

[...] Through a vote system, the best design has been selected and implemented. Thus, to increase motivation and engage the community, they should implement other regular games. Nevertheless, there's one thing that they don't communicate whereas they definitely should: giving feedback about the process, the learning, what the brand did with the insights they found from La Communauté. While acting like this, they take the risk that clients get tired of participating without seeing any concrete changes. They could lose trust and don't participate anymore to conversations. [...]