From a static website to tools customers actually use
- To action from pages you read to tools you use
- 20+ self-service for home, budget and pension
- Excel to API calculation models live in minutes
- Customers call about things they would rather have worked out themselves.
- The website is there to be read, not acted on.
- The adviser only learns the customer's situation once the meeting has started.
That is what it looks like in many companies that live on advice and service. These are some of the challenges we worked deliberately to solve with Nykredit.
What was Nykredit facing?
One of Denmark's largest mortgage lenders had a website you could read, not act on. Web and apps did not hang together, the content was the same whether the customer was facing their first home purchase or their pension, and because self-service was missing, the questions landed with the advisers.
The calculation power did exist. It just sat in spreadsheets with Nykredit's own financial specialists — out of reach of customers, and outside the website.
Nykredit went from being something customers read to something they use.
A static website. Content to read, the same for everyone, and no apps.
A dynamic website with considered customer journeys, dedicated web universes such as Boligoverblikket, and five mobile apps.
Nykredit is present where its customers are — in everyday life around the home, and in the shifts where family life changes.
The tools connect because the decision does
A home buyer does not make one decision. He sets a budget, works out what he can afford, and forms a picture of the property before he picks up the phone at all. We built the tools in the order the thoughts arrive, and let them point onward to one another.
Some journeys are about everyday life — what a homeowner needs along the way. Others are about the shifts where life looks different afterwards: moving in together, the family growing, the children leaving home. And the hard ones: illness, losing a job, losing a spouse. Both kinds require the bank to be present before the conversation, not only in it.
- What is there room for Smartbudget
The family's finances in one place, month by month.
- How far does it stretch "How much can I buy for" calculator
The customer's own headroom, calculated on his own figures.
- What does the home mean Boligoverblikket
A dedicated universe and a product in its own right: the home today and going forward, as a basis for owning, buying or selling.
- And then the conversation The customer arrives prepared
The calculations come along to the adviser, so the meeting starts somewhere else.
These three are examples. We have built many more tools, for several departments in the bank, and the order here shows the decision process, not the delivery plan.
Nykredit's specialists should not have to hand over their calculation models. They should be able to put them into production.
The calculation power was Nykredit's own. The bank's financial specialists sat with the models in Excel, and those models are strong. Our contribution was a tool that turns a spreadsheet into an API in minutes, so their expertise could reach customers directly. It changed who could take part in development.
Developers rewrite the model by hand
- The specialist hands over the spreadsheet and waits
- Every change to a rate becomes a development task
- Two places to keep track of: the spreadsheet and the code
- Each new calculator starts from scratch
The specialist's spreadsheet becomes the business logic itself
- Model to API in minutes
- The specialist keeps owning the model
- The same figures on web and in the app, from the same source
- The bank's experts and our developers work in the same material
Three moves that made the next tool easier to build than the last
Nykredit had the expertise, the models and the customer knowledge. Our contribution was making it fast to get out to customers and easy to change again.
- 01
The Businesslogic tool
Excel models become APIs in minutes. The specialist keeps calculating in the tool he knows, and the customer meets the result on the website.
- 02
Component library and design guide
Fields, charts, step-by-step flows and helper texts were built once and reused. That is why tool number ten looks like number one, and development could concentrate on what was new.
- 03
Integrations to the customer's own figures
The tools pull in the customer's own figures, both from Nykredit's own systems and from external sources, so the customer does not have to type in what the bank already knows.
Prototype first, figures afterwards
A new self-service solution started with a short brief and a spreadsheet from the bank, not with a requirements specification. The spreadsheet quickly became a prototype. Nykredit's own UX team knows their customers better than anyone from outside, and together we tested the prototypes on real users, fixed what did not work, and scrapped what did not hold. It is cheaper to throw away a prototype than a finished solution.
It was also measured on whether the tools actually moved the customer forward. Conversion was not an afterthought; it was what we adjusted against.
Ten years side by side gave an understanding you cannot read your way to. We knew Nykredit's strategy and their way of working, and they knew ours. That is why the proposals fitted in instead of pushing against.
We also ran operations afterwards. That meant we did not hand over and move on, but kept an eye on how the solutions behaved out with customers, and fixed what needed fixing. That knowledge went straight back into the next thing we built.
A universe, not a collection of tools
The home in everyday life, the budget when the family changes, and the calculations the customer brings to the adviser. Each solution stands on its own, and together they hang together for the customer.
A selection of what we have built with Nykredit: Boligoverblikket, Smartbudget with life situations, the savings-tips app and a range of calculators.
Coignite has played an important part in developing both web solutions and mobile apps that have lifted our digital presence from a static website to a dynamic, personalised platform. Through our many years of working together, Coignite has delivered creative and scalable solutions that not only engage our customers but also streamline our internal processes. Their understanding of our strategic goals, and their ability to turn them into user-friendly and effective solutions, have made Coignite a valuable partner in our digital development.
The strategy lives on
Work on self-service never stands still. It has to be adapted to new customer scenarios, new circumstances and new habits, and that has to be possible without us. So we built it so Nykredit's own capable people could carry it forward, and that is how it should be. Nykredit owns its solution and its data — no lock-in. That they kept letting us build the next thing, every time the last one held up in practice, says more than any claim from us.
- Industry
- Mortgage lending and banking
- Platform
- Web and mobile app
- Our role
- Development partner with operational responsibility under a service agreement
- Capabilities
- Digital consulting , UX and service design , App development , Web development
- Technologies
- Javascript, Angular, iOS (Swift), Kotlin, Java/Scala, Postgres
- The collaboration
- A continuous collaboration over ten years
Should your customers be able to find the answer themselves?
- A reply from one of us by the next business day.
- A no-obligation review of your situation.
- Clarity on which options are relevant to you.
- A concrete plan, if you choose to go ahead.