50 questions to ask financial services customers

​As a financial services organization, you’d probably love to be a fly on the wall when your customer uses your app or website. But unfortunately, it’s not always a pretty sight. From users sighing out of frustration when pages take too long to load or relying on customer support to resolve an issue, customer experiences won’t always unfold how you intended. 

The good news is that usability testing is as close as you can get to a front-row seat to your customer experience. While you can’t always guarantee smooth sailing, asking your target users the right questions at the right time ensures that you can continuously improve your customer experience.

Before fully developing your product, or update, spend time understanding your customers’ needs and frustrations. If you’re in the prototyping stage, collect user feedback as soon as you have a wireframe. And even after a new feature, product, or campaign has launched, keep monitoring feedback to help guide decisions on functionalities you need to add or remove. To get started, here’s a list of fifty questions to help financial services organizations learn more about their customers and improve their banking experience. 

Understand your customer’s financial habits and background

Before you start asking questions specific to usability, ask questions to learn more about your audience—so the test doesn’t influence how they might answer. 

Pre-test usability questions contextualize your contributor’s background, preferences, and actions. They can be open or closed-ended questions. 

For example, you might want to know your contributor’s experience with mobile apps or what financial services products they’ve tried before. Collecting this information will help you better understand why they take specific actions. 

Here are some examples of pre-test questions: 

• Share as much as you’re comfortable with about your income. For example, what income streams do you have? 
• Describe how you use your financial service’s digital tools. 
• How has your relationship with banking changed in the past few years? 
• How many times have you switched bank providers? 
• Which devices do you use for banking? If there are multiple, name all of them. 
• Do you expect your banking habits to change in the next year? How so? 

If one of your priorities is learning how experiences differ across groups, consider leveraging this diverse and inclusive perspectives template. 

Measure brand impressions

Now that you have a basic understanding of your contributor, you can get into company-specific and product-specific questions. 

• Do you think your bank understands you? Why or why not? 
• Are you loyal to your financial service company? Why or why not?  
• What are three words you’d use to describe your bank? 
• Would you recommend them to friends or family? Why or why not?
• What’s your first impression of this organization? 
• Would you trust this brand with your financial information? Why or why not? 
• Have you considered leaving for a competitor? What would compel you to do so? 

For more inspiration, take a look at this brand attributes template. 

Watch the following video on what contributors had to say when asked if they feel their bank understands them:

Remote video URL

Assess search and navigation

• How easy is it to find your account balances? 
• Are you able to successfully navigate this banking app or site? Why or why not? 
• How often do you use the search bar? 
• How does mobile navigation compare to desktop navigation for your financial service? 
• Have you ever used your financial app’s chatbot for the information you couldn’t find? How often?

Learn more about improving your product’s navigation with the tree testing template. 

Gather feedback on in-branch experiences 

• How would you describe your most recent visit to your bank? 
• What did you like about your recent in-person visit? 
• What did you dislike about your recent in-person visit? 
• Is there an experience or service you reserve for in-branch visits? 
• How have your in-branch visits changed over the years?

Get the feedback you’ve been lacking on in-branch experiences with this retail banking experiences template. 

Optimize mobile banking 

• How would you improve your bank’s mobile app? 
• Rate the consistency of your financial service’s mobile experience versus online. 
• Do you prefer mobile banking over online banking? Why or why not? 
• Is there an experience or service you like doing on mobile over other channels? Why or why not? 
• Think about your experience with non-finance apps. How does your banking app compare? 
• How valuable is this app to you? Explain your answer.
• How frequently do you use your financial service app? 

For more help, look no further than this mobile app evaluation template. 

Watch the following video to hear about everyday consumers’ experiences with mobile banking apps. 

Remote video URL

Improve online banking 

• How would you improve your bank’s website? 
• Rate the consistency of your financial service’s online experience versus mobile.
• Do you prefer online banking over mobile banking? Why or why not? 
• Is there an experience or service you prefer doing on a desktop over other channels? 
• How helpful is this website to you? Explain your answer 
• How frequently do you use your financial service’s website? 

Get further inspiration with this website evaluation template. 

Assess self-service banking

• Do you prefer solving issues on your own or contacting a live agent or call center? Why or why not? 
• In what scenarios do you prefer self-service over customer service? 
• How helpful do you find your financial service’s self-service options to be? 
• What would you change about the self-service experience if you had a magic wand? 
• Engage with the online chat. Ask questions like "Where can I find information about your company?" 
• Please rate your level of agreement with the following statement: "The response from the online chat agent meets my expectations." Please explain your rating. 

Get better insights by leaning on this retail banking template.

Evaluate the omnichannel customer experience 

• How do you interact with your financial organization on a smartphone, desktop, tablet, and in person? 
• Is the experience consistent across all devices?
• If you need to complete a process that spans multiple devices, can you do it smoothly? 
• What do you consider your primary channel of choice? Why? 

For more, take a look at this customer journey template.

Find out if your copy is effective 

• Do you understand what this landing page offers? 
• Is the website or app’s language easy to understand?
• How persuasive do you find the buttons on the website or app? Are they easy to find? 
• Describe the value of this service in your own words. 

Finally, fine-tune your study by leveraging this messaging comprehension template.

Human insight provides answers 

You won’t know the answers if you don’t ask the right questions. Always go directly to the source—your customers. And remember, usability testing is a continuous process. One test paves the way for many more throughout your product updates, competitive research, and new feature launches. By gathering human insight, you can find out what’s working and what’s not, so you can create incredible financial experiences across all your channels that can weather shifting preferences and industry changes.