Situation: Facing a challenging period that tarnished its brand, Danske Bank had historically relied on partnerships with trade unions and organizations, to build its private customer base. However, in 2023, plans to sell its private market operations to Nordea disrupted these partnerships. Without renewal of agreements, Danske Bank risked losing a significant portion of its customer base and its market position.

However, Danske Bank made a strategic move by offer the same low interest rate to all customers, to retain those switching banks and attract new customers.

Brief: Find a way to tell people that Danske Bank now offers all their customers the same low interest.

Objectives:

Retain the customer base until the sale to Nordea is completed by:

Recruiting new mortgage customers

Reducing churn and preventing the disappearance of existing customers

Brand Goals: Increasing the assessment rate from 4% to 6%

When costumers no longer called to negoteate we instead used Danske Banks call center for something else. Upon calling you were greeted with a menu offering 49 different options to select from. None of them involved negotiating your interest rate.

For example, you could talk about the weather, listen to someone whistle, or get tips on how to change your swimsuit without showing your butt.

Upon making your selection, you were greeted by a live customer service representative who could prepare for the conversation topic in the system. This ensured that each caller received a unique experience.

The target audience consisted of reserved and conflict-averse Norwegians, in a time of economic uncertainty, who demonstrably avoided calling their bank, even though they knew it was the best way to save large sums of money.

Actually as many as 48% of home owners said in a survey they probably could save money if they negotiated with their bank, but still didn’t do it.

We launched a product tailored for this target group, pre-negotiated interest. With the need to call and negotiate eliminated, they could call us to talk about anything else instead!

When almost everyone knows that the only way to get a better deal on your mortgage was to call your bank, we wanted to use that to our advantage.

So, we opened our phone lines for those who preferred not to engage in banking arguments with our employees and urged everyone to reach out, provided they weren't seeking to negotiate.

In classic customer service style, you got a range of options, but instead of boring bank-related choices, you could choose from anything else you might want to talk about.

A total of 49 options for topics to discuss were politely answered by a customer service representative, who could prepare for the conversation topic in the system.

The lines were open for a week.

44.2% increase in mortgage applications compared to 2022.

The average time spent on the new customer service was over 2 minutes and the mortgage services saw an increase of interest by over 200% (!)

Despite both macro and industry trends with customer flights to cheaper loans at smaller and local banks, the campaign managed a full stop in churn, and loyalty amongst existing customers increased.

Brand perception and consideration rate up 10 points - all pointing back to campaign activity.