EXCLUSIVE: “The App-to-Productivity Conundrum” – Trisha Price, Pendo in ‘The Fintech Magazine’

An explosion of apps in the back office could be jeopardising the very thing they were designed to improve. ‘Swivel chair integration’ fatigue is real, says Pendo’s Trisha Price

“I often see financial services companies, banks in particular, not making the correlation between employee experience, productivity, and end-user experience. People often think of them as distinct, but they’re highly related because their employees serve their customers.”

Put like that, the connection between employee and customer satisfaction seems so obvious. Yet Trisha Price, Chief Product Officer at software experience management provider, Pendo, says many firms still miss the vital connection between employee and customer satisfaction and how that impacts their bottom lines. Having spent her career working for well-known names in the fintech space, including building bank operating systems, Price understands how better digital experiences can help companies attract and retain their customers in a highly competitive marketplace.

However, following significant industry-wide investment in digitisation over recent years, she believes firms now need greater understanding of how work gets done internally to improve their bottom line. They need data on how employees are using the software required to do their jobs. Had she had that, her R&D teams could have made the improvements necessary for employees to be more productive.

“I realised I was frequently flying blind with the digital experiences I was in charge of creating, wondering if they were hitting the mark and getting the outcomes we wanted,” she says. “I never had the data I needed to be confident in that, so it’s been incredibly exciting to come to Pendo and help create the tools to provide that data and clarity, and help ensure product leaders across industries have what they need to drive business outcomes like revenue growth and employee experience.”

She’s watched financial institutions invest heavily in the customer journey ,listening to their feedback and iterating  endlessly to meet their needs. Meanwhile, the employees behind the scenes, working to make it all happen,were suffering digital burnout.

“That same focus on data and experience for their employees as for their customers is vital,” says Price.“New applications are an important part of digital transformation, but the constant introduction of new systems and workflows means more for employees to learn and onboard with.

“The number of apps now available really causes issues for them. I call this ‘swivel chair integrations’, meaning they’re working on one application and have to turn and work on another, seeking information and duplicating the same workflow in multiple places, which is error-prone and causes productivity issues.”

There’s good evidence to back this up. Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index 2021 report into the work habits of 13,123 knowledge workers in eight countries, found that more than a quarter said switching between work apps made them miss actions and messages, while 26 per cent said app overload made them less efficient at work. All of which is heightened, post-pandemic, with digital platforms now providing the gateway into hybrid working.

“New applications are an important part of digital transformation, but the number of apps now available really causes issues for staff”

By 2023, a Gartner survey of 4,800 employees found the average desk worker was using 11 apps daily, with almost half saying it was harder, not easier, to find the information they needed. More than a third missed important updates due to the sheer volume of apps deluging them.

Employers can’t afford to ignore the experience of staff, especially since a study published by Renascence in 2024 drew a direct correlation between happy employees and happy customers. Financial institutions that improved employee satisfaction saw a 25 per cent increase in client satisfaction.

Pendo’s software experience platform helps improve how work gets done, from employee onboarding to overall software usage. It believes its insights and in-app communications tools are more effective than one-off training, helping She believes live insight into how staff are coping day-to-day with new technology is key.

“The biggest thing companies need to be successful is to have all the data, such as how many employees are logging into applications and what features they’re using. If a company is spending an enormous amount on licences, are those ‘seats’ being utilised? But more importantly, are their employees as productive as they need them to be and are they receiving the value they set out to achieve by purchasing each piece of software?

“The qualitative information is equally important – like how employees feel about each application, whether they are confused or frustrated, and then being able to actually, at scale, watch how they’re utilising them. See where they are getting stuck and how they are navigating workflows and user journeys. Where they are rage-clicking the same button, over and over again, because they can’t get their job done.

“And when they can’t get their job done, not only are they frustrated and unhappy, but you, the financial institution, are not getting the productivity and the business outcomes, and that has a direct impact on the bottom line. All these pieces of the puzzle are critically important to support digital transformation and make sure firms get return on the massive investments they’re making. AI is a great way to see the patterns in this data and then suggest improvements,” says Price.

It can be used to augment employees’ productivity by introducing automation and agents, including tools that helpfind insights, and even conversational applications that act like banking advisors. They can look at data and provide the employee with suggestions about what other products a customer might want, or how they should price a particular product, such as a loan.

“Agents with the potential to do work on behalf of the employee is where it starts to get really interesting,” says Price.

Staff and customers are, after all, similar in as much as companies like Amazon and Netflix have set all our expectations for personalisation.

“When we log into software, we expect it to know us and what our preferences are. We adjust our user experience, based on those things. Financial institutions need to do the same for their employees,” adds Price. “If I’m an underwriter, versus a banker, versus another role at a bank, when I log in, I want the experience to be personalised to my job and what I’m trying to do.

“The experience can evolve, based on how many times an employee has used an application. The first time they log in they might want a welcome experience, whereas, if I’ve been using this piece of software for years and I’m an administrator, I don’t want simplicity. I want to get straight to the job.”

This article was published in The Fintech Magazine Issue 34, Page 42-43