By Sara Williscroft, ABC
November 5, 2018: ATB won a Silver Leaf Award in 2018 for this project, in the Internal Communications category. We have added a video and the work plan to this post.
We’re profiling Calgary’s inspiring 2018 Gold Quill winners! The fourth chat in our series is with Nekolina Lau from ATB for her project: Retail Mobile 3.0, which won an Award of Excellence in the Internal Communications, Communication Management category.
Can you share a brief overview of your winning project?
When launching the retail ATB Mobile 3.0 app ATB focused on enhancing the mobile banking experience by providing a more intuitive interface, better speed, improved performance and more transaction options. But we needed to do more than develop a smart, simple and helpful app with a great customer experience.
We needed to increase adoption by transitioning existing users to the new version of the app and increase the overall app user base with net new users.
With this in mind, our approach to internal communications focused on ensuring ATB team members were aware of the new app, understood how it worked, and why they should be excited about the new version prior to its launch. This would increase their confidence talking about and recommending the app to customers when it became available and drive advocacy amongst team members.
What did you feel most proud of in this project?
I am most proud of the outcomes of this project. The business had a specific goal and it’s clear that the internal communications approach we took contributed to the project’s success.
Working with the project and adoption team up front to establish key goals and metrics gave us something concrete to focus on. This led to a few key tasks that really drove business value. We did more than create awareness, we inspired people to take action and change their behaviours.
What was a key challenge you faced with the project?
As with any technical product, the launch date was contingent on the technical component of the app being delivered.
After a few false starts, changing scope and delays in development and testing, the launch of the app was delayed and the functionality of what was released as part of the initial launch did not deliver all of the key functionality set out in the initial scope.
Adapting quickly, the project team moved to a rolling release launch, requiring the communications team to be specific on what functionality was coming in which release.
What advice can you give to other communicators dealing with your specific objective?
Stakeholder analysis and assessments are key to uncovering motivations, attitude and opinions. As an internal communication team it is easy to fall into a trap where we assume we already know how team members feel and what is important.
Taking the time connect directly with our audience and ask questions specific to our project was a great opportunity to confirm some of these assumptions and also uncover new information.
Why is winning a Gold Quill important to you and your team?
The process of applying for a Gold Quill Award is a great experience because it allows you to opportunity to vet your work against a common strategic approach. It challenges you to always connect to a bigger purpose and objective. Plus, the feedback on my application is something I could reflect on to make me a better communicator.
Winning a Gold Quill Award of Excellence is so meaningful to me because this is an award with a strong reputation and international recognition. Knowing that a team of professionals in the communications field assessed our work as one of the best in the industry is an honour and very humbling. I highly recommend applying.
Congratulations to the ATB team! Last but not least, a huge thanks to Nekolina for her time responding to our questions!
To learn more about Gold Quill click here.
