TD Bank Enables CX Research Experimentation for Insights Teams

TD Bank Enables Customer Experience Research Experimentation for Insights Teams

Methodify is Sago’s automated quantitative research engine that provides tools and solutions to enable agile research. TD Bank leveraged this technology to enhance its consumer insights practice.

Exploring TD Bank’s Experience Using Methodify

Andrew Hui, Associate Vice President of Consumer Insights at TD Bank, shares how the organization first considered Methodify back in 2018, as the company was excited by the following key benefits:

1. Methodify moves quickly, enabling TD Bank to obtain insights in days instead of weeks.
2. The platform created an opportunity for TD Bank to create its own research tools, and to identify red flags in insights earlier in the process to save time.
3. The user interface for Methodify was much easier to use than competitors, which are often confusing and intimidating to navigate through according to Hui.
4. Methodify’s simplicity lowered the barrier of entry to consumer insights, driving widespread adoption across TD Bank.
5. In hindsight, Hui believes TD Bank has only scratched the surface of what Methodify is capable of throughout the five-year journey.

The relationship between TD Bank and Methodify evolved organically through these stages:

• 2018 is when TD Bank onboarded Methodify as a new vendor. This process is rigorous due to requirements in the financial services sector.
• By 2019, TD Bank agreed to trial the most accessible, low-commitment offering, which was the “custom survey builder.”
• TD Bank continued to build on its first methods, forming a template for doing research.
• In 2020, more of the TD team was onboarded to the platform.
• The COVID-19 pandemic deepened TD’s relationship with Methodify, as consumer insights demanded faster turnarounds to navigate a period of uncertainty.
• By 2021, TD Bank’s insight practitioners were increasingly comfortable relying on the paltform, with some stakeholders forming colloquialisms like “run a Methodify test.”
• By 2022, Methodify was embedded in the creative development process after facilitating more than 300 research projects since initial vendor onboarding.

A Specific Example of How TD Bank Uses Methodify

Hui outlined the old process used by TD Bank during creative development:

“Since TD Bank is in an extremely competitive category, we face a lot of challenges finding breakthroughs in our creative development. This model is the old way of doing things:”

1. Start
2. Master Brief Intake (Agency)
3. Creative Territory Development (Agency)
4. Creative Territory Approval (TD)
5. Script Development (Agency)
6. Script Approval (TD)
7. Video Stim Development (Agency)
8. Normative Quantitative Testing (TD insights)
9. Qualitative Testing (TD insights)
10. TD Formal Creative Review (TD G&C)
11. Finished Video Production (Agency)
12. Trafficking

Hui clarified:

“A key part of this process is normative quantitative testing. This can make or break creative development and is very expensive to perform. If the test results are below norm, the team would either tweak what we could, or return to the beginning of the process. This completely goes against our desire for things to move quickly.”

This led to the creative development team spending most of its budget before learning that changes were required—a waste of capital.

Methodify enabled the use of new testing methodologies, allowing TD to manage risks by capturing that consumer perspective far earlier in the process. The team knew what changes were needed faster, leading to less waste.

Creative Territory Development

After integrating Methodify, TD Bank performed creative territory development via this process:

1. Take creative territory into testing
2. Testing determines whether the concept is in the right or wrong space
3. Agencies build scripts
4. TD tests those agency scripts
5. Present to consumers to gauge whether they like the creative activation
6. THEN go into normative testing, and testing streams

As is apparent, Steps 1 through 5 come before normative testing in Step 6, offering more opportunities to pivot and change the creative development before spending the budget.

A Summary from Andrew Hui of TD Bank

“Overall, this process has been working for just over a year, and with success. We formally embedded Methodify testing into our creative development process,” said Hui. “Our team now uses a methodology of validate-revise-repeat. We try not to take the things we do, or the tools we use as canon, as the rapidly changing consumer landscape requires us to continuously evolve. Thanks to software support, we continuously scrutinize our work, tear it down, and build it back up until our consumers are satisfied. Additionally, templating is something we want to use everywhere thanks to great process efficiency improvements. Instead of focusing on project execution, we are looking for more opportunities for templating with our research agency partners.”

Rounding up his thoughts, Hui looked to the future:

“I am a firm believer in democratizing access to insights, which our experimentation with Methodify enables. This may involve enabling stakeholders with new capabilities to self-serve their own research. It’s about creating safe environments for non-researchers like stakeholders, so they can get the insights they need. We think about integrating-to-simplify, avoiding a focus on nitty gritty project management or research, and instead the ability of teams to think through the implications and possibilities of their work. To achieve this end-state, integration of a consumer insights platform is the first step. That way, teams can spend less time distributing results to the right people, and more time connecting those results to actual business strategies and decisions.”