Wells Fargo: Why customers abandon — and how to bring them back
Problem: Drop-off and abandonment rates were rising for Wells Fargo's checking account application — and even customers who completed the process weren't engaging in the primacy actions (direct deposit, debit card, Zelle) that drive long-term retention. The bank didn't know why. Oliver Wyman was brought in to diagnose root causes across the full journey, from application to the first 60 days of activity, and build a strategy to fix them. I led the design and product strategy over a 10-week engagement.
Role: Design and Product Strategy Lead — led competitive audit, synthesized qualitative and quantitative research, facilitated stakeholder alignment and prioritization. Presented directly to Wells Fargo's Head of Design and Head of Consumer Digital.
Team: Qualitative and quantitative researchers, management consultants, client stakeholders
Outcome: Delivered a prioritized roadmap of ~20 initiatives — several adopted into Wells Fargo's active product roadmap.
01: Understanding the full journey
To begin uncovering the reasons for abandonment, we structured the research around three questions: why were applicants abandoning mid-process, why weren't new customers engaging in the actions that drive retention, and how did Wells Fargo's experience compare to competitors?
To understand the above, I led a competitive audit, benchmarking Wells Fargo’s application process against Chase, Capital One, Chime, Ally, PNC, and Bank of America. I went through each competitor's full flow end-to-end across mobile web and desktop, documenting every screen, nudge, email, and notification that shaped the customer experience. In parallel, I partnered with our research team to run qualitative diary studies with 20 participants, following them through the full journey of applying for and opening a checking account. And finally, my team ran a quantitative pulse survey (n=503) to validate what we were hearing in the qualitative studies.
Competitive Audit - Broken out by competitor
Diary Study - Abandonment
Competitive Audit - Broken out by competitor and step
Diary Study - Abandonment
The competitive research allowed us to analyze how Wells Fargo was doing via quantifiable metrics such as number of questions asked and number of pages in the flow, and allowed us to measure, from a heuristics perspective, how Wells Fargo compared. From here, I synthesized all three into a journey map that visualized the gap between user goals and current experience at each stage, highlighting the pain point at each stage (if it existed), and potential opportunities to alleviate those pain points.
User Journey - Application process
02: Challenging assumptions with competitive data
The journey map gave us the full picture and the competitive audit, combined with the qualitative and quantitative findings surfaced a key finding:
Wells Fargo required the least amount of information from applicants to open an account — yet when participants ranked Chase, Chime, and Wells Fargo after completing all three applications, Wells Fargo felt the least secure and ranked lowest as "best fit."
The issue wasn't volume of information requested of its users — it was how that information was presented. Wells Fargo had the least guided onboarding of any competitor and bugs in their nudge delivery system (emails, notifications), meant users who left mid-process often never came back.
The initial instinct had been that the application needed to be shorter and simpler. Our data showed the real problem was trust and guidance — users needed to feel like the process was secure, that they understood why each step existed, and that the bank would follow up if they dropped off. That became the strategic foundation for every recommendation we made. The combination of the competitive audit and the qualitative study allowed us to put together best practices principles, synthesizing who the leaders in the industry are, what makes them leaders, how users perceive Wells Fargo and why, and opportunities for Wells Fargo to improve, and overall experience principles to meet the needs of users.
Excerpt 1 from Research Synthesis deck
Excerpt 2 from Research Synthesis deck
Excerpt 4 from Research Synthesis deck
Excerpt 3 from Research Synthesis deck
03: Building a framework our client could use without us
We had findings from three different research methods spanning the full customer journey — a lot of signal to make sense of. Drawing on behavioral science, we distilled it into a framework built around four principles pulled directly from the research. It gave our client a shared language for making product decisions, not just a list of things to fix.
Transparent — uncertainty breeds anxiety, and users abandon when they don't understand why information is being asked.
Supportive — financial tasks are intimidating, and users need to feel guided.
Consistent — trust is fragile, and inconsistencies between mobile and branch create friction.
Easy — 64% of survey participants said they wouldn't improve their financial lives if the process wasn't convenient.
Early whiteboard mapping session
04: Outcome
In 10 weeks, we moved from internal ambiguity to a prioritized roadmap of 25 initiatives spanning the full journey — from application through onboarding and primacy activation. We worked closely with Wells Fargo's product and design teams to categorize each recommendation as a quick win, big project, or minimal impact — factoring in their existing tech stack, regulatory constraints, and how the product was currently built. This ensured the roadmap wasn't just strategically sound but actually implementable. The behavioral framework we built didn't just organize our recommendations — it gave the bank a shared language for evaluating customer experience decisions long after our engagement ended.
Below are selections from the final deliverable: the prioritized recommendation tables and two example deep dives showing how competitive audit data and pulse survey findings translated directly into actionable initiatives.
Excerpt 1 from final readout deck
Excerpt 2 from final readout deck
Excerpt 4 from final readout deck
Excerpt 3 from final readout deck