From Stalled Growth to Strategic Gains: A Win-Loss Research Success Story
A leading U.S. banking institution partnered with The DRG to better understand what drives new customer acquisition—and what causes attrition. Their goal: uncover insights that would help increase market share and strengthen their competitive position.
Despite strong brand recognition and loyal existing customers, the bank was falling short of its aggressive growth targets. They faced three critical challenges:
- Stalled acquisition rates among high-priority demographic segments
- Rising attrition to both traditional and digital competitors
- Limited visibility into the decision-making factors behind customers’ choices
To address these gaps, the bank needed a clear picture of the competitive dynamics at play—who was winning, with which customer types, and why. They also wanted to understand what was motivating customers to choose their bank, and just as importantly, what was driving them to leave.
banking
The Solution
The DRG launched a continuous win-loss insights program spanning eight key product lines and high-value customer segments. This included deep competitive analysis to assess how the bank stacked up against both traditional financial institutions and digital-first challengers.
The study explored customer behavior and sentiment at multiple stages of the journey, with a focus on:
- Key life events and financial triggers prompting customers to open new accounts
- Primary sources of information used during financial product and institution research
- Crucial decision points and touchpoints influencing the path to purchase
- Core needs and motivations behind banking relationships
- Competitive advantages—and disadvantages—by customer type and product line
To maximize impact, we integrated these findings with the bank’s existing customer and brand insights programs, including relational and transactional surveys. This synthesis helped uncover not only what mattered most to specific customer segments, but also which product features, messages, and channels would be most effective in attracting and retaining them.
The Wins
While we found the bank was well-regarded for building strong, trusting relationships with existing customers, our insights revealed high-impact, actionable opportunities to improve both acquisition and retention strategies:
- Uncovered key strengths to promote to prospects
- Identified digital experience gaps – especially with younger customer segments – and how to overcome them
- Revealed the features and rewards tactics that were most likely to attract each segment
- Pinpointed key reasons customers were leaving and how digital-first competitors were attracting them
With these insights in hand, the bank implemented meaningful changes across the organization. Product enhancements addressed key gaps, digital improvements were prioritized, and marketing and sales communications were refined to better resonate with target segments.
By turning analytics and insights into strategy—and strategy into action—the bank is now positioned to grow smarter, compete harder, and build lasting relationships with the customers who matter most.
this could be your win
And we can help you get it. We’re here to make the complexities of marketing research simple and reveal the unknown around your customers, brand, employees, and market.
