‘Through events we really know what's happening in the market’

Antoinette Barnard introduced a new event strategy for the B2B services Tribe at Rabobank, one of the Dutch major banks. Within the first year this approach is already paying off with more sales, substantive PR, better customer insights and a highly motivated ‘tribe’.

At Rabobank they work from several so-called tribes, which are subdivided into ‘areas’. For example, the B2B services tribe consists of the areas Identity & Payment Acceptance , Customer Support, Risk & Compliance and Sales & Alliances.

Head of B2B Sales & Alliances is Antoinette Barnard. After a banking career in her homeland South-Africa, she started two years ago in this role at the bank with its headquarters in the Dutch city of Utrecht.

Common goal

“We are a tribe because we function as a family”, Barnard explains. “We all have a common goal. There is no individual interest in it. We want new merchants for Rabobank, new customers for our business and we also want to make sure we keep them. And that we keep them happy.”

“And it works well too because what you need is all within the section. So, when I need something from my product team, I know where to find them and I know they can prioritize to a new need that is developing.”

“It's just easier to work like that because we all know that there are, for example, five priorities for 2024 and everyone is going for the same priorities. So, if you have a conversation with someone in one of the other teams within the tribe, they will understand you, because they speak the same language. They understand what the goal is. They understand what it is we need to achieve that goal.”

Engagement function

What she missed after taking office was a customer engagement function. This is something she implemented on June 1st of last year. Events play an important role in this. 

“You normally get customer insights from a marketing perspective, but you don't really get insight from your direct merchants, your direct customers, your direct partners. If you hear it from someone else who has experienced it, that's a different conversation.”

‘You think that you’re doing great, but then you get feedback from sixty surveys, where people at an event tell you that this is not the way they like it.’

“Therefore, we built a model to address that limitation specifically. Now, that model has been working for nine months and it has been very successful. In the last year we've had more leads, sales leads, from our events than we've ever seen.”

“We   already had an event leg, but very simple, very low-cost. Since we have had the formal customer engagement structure, we participated in major events such as Money 20/20 (international fintech event, EN), Horecava and Gastvrij Rotterdam (catering & hospitality tradeshows, EN) and the Webwinkel Vakdagen (webshop tradeshow, EN).” 

Reason of being there

“We do fun things at those events. We make sure we invite the right people, and we ensure that we have a large stand. But the most important thing for us is why we are there.” 

“And the reason why we're there, the reason why we're doing these things, is so that we can make sure, that we really know what's happening in the market. I always tell my team; you don't know what you don't know. We think we know, but we actually don’t.”

“Merchants are different, customers are different, partners are different; they all have different needs and constraints. At these events you can show what your propositions are, and you can show a new product. Like, for example, we showed a demo of our new Tap to Pay solution at Gastvrij Rotterdam long before it went live. We showed the visitors a mock transaction, how to do it, what it looks like, how long it takes.”

“That's why we're doing this, to engage more and to raise awareness. It's also PR for us, but it's also that we want to show the market that this is what we do.”

Expert skills

“We usually have our partnerships managers on the stand. I'm there most of the time. Our Events Manager Carolien van Leeuwen is there most of the time. So, there's a good representation of commercially astute people who understand how the business works with very expert payment expertise and very expert skills, because we also have a very specialized product suite. So even if someone comes on stage and wants to have a conversation with you, it is a different conversation that you have, compared to someone asking you on the phone about a proposition they found on your website. When you're face-to-face with a person and you can explain it and you can show it, it's just different.”

“Sometimes we also invite one of our existing partners as a co-host, so that we can illustrate how a partnership works, for example. Then you go a little further. It's not just to show the bank's product, because that's the traditional way of doing it, but it's also to show how well it works as the partner has got his solutions set up there. Or he has his offering that he can show you.”

“That works very well and we're going to work this way for each of our events. Both our partner and we will attract our audience, so we both create new sales opportunities and can build new customer journeys.”

Purpose behind the event strategy

“The whole purpose behind our event strategy is to take it a little further, bringing out that value and bringing out long-term investments. Because it's not a short-lived thing. These conversations happen over months, and you build the relationship first before the partner agrees to your services or your offering.”

“Or they come to us and ask to help them to reach their objectives. Then you start having  this conversation. That doesn't happen overnight. It's something that's in the works and you invest a lot of time into that. And there is a lot of tender love that needs to go into it, but also skill and expertise.”

Return on investment

It must be clear that for Rabobank, like any business, return on investment is very important. The bank has a strict process at the events where it keeps the record of the customers who visited the stand and what the follow-up would be. With their permission of course. 

Barnard: “So, from a sales point of view, we can certainly calculate the return on investment in revenue terms. We can specifically link the successful sales we got from an event. We know what we're processing for a merchant, from a payment point of view. For a partner, the same. In that way we can calculate that.”

‘Ultimately the events team is responsible for the return on investments’

“On the PR side, there's no revenue number to that, but you can calculate the result from your market awareness and your customer satisfaction results. If you know there were five hundred visitors at your stand and you surveyed sixteen of them, you have a sample with a 95 percent confidence level that is actually the feedback from the event and it's part of the return on investment. Our NPS (Net Promoter Score, EN) went up, the propensity to repurchase views changed and our customer effort scores were impacted. Yes, we can track that”.

Collecting customer insights

“But the other very important thing is the insights bit. We have a Customer Insights team that is specific to B2B. And they also use those events to collect customer feedback in terms of satisfaction. At the Webwinkel Vakdagen they actually had a QR code that visitors could walk up to and copy to access a survey where they could express what they think of Rabobank and our service.”

“We use that information, and we reconsider the customer journey. You think that you’re doing great, but then you get feedback from sixty surveys, where people at an event tell you that this is not the way they like it. And then we change it based on that.”

Dedicated events team

The tribe B2B services has a dedicated events team as part of the customer engagement area, together with the customer insights team. The latter engages with customers from a data perspective and through events this team also engages with customers in a physical way.

“The dedicated event capability in the group knows what all the limitations are”, Barnard explains. “The roadmap is built on that, so that the events team knows exactly what the constraints are and the objectives of those teams within the tribe. And then they can plan the roadmap of the events in a way that they can achieve the formulated goals in those different areas.”

Those tough questions

“When I built this capability a year ago, I said someone who's going to lead an events team in the B2B tribe needs to understand the payment landscape because it makes it easier for her. It also makes it easier for her to reflect to what the teams want to do.” 

“Why do you want to go there? What is it you want to achieve? Show me it links up with your business plan. Shall we increase the number of customers? Shall we improve customer association? Will we change a customer journey? Shall we improve a process?”

“The events team is there to ask those tough questions, because ultimately the team is responsible for the return on investments.”

 

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“I think that the event strategy in our case is not only for our customers, our partners, but it is also how we develop the skills of our own teams. How do we get them to do what they do better? How do we get them to love what they do? How do they live that passion when they go to an event like this? And that they can have a conversation about their love for identity services and this is where they see it going to in the market. You get that enthusiasm and that's the difference. I think that's why it works well for us.”

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‘Over the four days we did 23 podcasts’

“Money 20/20 is a big one for us in terms of networking”, Antoinette Barnard talks about their presence in 2023 at the worldwide fintech event at RAI Amsterdam. 

“At this event all the international fintech players are coming together to discuss the future and show their own solution. For Rabobank it is important to be part of these discussions, and create exposure around our fintech B2B Services like Identity & Payment Acceptance. 

“Next to our stand, we had a podcast host, and we had a pre-agreed list of topics that we put together, around themes that we thought would be of interest and over the four days we did 23 podcasts.”

“It attracted a lot of people. Everybody who walked by saw it because it was a glass wall room.

“And it was not all business related. For example, I did a podcast about women and leadership in the payments industry. And how women can enter the payment world that is normally seen as a man's dominated world.”

“So, we also used that opportunity not only to focus on the business side, but also to improve talent. Mentoring. How do you make the difference for the people in your team who want to work in such an environment? We gave it a little bit of a different spin, which is really fun.”

 

This article was published in Conference Matters international 142, May 2024