RBC First Time Home Buyer Journey

Background

As the Senior Researcher for the team responsible for creating digital experiences to support the RBC mortgages business and their customers, I spent 12+ months conducting research with Mortgage Specialists and first time home buyers. The goals for all the studies I ran was primarily to test the user experiences that the team was developing. Along the way, I gathered so much more data about the home buying journey and the people experiencing buying a home for the first time. I collated this additional data into a sketch of what the customer journey of a first time home buyer looked like.

Goals

I wanted to formalize this sketch. Although I felt confident in the accuracy of the information I had gathered and the patterns I was seeing, I knew I needed to take a methodological approach if the team was going to be able to generalize the findings for a larger population.

Methodology

Stage 1 — Workshop: The customer journey I had sketched was primarily composed of journey phases. I used these phases to draw columns on an online white board. These were presented to participants in an online group setting of five participants. In a 2-hour session, participants reviewed the phases and a) confirmed / edited / deleted / added phases, b) added the activities they performed in each phase. I ran five sessions with five participants per session.

Stage 2 — Workshop review / diary study: Once I had collated the information from all 25 participants, I created an online review for the participants in the form of a diary study. Participants were asked to log on after the group session and review / confirm / edit the information we gathered in the sessions. Each participant was only asked to review a subset of all the phases, and phases were randomized across participants.

Stage 3 — Survey: The final phase was an online survey with 1000 participants.

Executive Summary

This project represents the culmination of over a years’ worth of research on the first time home buyer’s journey and contains rich insights for use in developing resources to not only help first time home buyers but to also strengthen the relationship between real estate, financial, and other service providers and their customers. In addition, the inclusion of time horizons in this journey give service providers an unparalleled opportunity to develop customers for life.