Penta

Penta is a digital business bank platform whose goal is to make business banking easy, simple and fast, so their clients can actually focus on their business.

Test case: Copywriting

To do

Penta needs three ideas for how they can improve on their brand, and how this could be approached.

Research

Competitor analysis

I've started out by conducting some competitor analysis to identify companies that offer a similar service to Penta: bunq, Curve, Holvi, N26, Revolut and Wise, and look at the products they offer. I've collected this information in an Airtable database.

Conversation mining

Now that I have an understanding of which other companies provide a similar service to Penta, it’s time to get to know the users better.

To do this, I've conducted some conversation mining. I collected reviews and feedback of both Penta and their competitors. This provides information on who the current and potential users are, and what their desires and pain points are.

I also highlighted copy that caught my eye. When figuring out how to write copy that engages with a particular user group, it can be helpful to study how they communicate, and see what words and phrases they use.

I've collected this information in an Airtable database.

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Penta has pursued a strategy of targeting small and medium-sized enterprises. They have seen success by offering to open business accounts more quickly and easily than high street banks, and not charge exorbitant fees to startups.

Based on my research, I feel that there is a great deal of scope to expand this strategy by luring customers away from other digital banks.

I’ve observed from conversation mining that Penta rates extremely well for customer service, while this is consistently a pain point for users of competing services ('Twelve hour plus turn around on their app chat. Not bad for an ONLINE banking service!').

I’ve also observed that customers frequently talk about switching from one digital bank to another, often as a result of a poor customer service experience ('I have since switched to Google pay.')

Copywriting for Penta should emphasise the responsiveness of their customer service, the ability to speak to a real person about an issue, and the availability of English language support, as this represents a good opportunity to tempt customers away from other digital banks.

See the below Google advertisement:

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Penta talks a lot on their copy about social responsibility issues like carbon-neutrality and diversity, such as in this blog post:

This has helped form Penta’s brand identity and establish it as a more personal, human company than high-street banks as well as some of its digital banking competitors.

This could also be an opportunity to incentivise more engagement with their products and services. Penta already offers cash bonuses for successfully referring other businesses, but why not integrate this with their work with Plant-for-the-Planet?

See the below Facebook advertisement:

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Based on conversation mining, security is a concern for digital banking customers, with some reporting being the victims of phishing or smishing schemes ('Due to their lack of security and doing zero efforts to make their users aware of the current scam tactics, I was victim of an elaborate smishing scam').

Business banking customers may be expected to be more savvy about their account information, but with many digital business banks offering cards that can be distributed among business's employees for different purposes or budgets, customers are understandably concerned about their account’s security.

Offering reassurances would be a good move for a brand like Penta. It's true that there aren’t a lot of means for digital banks to prevent customers handing their account details over to fraudsters, but behaviour monitoring software can flag suspicious activity. However, this does have the downside of holding up transactions or even freezing accounts, something that my conversation mining showed some customers find to be a pain point.

For a more personal touch, Penta can push education materials for customers and their employees on how to bank securely. This helps to cement the idea of Penta as a helpful, human partner in their customers' businesses.

See the below out-of-home advertisement: