A UX Design–turned–research company project for Bankwest. 

"Revolutionising in-app support"

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The brief: To reduce customer call centre calls through uplifting in app support.

The set up: Working on this initiative simultaneously with various other initiatives with multiple cross functional squads.    

The process: Research, synthesis, design and iteration. 

Key tools: Figma, Askable, Teams, JIRA.

Key methods:                                
● Current state analysis (tree node diagram).
● Competitor and comparator analysis. 
● Service Design Blueprint. 
● User interviews.
● Analytics analysis.  
● Cross team collaboration.
●  UI Design, wireframing and prototyping. 

My role: Owned UX Research, synthesis and design. Engaged and collaborated with multiple squads across the bank with intersecting work. Our squad was busy building/delivering a previous initiative I designed so I worked mostly autonomously.

The problem: The call centre receives 25 000 calls per month but Bankwest only has he resources to take 18 000 calls per month, resulting in a 50% abandon rate on these calls, low net promoter score (NPS), colleague burn out and frustrated customers. Customers cannot self serve and get the help they need in app to resolve their issues, without having to call the bank. 

The solution: We designed solutions to make it easier for customers to self serve and find the help they need in app for their most pressing issues, without needing to call the bank. We did this by digitising the dispute transaction process, providing a dedicated help page and prioritising the message us feature. 

RESEARCH

Comparing a range of in app support experiences.

Extensive competitive and comparator analysis helped us gain insights into how other apps handle in-app support. We identified some clear opportunities for improvement, regarding our chat feature, FAQs and the overall information architecture (IA) of help.

×

Current in-app state analysis.

A detailed tree node diagram of the current state of the bank’s in app support helped us to analyse the experience at a closer level. Some clear pain points were already evident and some some key opportunities to further explore were:      
● Whether the help locations were intuitive for users to find? 
● How relevant and of how high priority help topics were to users?
● Whether the chat experience made the most sense to users and was it meeting their expectations? 

User-centric research.

We did 10 target user interviews, covering 5 tasks, with bankwest app customers in order to learn: 
● Which help topics customers find helpful or not helpful and of highest to lowest priority and why.
● Customer pain points of finding help in app and expectations of where help would be the most intuitive and easy to find and why. 
● Why users call us rather than message us, how long they try to resolve issues before calling us, what’s been their processes to solve issues and how have their experiences been.
● Customer pain points, experiences and preferences with messaging the bank and what their expectations are of this experience. 

Clear themes emerged.

Digital affinity mapping enabled us to synthesise the feedback from the interviews and all that we’ve learnt from the UX research thus far. Some clear themes emerged in this process about users’ expectations and pain points regarding the bank’s in app support experience.

Key user insights.

My findings revealed specific pain points across several areas, including the user interface (UI), usability, accessibility, visual design, intuitiveness, and form interactions, which led to core user insights. This data-driven approach allowed me to pinpoint and address key issues, driving effective design solutions to elevate the customer experience. 

Understanding gaps in our processes to enhance efficiency.

Creating a service design blueprint for the customer journey of problem resolution with the bank enabled us to visualise what’s going on in the organisation and understand some of the the implications of potential process changes.

In the problem resolution phase the customer may have to visit a branch, use bank@post at a post office and/or print and fill out a physical form, which are all ‘in person’ customer actions, which we want to minimise to help our customers self serve digitally as much as possible and to strive to be digital disrupters in the industry.

×

Quantitative data re-enforced our qualitative data insights.

There were multiple data sources from 400+ customers (margin of error 4.7%) that we drew from including:                            
● Surveys and adobe analytics.
● Reviews and complaints.
● Call centre and branches.
● Website search and help pages.
●  Digital conversations (messaging).

Leveraging others superpowers.

Aside from valuable collaboration with the self service first, website, digital conversations and daisy squads I also reached out to the customer insights manager at the bank to take him through my research thus far to see if he had any relevant insights. The quantitative data he synthesised from a 442+ customer survey aiming to optimise digital engagement validated that completing transaction disputes in-app was highly sort after by our customers. 

SOLUTION CONCEPTS

Sketching and wireframing the self serve transaction dispute app flow.

×
×

A game-changing feature.

We focused on developing the transaction dispute feature as the most impactful UX improvement. By digitizing this process, we empowered users to resolve disputes directly within the app, aligning with the brand’s vision of a “simple” and “easy” customer experience. Further iterations would need to be done to flesh out any unhappy paths, error states and considering all privacy, compliance and technical requirements/limitations.

Empowering users with a in app help hub.

×

Uplifting the message us feature.

×
×

Further recommendations.

● Marketing – educate customers on the messaging service updates to encourage engagement/shift behaviours (Eg. emails EDM, in-app notification, flash screen, call hold message and digital onboarding). 
● Service design – quicker chat responses (approval of resources to deliver) and quicker call responses (design solutions to uplift of self-service and chat features).
● Explore UI design solutions and iconography to increase visibility of help in “more” , “login” and “home” screens to ensure easy accessibility to help hub.

Ensuring continuity of our work.

Although the project was rerouted due to a company reorganization, our work laid a strong foundation for future squads to build on. I ensured that our research, design solutions, and insights were documented and shared across teams, ensuring that Bankwest could continue improving in-app support for its customers.