Customer Service Platform
A walkthrough of my journey at a financial services company while designing for the applications used globally by customer service professionals.
My Role
I came into the team as the sole UX Designer, responsible for driving the design strategy and tactics to uplift a portfolio of legacy applications into the next generation tools for customer service.
The Product
Portfolio of internal applications used globally by servicing specialists for New Accounts, Credit and Collections.
The Problem
The product team has not had much exposure to proper UX process and methods. User research is often overlooked, and UI design is a painful task juggled between Product Owners and Developers.
“The business is asking for a new button, right here.”
- Poor design strategy when enhancing existing features.
"We already met to define the feature and now we need a mockup."
- UX is not involved from the beginning of the conversation.
"I think the users will love the new feature when we finally take it to production."
- New designs are rarely tested with end users.
The Action Plan
It was very clear to me that the UX maturity of the organization was very young, so I started incorporating best practices to begin influencing positive change and awareness to the benefits of the user experience design discipline.
One of the things I did was define a UX process to help me communicate and promote the types of activities we needed to incorporate into the process of building our products.
Research & Discovery >
Call listening
Side by side field studies
User interviews
Focus groups
Expert interviews
Comparative analysis
Analysis >
Journey Mapping
Personas
Information Architecture
Affinity Mapping
Design >
User interface design
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Support >
Demo designs to stakeholders
Hand-off to scrum team
Feedback to UI developers
Quality testing
Learnings >
User surveys
Continuous observation
Proactive user feedback
The Results
1
Established the use of clickable prototypes with Invision.
Design hand offs to developers became quicker.
Concepts became much easier to visualize.
Prototypes enabled higher fidelity user testing.
2
Encouraged more frequent testing and contact with our users.
Built empathy for the servicing specialists and their work.
Obtained feedback early and directly from actual users.
Gained valuable insights on user behaviors.
3
Advocated for the early involvement of design in the decision making process.
Prevented ill-conceived design decisions.
Encouraged out of the box thinking.
Ensured thoughtful design approaches.
4
Adopted the use of a design language system.
Ensured consistent use of standard components.
Enforced proper use of design elements.
Produced more visually appealing designs.
5
Drove awareness and demonstrated the value of UX design.
Influenced the case to grow and form a new UX team in less than a year.
Supported other product teams on UX recruiting and hiring.
Project Work
The Product
Inventory management system to improve the productivity of collections specialists while minimizing the risk of manual work.
What made it special?
Design Sprint product. Managing innovation and mitigating the effects of distrupting an existing process.
The Product
Enrollment process and tracking of payment programs for Card Members facing severe financial difficulties.
What made it special?
Enterprise initiatives with impact on multiple platforms. Highly collaborative across business functions.
The Product
Foundational design and interaction patterns for the next generation servicing platforms.
What made it special?
Carried under ambiguous design direction. Taking calculated risks.
The Product
Payment journey adaptations based on specific market requirements.
What made it special?
Allowing flexibility while maintaining consistent interaction patterns.
Wrapping up
I believe I have played an important role at my organization influencing a positive change in its UX maturity. Over the past two years there has been a rising interest in incorporating more design and user centric approaches into our product teams.
Many of these changes have been possible thanks to my colleagues who have been open to welcoming these UX methods and the leaders who have made a conscious investment to support this growth.