Verizon
Bill Pay experience
My role: Senior Experience Designer
Goal/focus: To enhance and improve the Bill Pay experience across all platforms (app, web, and chatbot) for Verizon customers.
Research
Usability studies / User interviews
Usability studies of the (then) current Bill Pay experience and spoke directly with customers.
With the Research team's help, we gleaned insights from customers, in real-time, as they attempted to pay their bills.
Most common themes gleaned:
Customers struggled to find ‘payment arrangements’ as it was difficult to notice
The information they could find on ‘payment arrangements’ was overwhelming
The payment process felt too long to customers and some of the details displayed wasn’t clear (ie; bill total)
Total confusion around ‘Promise to Pay’; no real understanding of what it is/does, that it isn’t an actual payment, etc
Specific software
We were also able to leverage a software/system called Glassbox
This allowed us to view any given scenario/experience that a customer has taken, app or desktop, that a customer has taken.
Competitive / Comparative analysis
We conducted some direct competitor research as well as some comparative research to have an understanding of how other companies were handling (bill) payments. This gave us better knowledge on what might/might not be working well, and what we could potentially leverage so that we were not ‘re-inventing’ anything and our experience is recognizable to customers.
Examples of the companies we looked at for our competitive/comparative analysis.
Synthesizing
Once we were done gathering all of the fruitful insights, we began synthesizing it all and putting together artifacts to not only use for our design decisions but to share with our stakeholders and partners as well.
Flow map/chart of the existing experience vs the updated experience.
Service blueprints created for a few different use cases.
Design concepts
After sharing our Point of View (POV) with Business, Product, and Engineering, we also gathered Business and Tech requirements. Once this was shared with us, we agreed on taking the most Agile approach to tackle this Bill Pay experience.
My Verizon App (MVA) first
Take a true mobile-first approach
Landing pg to begin
Tackle one-time, same-day, payments to begin since this accounted for 74% of customers
All other paths (ie; payment arrangements) would lead customers down the BAU path.
Taking this Agile approach for the MVA payment landing screen would allow us to gain customer feedback and make quick iterations if and where needed. We would then have the ability to apply these findings to the other payment flows that Bill Pay has to offer.
Round one
This is the first iteration/update to the payment landing screen. We were able to change what initially took customers a minimum of 3 taps/clicks to make a same-day payment and turn it into one step.
These updates were all usability tested by more than 10 participants before being developed.
Here are a few callouts on the enhancements we made to combat the customer pain points:
Taking the customer to separate pg
No need for a review screen and it helped the flow feel ‘quicker’ to customers
Saw this from many companies in comparative analysis
Extracted ‘Promise to Pay’ from payment methods
Treat this as its own path since we knew customers had confusion with it being looped in with actual payment methods
The ability to change the date wasn’t feasible at this point from a backend standpoint, but we wanted to keep the format there for familiarity once the ability to change the date was available
Refinements
Detailed Designs
‘More payment options’ (payment arrangements) path
Since a lot of customer frustration was around payment arrangements (future dated payments, 2 installments, Promise to Pay), we created various flows/experiences to attempt to tackle this and we rigorously tested these flows
Prototype
Payment arrangement: 2 installments
Same-day payment (happy path)
Payment arrangement: Agree to pay later
Delivery / Outcomes
The updated Bill Pay experience has been released for MVA and it will be released on Web near the end of 2023/early 2024. Overall, this updated flow has seen positive results:
The conversion rate has increased from 74% to 85%
The call-in rate has decreased from 3.2% to 2%
From a qualitative point of view, we have seen and heard positive feedback from customers as well.
“This is very easy, simple, and clean. You gave me all my options very clearly. Most people would be able to move on with this pretty quickly and easily." -21
"My children could pay this bill. That's how easy and efficient this was." -41
"For people that aren't tech-savvy, this will really help out with making sure they pay the correct amount." -33