Reducing Operational Costs by Putting the Customer First
This project focused on enhancing the benefits mobile app to be self-service and preemptive, directly targeting high operational costs associated with customer support.
The Challenge & Strategic Opportunity
The Problem: Associates in the process of retirement wanted a way to get more immediate status updates and answer simple questions. The lack of a solution resulted in reliance on the call center, resulting in increased operational cost.
My Role: As the Senior User Experience Designer, I led the end-to-end design and validation for the application.
Strategic Focus: The primary goal was to shift the application to be more proactive and informative, integrating contextual help, improved information architecture, and clear status indicators.
Design Action & Execution
Discovery & Pain Points: Conducted user research, consisting of call center reporting and direct end user interviews. Identified call types that could be mitigated, including retiree status calls. Identified frequent retiree questions and areas of confusion and frustration.
Targeted Redesign: Focused the redesign on providing clear resources to common questions, simple, automated navigation and immediate access to status updates and next steps.
Validation: Utilized usability testing and post-launch analytics and feedback reviews to ensure the new experience effectively met end user expectation.
Outcome & Impact
The redesigned applications successfully transitioned users to self-service, generating a measurable return on investment and user satisfaction.
Operational Cost Reduction: Achieved a 20% reduction in call center volume
. User Empowerment: Improved the consumer experience by providing direct access to information without external assistance.
