THE PROBLEM

Absent-minded customers are prone to missing their credit card payment and fall into collections.

This is putting pressure on delinquency rate, impacting the Bank’s write-off’s, and resulting in high operating costs. Although customers can sign up for automatic payments via phone and branch visits, there are no options in the digital channel and the demand for it became even greater during COVID.

Working with challenges

01 — COVID-19 pandemic
This request came urgently from the business when the pandemic first hit. As part of the Covid-19 relief initiatives, we had a very tight timeline of a month to work with.

02 — Notifications out of scope
Reminder is one of the top things that came to mind when I was first briefed on the project. However, after connecting with the engineering team, we found out that notifications are managed by another system and is out of scope for the near-future.

03 — Credit card is a complex product
Throughout the usability and concept testings that I have been in the past, I’ve learnt that many people struggle to understand how credit cards work. The AutoPay logistics documents from business and the FAQs sheet from the Call Centre showed many types of scenarios that can potentially happen to our customers, ranging from insufficient funds to manual payments. How can we bring clarity and security to our users without overloading them with information?

THE IDEATION

Understanding the AutoPay journey together

To ensure that we cover all scenarios relating to AutoPay, have an accurate understanding of the ecosystem, and engage the services that we may need at the right time, I mapped out the ideal journey with my Product owner. The map provides a high-level visualization of the experience and is used as a skeleton for future designs.

I ran a quick virtual ideation workshop with a small group of product owners, developers, and designers to brainstorm what the key steps in this experience — set up, manage, and delete — might look like. After the session, I grouped together similar ideas and sketched out the concepts.

DATA & TESTING

Single manage vs. Multi-manage

During ideation, I came up with two IAs — one where the user has to go into each individual account to set up AutoPay and the other where the user can manage AutoPay for all cards on one page. In order to make an informed decision, I reached out to the analytics team for some credit card data as well as brought the two designs into testing.

Ultimately, single manage was chosen as the average number of credit cards per customer was 1.5 and the IA was preferred by all testing participants.

Design highlights

01 — Tracking behavioural impacts from entry points
One of the things that we had difficulty with in usability testing was the timing for the opt-in prompt. These tests are task-oriented, and the mock-ups are not a reflection of the participant’s finances. There are gaps between what the participant say they would do while looking at a prototype vs. what they would actually do when using their own bank accounts.

We decided to bring A/B testing to production by releasing the feature with two prompts — one that initiates before the user completes their bill payment, and one that initiates after the user makes a payment to their credit card and lads on the confirmation screen. One when we have enough data collected, we will re-visit the designs and make any changes needed.

02 — Providing transparency to ease anxiety
Customers have often told us that the reason why they don’t set up for automatic transfers or payments is because the loss of control. They’re afraid that they may not have enough money in their bank account and will get charged with fees. They’re afraid that, due to unforeseen reasons, the payment might not be paid in time. Although the level of control varies from person to person, we can do our part in lessening the customers’ anxiety in our designs.

These considerations include having a status indicator showing that AutoPay is enabled, showing upcoming payment date and info, encouraging customers to sign up for notifications if they haven’t, and displaying when AutoPay will be enabled during set up.

03 —Seizing opportunities to educate
Education pieces are found throughout the experience. During set up, terms such as statement balance and minimum payment are explained. As for terms and conditions, we provide a brief explanation at the top of the page for easy scanning. To further support the Call Centre, a list of FAQ was compiled and made available digitally on the AutoPay details page.

What’s next?