Billing Concept & Comms Review
This project was one of the Ad hoc projects I had the opportunity to work on. The time constraint was especially challenging since I was expected to provide results in about a week, and this was a special topic requested by senior level and executive management. I'm glad I was able to take on the challenge, together with other team members and UX designers I collaborated with, gathering all the help and suggestions I could get (in fact even a senior level executive sat down with me and a UX Designer so we could finalize the billing concept, dynamics, and comms to be tested and include it in the test script). The project team eventually found the results really useful. This topic was also nominated for a Company-wide award. So it was all worth it.
2017
Lead UX Researcher
Ad Hoc
The Problem / Opportunity
How to improve the billing mechanics and SMS comms for a billing policy for Globe accounts, to avoid customers from being billed excessive charges on top of their postpaid plans
Approach
Face to Face, Moderated 1-1 user interviews and mini FGDs to simulate group scenarios with multiple accounts and family setting
Major Insights
Prepaid subscribers with no previous postpaid plan couldn’t relate to most of the billing terms presented during the interviews. They often associate the terms to other types of utilities or to their prepaid subscriptions.
Users (both existing and potential postpaid subscribers) can understand the billing concept upon reading the description during the interview. But given the terms alone, they would tend to think both are actually the same.
User Empathy Map for each of the SMS Comms Review (Full details confidential) were shown to stakeholders to give an overview of what users will think, feel, and do once they receive each SMS
Impact
Simpler & Relatable Billing Terminologies
The evaluation of billing terminologies and naming suggestions from users helped the Credit & Billing team in choosing simpler terms that are easier to understand by customers.
UX Recommendations backed by UXR
The results of the study guided the Lead UX Designer & Architect to provide recommendations to the project team in terms of:
revising particular terms,
revising the SMS about billing that will be sent to individual subscribers,
including a breakdown of the billing charges,
and revising the SMS flow mechanics and specific information to prevent confusion among subscribers with multiple postpaid accounts (e.g. for families).
Globe Award
The Billing Concept in this study which was later iterated, eventually won a Company-wide award for solving customer problems. And I was included and recognized because of my contributions as a UX Researcher.
Key Learnings
Time constraint is probably the factor that challenges me the most. But having a resilient mindset is the key for me to overcome it. And I also noticed, it's also when creativity strikes me the most. Creativity for example, in being able to recruit participants in a shorter amount of time, I reached out to multiple external recruiters. In terms of managing stakeholders regarding receiving the insights, I conducted debriefing and sent insights summary in bullets per session, so they can already make iterations instead of waiting for the final report.
When faced with these challenges, I just go on and do it. Most of the time, there's no other way.