We want to meet the customers...
Most users would need help at some point one way or the other. Bank of America customers are no exception. Customers have questions, doubts and help completing a process. Most of the customers are hesitant about sharing sensitive data over the phone or through text chat. Hence they mostly prefer to meet an agent or representative in the bank face to face. So Bank of America wanted to facilitate and encourage its users to meet with their representatives at Bank.
Design process
Research
I decided to conduct an initial groundwork on how the banks help channels was working currently. Usually when a user has process related question for eg :(how to pay my card balance or how to order new checks), they either refer online FAQs or would contact an agent through phone or text chat. This method has worked historically well because the agent would know the online banking environment well and direct the users accordingly.
But when the user has a product question like:
- which savings account is better for me ?
- which card would give me better savings ?
- what is the best home loan percentage I would get ?
A phone call or a text chat has not been helpful in the above cases. Most of the agents did not have a clue as to what the users are looking for since this was not an efficient way to understand and clarify their queries. The best way to clarify the needs of a customer is through face to face communication.
I also found out that the current help infrastructure did not encourage the user to walk in to the bank to talk about their needs or questions.
Another drawback that most banking centers faced was not knowing what the user really wants. User would call and schedule an appointment with the bank agents or loan officers but they would not let them know what they want help about. This means agents/officers did not get a chance to do some research about the user and their needs.
"Infrastructure not sufficient- Users calling in with product questions - Users not encouraged to meet face to face -No preparation before the meeting"
Based on the research I concluded that the customer needs to be encouraged to meet with bank agents to clarify their doubts. Also it would be helpful for the agents to get an outline or know what the user wants before meeting the user for better assistance.
"Encourage users to step in to bank for their needs and serve them better by studying their needs before hand"
Brainstorming
- Once the mission statement was in place I wanted to brainstorm on what various stakeholders felt about appointment process.
- Key stake holders like sales representatives, line of business officials, selected users and call center mangers were involved.
- I facilitated the brain storming session with these groups.
- The groups brainstormed on: why an user would call bank for help? What were the pain points they experienced during the call ? Did they make product decision over the phone ?
- I also asked the user to sort their needs under specific categories.
- Apart from this industry bench-marking exercise was also done.
- I scouted the internet for best appointment related experiences and I studied them.
- Based on the results I nailed down a very high level process flow.
Interaction design
I presented the learnings from brainstorming session to the design leadership team and decided to lock down the steps that the user would need to follow in order to schedule an appointment. What, where and when were the questions the user needs to answer in order to schedule an appointment.
I designed the interface to channel the user based on the need or question the user had. If the user had a question about home loans then we had to direct the user to a loan officer. So we created a landing screen which shows category of user needs. We created categories based on the results we accumulated from the brainstorming sessions. A simple visual list was used to design for this purpose.
The next step was to identify which banking center the user would come in to. I created a control that would take location/city or ZIP code as input and display different banking center with distance and working hours information. User can simply point and select the location. Map and directions information will be provided to the user.
Then the user has to select the time they would like to visit. I considered different types of controls like sliders, spinner and dropdowns. Finally I landed on a list that would show users available slots.
I also needed the user to enter their basic information like name, phone and email. This information will be used to greet the user and to send a remainder later. Users expressing their needs beforehand would be helpful for agent's research and preparation for the meeting. So I included a free form comment box for the user to type in their queries and preferences.
All the what, where and when information will be shown to the user on all steps, they can edit this information at anytime. This was received positively in user testing.
Access points
I decided to provide in-context appointment scheduling for users. "Bank by appointment" link was placed at multiples strategics points in product pages and was also added to the pro-active help feature. If the user select Bank by appointment option from a credit card page, category selection would be automatically made for the user to fasten the process.
Visual design
I wanted the visuals to reflect the simplicity of the interaction design. Point and Click was the visual direction we took for desktop and iPad screens. Easy blocks which users can click and create an appointment. For mobile screens we kept the design tight, so that the user can see all elements on a screen. Bigger fonts were used on certain information to draw users attention.
User testing
User testing was done extensively through live sessions. The users were given various appointment requirements and were asked to interact with clickable prototypes. Most of the users liked the new interface, they commented that it looked fresh. Also the on screen information helped them understand what actions to perform in each step. Some users were confused on the categories so we went back and refined them to make it more simple.
Result
The app was released and the access points were rolled out in phased approach. The number of users scheduling appoints increased drastically. The number of digital referrals increased to 45 per week in each banking center. We also observed a spike in the number of appointment in the small business users space.
