Colleague Assistant Tool 2.0
Leading a complete revolution of the current Colleague Assistant Tool that will improve the experience for colleagues assisting customers in financial difficulty
THE CHALLENGE
The Colleague Assistant Tool (CAT) is a dashboard used to assist colleagues in setting up plans for customers to help get them out of financial difficulty. It has needed a complete redesign for its second iteration to optimise functionality and accessibility for everyone.
The Colleague Assistant Tool was originally designed as a way of migrating colleagues away from manual entries on an excel document to an automated system, allowing them to rapidly gather information about customers in financial difficulty and help set up plans to help get them out of it.
I led the end-to-end creation of the the 2nd iteration of the tool, with the goal of optimising clarity, data gathering and retrieval, and overall accessibility and experience for both colleagues and customers.
THE OUTCOME
- Reduction in average call times by 5 minutes, from ~19 mminutes to ~14 minutes
- 70% CSAT uplift for colleagues
- 32% CSAT uplift for customers
- NPS ratings from customers increased from 66% to 95%
- Reduction in stress and increase in colleague empowerment
- Trust in the Lloyds Banking Group brand as Britain's best bank.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
February 2020 - September 2020
THE TEAM
1 Product Designer
1 UX Copywriter
1 Product Owner
1 Business Analyst
4 Developers
KEY GOAL
To lead the improved 2nd iteration of a tool that helps colleagues get customers out of financial difficulty
APPROACH
The delivery was split into three phases to make changes in line with strict deadlines.
Phase 1: Optimising existing components on the CAT 2.0 tool to improve overall functionality, and merging platforms together (integrated May 4th 2020)
Phase 2: Revolutionising existing components, enhancing journey flow, collaborating with design system and UX copywriter team to improve accessibility for both colleagues and customers (integrated June 1st 2020)
Phase 3: Future integration of vulnerability markers into the tool for full optimisation and tracking financial situation (Date TBC)
Initial wireframes and interactive prototypes were created using Axure RP to demonstrate the overall flow of the system, with user feedback from the Model Office (colleagues using the tool) used every 2 weeks to make the necessary changes.
Visual designs were then applied on Sketch to demonstrate the end-to-end state of the journey, which were used by the developers to build out the tool.
The tool was originally rolled out internally to Model Office colleagues to gather feedback, which shaped the following iterations, before being delivered into live integration in the future.
Discovery - Customer side
Focus groups were held to understand customer needs and expectations when utilising the contact centres for financial help and allevation
Customers believe that as banks provide services such as credit cards, loans, mortgages etc. that they have a responsibility to protect their customers and provide personalised advice as well.
Customers also expect banks to know everything about customers due to holding their money and their spending habits. They were surprised to realise that this information was not readily available for colleagues, which made them lose trust in Lloyds and create natural friction between contact centre colleagues and customers.
Customers expect the bank to create automated plans quickly and efficiently.
They also feel too embarrassed to seek help, so expect the bank to be able to provide advice based on what they know, rather than having to ask the customer to relay their financial situation in depth.
At the same time, however, customers feel more comfortable speaking to close friends and family about financial matters as their situations are seen as more relatable and personal, and as such, customers tend to trust their advice more over banks, who they feel may have another agenda to push them towards more sales and services.
Contact centres are only open between 7am-6pm, which means many customers cannot actually speak to colleagues with long wait times of up to 1 hour.
Summary: Customers want a solution that is more personal and tailored to their individual needs, with banks having their information readily available, so that they can offer the best advice possible, as quickly as possible.
Discovery - Colleague side
Focus groups were held to understand colleague needs and how they interact with customers to capture data and lead the conversation as calmly and efficiently as possible
Colleagues typically have to write scribbles and notes by hand writing in order to capture data and jog their memory. This is inefficient as it becomes confusing to remember where certain information is stored or what certain scribbles mean.
Hand writing notes is typically faster than computer based ones as they don't have to keep flicking between tabs of customer information and a notes app. It also allows for personal needs such as scribbles as opposed to words, which allows them to think of information quicker.
Some colleagues also expressed concerns that they can write and talk at the same time, but not tpye and talk.
There is added pressure to take calls quickly, which means there is a risk of making mistakes, especially when adapting to a new system.
Currently, colleagues dislike the proposal of the tool due to the number of actions they would have to take. Colleagues expressed that actions would need to be listed out for them so that they can guide the conversation easier.
Summary: The proposed tool was therefore initially met with hostility, and seen as a hindrence, so I had to think about ways that we can make information relaying and data capture easier for colleagues to provide greater value, with greater information provided to the colleague automatically and less typing and clicking.
PHASE 1
The first iteration of the tool used a basic dashboard that only allowed the colleague perform actions based on the information the customer gave them, and make basic notes specific to those actions.
Any personal information that they collected would often be written down either on an excel document or on paper. As a result, this made it difficult to accurately store data on a customers' financial situation and understand their behaviours or actions that got them into such circumstances.
The first phase saw a redesign of the tool to merge these different platforms together to store everything in one place, and give the colleague more ways of understanding the customer. This would allow for more tailored plans for paying off arrears.
Original CAT tool
CUSTOMER SUMMARY
The customer summary page is the first landing page for the colleague, and serves as the main navigation hub for the rest of the journey.
I started on working on this page first as it would direct the navigation of the rest of the journey and allow us to understand what information needs to be placed into what screen.
The entire journey now uses a sidebar navigation, that allows the colleague to seamlessly move through the action points necessary, whilst also helping to guide them as to how they need to interact with the customer.
A new tile component was integrated at the top of the screen to summarise the actions the customer has previously taken. This required the use of complex APIs to draw the data from the database. The next steps for the customer, be it ending the call early, performing another action, or moving onto the next stage of the journey, would be directly affected by what information the tiles displayed.
A generally cleaner interface was used, simplifying the customer's personal and account information, whilst the sidebar shows all the products that the customer holds with Lloyds.
YOUR SITUATION
The colleague now has an online dashboard that allows them to collect information about the customer's financial situation, which shape the decisions that the colleague makes for the customer's plan.
The "Your Situation" screen now allows the colleague to collect information on the customer's financial situation in the same area as everything else. It has logic applied to it to navigate to the right questions and actions depending on what information the customer provides.
User feedback showed that the inclusion of this screen completely simplified their work and improved the user experience significantly.
YOUR BUDGET
This was another new screen added to the tool. Its purpose was to assist the colleague in further understanding the customer's financial situation and relationship with their money if they could not pay off their arrears in full.
This revolutionised the tool as well as it allows the colleague to gather more information about how the customer manages their money, whilst calculating how much money they have spare at the end of the month. This allows the colleague to formulate a plan of how much they can afford to spend in paying back their arrears, or if any other actions need to be taken, such as suppressing interest or freezing accounts.
User feedback has stated that this screen has enhanced the tool significantly as it provides greater clarity to the customer about their financial situation, whilst allowing them to make educated decisions on how much they want to contribute to the plans being set up for them.
YOUR OPTIONS
Based on the information collected from Your Situation and Your Budget, the customer is then given a list of plans they can choose from to pay off their arrears.
The tool would automate a list of plans for the customer that allows them to pay off their arrears in a specific time frame, which gives the customer autonomy over how much they want to contribute over their preferred period of time.
This has been a huge success for colleagues as it summarises all information provided by the customer that can help guide conversation and allow the customer to make educated decisions based on the tool's recommendations.
Option Selector
Options Summary
PHASE 2
The next phase looks at enhancing the functionality of the tool through redesigning the existing components and reducing any clunkiness within the tool.
Whilst the updated tool in phase 1 demonstrated a significant improvement to the user experience, the journey needed to be enhanced to reduce complexities in displaying information clearly. Phase 2 therefore looked at ways in which the tool can become much more functional.
CUSTOMER SUMMARY
The customer summary page was once again looked at being redesigned first as this is where the bulk of complexities were occurring.
Whilst the tiles at the top of the page were an aesthetic upgrade to the previous tool, it had created too many complexities when displaying action and disclosure banners.
The layout has been changed to prioritise important questions and customer details at the top, with the tiles now being replaced by a list component on the side. This allows more better functionality in displaying action and disclosure banners that now appear at the bottom of the page in a dynamic list view.
User feedback has proven that this is a much better user experience and does not clutter the page with banners anymore.
DESIGN UNIFICATION
The rest of the screens in the tool followed similar design patterns by utilising the use of accordions to filter information and declutter the page.
As both these frameworks used different APIs, we had to ensure that the correct values were displayed to users.
COMPONENTS
Accordion states were created to filter between information and give greater clarity over any errors that have occurred and what actions have been completed.
Research showed that colleagues respond better to visual queues rather than just text, and the elongating pages made it difficult to navigate around the page. By using accordions in tangence with visual queues, colleagues found it much easier to navigate, which allowed for faster responses to customers.
PHASE 3 AND CONCLUSIONS
Surveys were ran across 30 call centre colleagues and 30 customers. 3 months after deployment, the tool had been used by colleagues to serve over 4000 customers.
Colleague satsifaction levels increased by 70%, with customer satisfaction levels by 32%
Colleagues also stated that they felt more empowered, confident and in control of conversations, particularly when dealing with customers who are in a highly stressful situation.
Average call times reduced by 4 minutes, and colleagues stated significantly less stress when dealing with calls.
Colleagues stated that they felt more supported and their productivity and work life balance significantly improved after the release of the tool.
Customers felt that the service was much more personal and that they felt valued, with NPS ratings increasing from 66% to 95%.
