Automated Refund Status Flow
A case on how I improved the user's experience on a Help Center automating the access to information.
Introduction
EBANX Is a company that provides payment services for B2B companies that want to sell in Latin America.
The main objective for the product is to help users access the information they need quickly and seamlessly while avoiding reaching for customer service agents.
I was the only Product Designer responsible for all the project design process, working alongside of the Product Manager, Global Product Manager, Tech Lead and the Dev team.
Main KPIs
- Self-service - % of users that can find the information needed by themselves on the platform
- Total tickets - total number of tickets generated for the CS
Timeframe
3 months - from July to September 2021
Method
Dual-track Agile - Discovery and Delivery
The problem
EBANX increased the number of partners using their payment system and, as the number of customer services tickets were increasing, the company was forced to invest a lot of money in call center operations.
Hypothesis
Automating the access to basic information about payments for the user through the help desk website could reduce operating costs
Understanding the scenario
We had a Help Center that contained a feature called Payment Timeline that was used as a source of basic information about users' payments through EBANX. And we had an MVP of a chatbot that was used to provide users with a link to the refund form and some information.
Investigating the problem
We investigated qualitative data through Zendesk tickets, interviews with call center people, and also quantitative data we were capturing from the Help Center through our data science team.
We started by understanding in detail the numbers we had and how users were relating to the product, finding 3 major insights:
The Payment Timeline
We had a 53% self-service rate and only 67% of the visits in the Payment Timeline generated some search for payments
The Chatbot MVP
The access to the chatbot MVP that serves the refund issue was much lower than the Payment Timeline
CS Tickets
We had a high volume of refund-related tickets, mainly to request basic process information like deadline and status
Identifying user pain points
Based on our research we identified all the users pain points, and decided to focus on the 3 main ones:
1 - Can't access the refund form
Influenced mainly by the lack of access to email, which was the only channel the user received the link, besides the chatbot MVP (which was not getting many visits)
2 - Don't know the refund status
As the user had no channel to consult this data, they ended up contacting the customer service to do so
3 - Don't remember the bank account
Often users could not remember which bank account they had filled out to receive the money and asked for a receipt to see the information
Iterating the product
After analyzing the data, we identified the opportunity to insert, in the Payment Timeline itself, the refund process information that the user needed.
After that, we investigated the risks of this change with the developers to understand what would be required to bring this information from the chatbot MVP into the Payment Timeline. With this investigation, we saw that only one API would be reused in the new flow.
Based on this, we defined that in the first iteration, we should prioritize the main pain points of the users previously identified (form access, status, and payment receipt).
Then, for the next iterations, we focused on inserting complementary information, such as deadlines and tips about the process.
Since the iterations would be performed on a consolidated product, we already had the entire basis of the interface well defined and, with this, we were able to focus our efforts on defining which information to insert into the structure and, thus, adapt their distribution on the screens.
The hand-off to the developers was also facilitated because we reused many existing components, so the development time was reduced.
Results
After implementation, we started tracking KPIs over the next few months and noticed the following results:
Increase in self-service
From 55.9% in September/2021 to 68% in March/2022
Decrease in tickets on refund
49 thousand in September/2021 to 40 thousand in March/2022
Increase on Payment Timeline inquiries
Increasing from 71% of people accessing and viewing their payment history to 81.6% in the same period commented above
Conclusion
More than just a payment query, this iteration of the Payment Timeline brought value to both the company and the user.
With more automated ways for the user to answer their frequently asked questions, the company is able to reduce call center costs and has a product with a strong advantage over the competition.
And the user is able to have an entire follow-up of his purchases on EBANX, from when he makes to if he has a refund to be made, all in a practical and fast way.