Co-op Financial Services Springboard - Improving the disorganized documentation of financial service systems that are inefficient channels for the needed cross-functional communication.
Springboard was not designed to facilitate the dynamics of team support scenarios. However, frontline service representatives must collaborate with specialists in other departments (e.g., card specialists, fraud) to resolve a request. When a credit union member calls in for service assistance on matters related to their account, it is imperative that front-line representatives solve their service requests promptly.
I worked on designing the seamless experience of accessing and adding documentation to the collection of services on products in a member’s portfolio.
We decreased the time it takes for a user to assist members calling their credit union by 22% when having a team-supported experience.
Role and Responsibilities
Product Strategist - UX Research, Product Design
Timeline
Nov 2021 -
April 2022
Tools
Figma, Airtable
Platform
Web Application
Springboard’s systems don’t communicate well resulting in losing members’ service history data and causing friction when documenting memos across the different systems.
All of Springboard’s data was dispersed including member information, product details, and transaction data. When frontline service representatives are assisting with members’ service requests, the separated account updates make it challenging to forage for clues about service history. This results in a significant decrease in workflow for the representatives and an increased amount of time in helping the member leaving them frustrated.
The Problem
The disorganized documentation of financial service systems are inefficient channels for the needed cross-functional communication between cardholder specialists in different departments.
Before I was able to meet with users, I conducted secondary research on general customer service representatives to gather information about their workflow. I hypothesized that the disconnected data between systems used at Co-op impacts cross-functional communication and collaboration that needs to happen when assisting members. I validated this through 1:1 discovery sessions with 12 Front-line and Card Service Representatives at 8 Credit Unions. Front-line service representatives need to collaborate with specialists in other departments (e.g., card specialists, fraud team) to resolve a request.
Here are my main takeaways:
Collaboration allows a service representative who has the subject matter expertise in a department to solve a particular issue for a member, which allows for the collective knowledge of expert representatives of different departments to use, making the customer service team a stronger entity overall.
Representatives and customers benefit when teams work together from quickly resolving issues members are facing to building stronger relationships with customers and colleagues and making it easy to find memos.
The memos for Data Navigator (checking and debit) is the closest system that does well in gathering memo data, by comparison, but doesn’t allow for all cardholders’ memos to be stored here including checking, debit, credit, transaction dispute cases memos. That being said, Data Navigator memos are not intuitive, and the outdated design prevents users from accessing the data with ease.
System-generated memos are different from manually entered memos and are stored in different spaces.
Sometimes a service representative helps members with 2-4 service requests at a time and they need to quickly reference the cardholder’s information on their account and document each service they helped the member with
UX Research and Synthesis
Exploring new and clear ways to store all service history memos while reducing friction when helping members with their service requests
I made sure I was exploring designs with the stakeholder requirements in mind and solving for the user pain points by keeping them visible as I sketched out quick ideas. I had design critiques with the team to evaluate the designs against business objectives and user needs and recurring meetings with developers to get their early feedback on feasibility.
Memos Ideation
Issues with discoverability, workflow, and information organization.
Design Validation and 1st Round of Iterations
Discoverability Issues - Only 2/7 front-line representative participants were able to find the entry point for memos. The rest cited that they weren’t sure what the pencil icon was for.
Iteration - After a design critique and looking at various design patterns for note-taking tools, I added a different icon that aligned better with our users’ mental models.
Workflow Issues - Participants mentioned that they liked seeing the collection of documented memos in Service History however, 5/7 said their workflow begins with quickly reading through the memos on the account and seeing any recent activity or account information summary to get an understanding of why the member may be calling in.
Iteration - I added tabs to the memo modal as a navigation element to easily access both parts of memos in one view when adding a memo and viewing all agent memos instead of closing out of here to go to the Service History tab in the secondary navigation
Information Organization Issues - 3/7 participants questioned where they would leave a memo for the secondary and additional cardholders on Mary’s account if they were doing a service request for activity on their card.
Iteration - I added a shortcut entry point in the memos modal to access all cardholders’ tied to the primary member in the “Cardholder Servicing” dropdown list, instead of having to close the memos window and access another cardholder from the Cardholder summary section on the home page.
Design Validation and 2nd Round of Iterations
Issues with workflow, feasibility, and requirements feedback.
Feasibility issues - The development efforts were high for adding memos to a specific cardholder and their product in the memo modal.
Workflow Issues- 4/5 front-line representative participants said it took longer to enter a memo when selecting a cardholder first and then a product.
Iteration - To indicate what product the memos were tied to, I moved the “Add a Memo” entry point to the product section in the side navigation where all product information tied to a member, stems from and aligns better with the flow representatives take when assisting members. This also connects the secondary and additional cardholders since the product selected on the left includes all cardholders in the cardholder summary section.
Requirement Issues - I got feedback from the product owner that the options for marking a memo as permanent and non-permanent needed to be shown to be able to sort the data in the back end
Iteration - I added the non-permanent and permanent options in a dropdown below the list of memos to surface relevant information and added the “Pin” option for permanent memos for urgent cases.
A Streamlined way of understanding the service history for every members’ products and improving collaboration between representatives and different departments.
Springboard is a massive product with the memos feature being one of many of the financial web platform. Our team built the first modern experience for over 1,000 credit unions in the United States and other features continue to undergo testing and iterations.
The Final Design Solution for Memos
Our team-supported experience allows representatives to quickly assist Credit Union members by 22% when accessing and adding memos to the collection of products in a member’s portfolio.
I worked with our developers to implement the design, and they delivered React UI components for Co-op’s engineers to use. The service history memos feature is now live helping representatives across 1,000+ Credit Unions collaborate with specialists in other departments to promptly resolve a member request.
Delivery and Results