Accident Forgiveness
Challenge
The memory of an experience or interaction has the ability to negatively or positively influence perception of a brand. How we end a moment is important. In order to remain competitive, it’s important to focus on customer satisfaction since emotions often drive decision making and can be pivotal with what brand(s) one is loyal to.
Throughout the customer journey, no matter what channel one engages in, there are inconsistencies with the abilities a call center agent has compared to what a customer can do via self-service. This increases frustration especially when long wait times or customers experience change.
Customers are aware of the network value Verizon offers, however, are price sensitive and have a high propensity to churn when they experience frequent negative interactions.
Solution
A premium brand needs to match the expectation of customers by proactively having their back in moments of need. For this project, we identified moments that matter across the customer journey that have the highest impact with increasing customer satisfaction contributing to Verizon's goal of achieving NPS 50.
Infuse moments of Surprise & Delight in order to move detractors to promoters was the primary focus of this project.Through research, we identified waiving late payment fees would be most impactful on advocacy, satisfaction and NPS as well as promote good will among both metered and unlimited customers.
Delivery included proactive and reactive communications integrated within the web and app experience for qualifying customers.
Discovery
The discovery phase consisted of conducting both quantitive and qualitative research to understand what makes Verizon Wireless and Fios customers feel appreciated in addition to understanding what concepts would make them feel recognized. Methodologies included data analysis, voice of customer insights, DScout Diary Studies, concept testing and other forms of generative research.
What do people value in relationships with brands, products and services?
What makes customers feel appreciated and when/how should we provide those things based on key trigger points along the customer journey?
Which tenure-based concepts are most relevant, exciting and motivating to invest/stay with a provider?
The research confirmed there’s a desirability from customers to have their fees waived -- in particular data overage and late bill fees since they are experienced the most often. What was interesting is customers who considered themselves to have high tenure expected to be cared for in moments of need.
Strategy
The greatest opportunity from synthesis of discovery findings was to focus on infusing moments of Surprise & Delight in order to move detractors to promoters during a customer’s billing journey. Value that makes customers feel recognized includes a lower monthly bill and waiving fees.
Strategically leverage segmentation insights to target high value customers via proactive communications for tenure appreciation. This will focus on waiving fees for special events in order to empathize in moments of need with the goal of increasing NPS, Quality of Experience Score and lower call volume.
“Waiving late payment fees would be most impactful on advocacy, satisfaction and potentially NPS as well as promote good will among both metered and unlimited customers.”
While there are various use cases under the Accident Forgiveness program, the prioritized opportunity was to develop a Past Due Bill fee waiver experience. Through research we learned customers understand the need for fees, however, feel they should be rewarded for good behavior especially when it comes to tenure. This highlighted an opportunity to showcase appreciation to customers and empathize with target segments.
Business Case
As the first project of its kind to focus on delivering customer satisfaction and less emphasis on cost saving, our team developed a business case in order to showcase the value to leadership and get project approvals for launching a pilot. This included a segmentation strategy, financial analysis and a recommendation on the proposed concept.
In order to start developing a business case I knew I needed to understand what customers we’d target and define attributes (e.g. customers who aren’t enrolled in auto pay) to further narrow types of customers we could target in a pilot given there are over 121M lines for wireless consumers. In partnership with the Data team, we determined it’d be most impactful to target customers who have the highest spend and most tenure, which is where the majority of customers fall and relates back to the research.
In partnership with the Finance team, we built different models where we looked at the cost of a call and what the company profits in fees to determine what solution would be the best for a pilot. This factored in the propensity to churn. The selected direction was to design for the past due bill experience since it was more feasible to develop and still provided net savings.
Design
Designing for the experience was more than creating the look and feel. It included system design to ensure the right triggers were implemented and provided at the right time. When designs were complete, I helped established success metrics and wrote user stories for development.
In order to understand what touchpoints required a redesign to enable this fee waiving experience, I interviewed various teams (e.g. finance, call center, etc) to gain an understanding of current systems. This helped inform recommended updates for the backend and their respective front end interfaces. The goal was to ensure this proactive fee waiving experience worked together with the broader credit ecosystem.
The design we presented to leadership included a combination of proactive and reactive communications based on engagement triggers. When an eligible customer is late on their bill, we’ll send a push notification to inform them of the waived fee. Other touchpoints in the app experience also indicates awareness of this waived fee depending on the entry point.