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Thredd
Legacy Banking Back Office Transformation
My Role
Lead Product Designer:
Resource Planning, Design Sprint Oversight, Discovery, Validation, Design.
The Team
Product Designer, Content Designer, Product Manager, B.A, Developers, Exec Steering Co.
Deliverables
User Research, Revamp Strategy, Concepts, High Fidelity Design.
Timeframe
6 Months | 2023
Thredd is a global payments processor, who have supported the rise of fintech challengers and technology leaders, many of whom have become unicorns worth over US$1billion.
Thredd's main UI was a feature-rich, business-critical, legacy platform, handling everything from client onboarding and configuration to reporting and servicing tasks. However, it was causing serious business problems- It was cited in 40% lost sales deals, 88% of negative CSAT responses, and we were unable to charge for access.
UX was demonstrably poor - Time to complete task was impacting customer SLAs & support tickets piled up. It required 1 week in person training from to use it properly.
Thredd Portal enables users to search and view customer, account and card details and perform critical management tasks like moving funds and updating configurations. As well as drastically improving the UX, this project was the "new normal" for Thredd- a beautiful, useful platform for customers to manage their business. The revamp resulted in:
ARR increase of >£250k.
References in lost sales opportunities reduced from 40% to 0%.
20% CSAT increase.
Full case study found below, which focuses on phase 1 features for brevity. Some details have been omitted or changed to protect the privacy of Thredd & it's customers.
“Uhm... Payments Have Just.. Stopped Working..”
You're a Client Manager at a top challenger bank, responsible for a high net worth card product- Favourable fees, large limits. You roll into work on a Monday morning to see your Slack is ON FIRE.
Customers can't use their cards, transactions aren't processing. You need to investigate what's happening, fast! You search declined transactions.. And wait.. This could take a while. It finally loads.. You need to fetch the tech specs to interpret the error codes. This will be a long day…
Problem
Our goal was to improve customer satisfaction, the data indicated that it wouldn’t be improved with a simple makeover. Legacy revamps are challenging, and require careful prioritisation to prevent costs ballooning and timelines to drag out. The brief was vague- Make it prettier. But “it” was built over a decade, and had approx “9 products”, most of which were internal use only. To ensure we were going to achieve our goal, I developed a research strategy with the PM.
Strategy
Our questions were:
What are customers actually using?
→ Mapped page hits using a sankey diagram to understand their flow through the system.
What works, what doesn’t and how might we improve?
→ Issued a satisfaction and usability survey
Results
20% of the system is used by customers. Usability (SUS score 40) was terrible, but satisfaction with feature functionality was relatively high. This led us to propose a phased migration approach.
Problem
20% of the system is still a large volume of work. Given the team size (me & one other designer) I needed to focus our attention on what actually mattered to our customers.
Strategy
I scheduled field studies with some users, and interviewed senior decision makers recruited from the survey to understand:
How are different user types using the system in their day to day?
I then triangulated these with the survey results, clustered the insights, and mapped the tasks & goals & opportunities for improvement.
Results
This is a customer servicing tool first. Senior decision makers were concerned about how long it took to address their customer problems using the system - It was impacting their SLAs. The users struggled to find and comprehend dense technical content. Risky actions were easily performed, and audit trails were manually provided. Thus, we narrowed our focus on search, viewing content & performing actions.
Problem
Field Studies showed one major contributor to a longer time to complete task was searching. The original system featured a query builder type search- Powerful, but not expedient.
Strategy
I used an object oriented UX method to map the existing parameters available so that I could understand what was a search term & what would be a filter. We tested 2 search approaches- One being a standard set of entities, advanced search. The other being an entity selector search bar.
Results
We found that the addition of this search bar reduced search times by over a minute- Users instantly gravitated toward it and only deployed advanced search when they needed to.
Problem
Customers loved the amount of information available to them. But, they couldn’t find it, and had to reach technical specs to understand it.
Strategy
Working with a content designer, we set about mapping the data. We ran an open card sort with internal expert stakeholders to create categories and the order of information across 5 key “objects” (e.g transactions”. We ran workshops to further the OOUX mapping to understand the relationship between all the data. Content design reworked the language to make it more human & drafted tooltips and help content.
Results
During Field Studies, we'd measured time to complete a few servicing tasks. With new employees (unfamiliar with the legacy system) we performed the same tests. Time to complete servicing tasks, such as finding out why a transaction declined more than halved.
Problem
While testing search approaches, I noticed how many times a user may need to dip in & out of details pages so that they could find the relevant information.
Strategy
I tested out using a slide out panel to house account, transaction and card information- As there are sub-objects of customer records. The rationale would be that as a user scans through a list of cards & transactions, they could quickly open & view the relevant information.
Results
Ultimately there were concerns about the scalability of the slide out panels, namely that the information on these pages could be huge. Plus, we needed to consider more “objects” like different financial instruments becoming available down the line.
Problem
Support tickets were frequently raised requesting fairly standard changes to be made, e.g moving funds. The survey and our field studies revealed that some users were nervous using parts of the system because it was easy to make mistakes. These are actions which can result in fines if done accidentally.
Strategy
For each action, I mapped out the steps taken in performing them. Working with stakeholder experts, we identified the risky and not so risky actions. I visually identified risky actions, and for simpler actions added a simple confirmation. For longer flows, I added a progress indicator, so that the user knew where they were in the process.
Results
Support tickets were measured before & after release. We observed a 90% decline in “perform X action for me” support tickets. In a post release survey, when asked how confident they were performing risky actions, 70% of customers said “very confident”.
The Phase 1 delivery- The customer servicing & troubleshooting features, were tested incrementally as features were released. Once we had an MVP, i.e parity with the 20% of the legacy system, it was released for beta testing with customers. Broadly, the product enables users to search customers, cards, accounts, as well as performing various actions.
What Went Well
This case study doesn’t do the enormity of this project justice. Suffice to say, there were alot of ups & downs. Zeroing in on customer oriented goals from the start kept us focused. Speaking of…
90% overall reduction in time to complete task
Overall 75% reduction in "un-necessary" support tickets
Could Go Better
People love their legacy tools. They often work well, once you figure out how to use them. The attachment to the legacy tool provided more than a few roadblocks. Mid project, I created a deck outlining our plan & strategy tailored to an operational audience. I wish I’d done that sooner. Now, I have a couple of decks on hand for all big projects- Designed for different audiences.