AMERICAN EXPRESS

Self-service platform

Our challenge

Expressnet is the acquirer for Amex in Peru, one of the largest players in the payments industry. They needed a cost-efficient way to connect with their network of more than 250K merchants. Back in 2018 they did not have the best relationship with the largest portion of their customers and lacked an online presence, they were perceived as being part of one of its competitors and could not leverage their network for new initiatives.

Business drivers
Overworked employees highly specialized in manual processes and legacy systems

Business drivers
Pressure from corporate to offer value added services

Business drivers
Loss of market share to new players who focused on small businesses

My contribution

As an in-house service designer and customer experience specialist

  • Initial hypothesis formulation
  • Workshops and interviews with employees to create backstage flows
  • Customer surveys
  • Generative user research planification and supervision
  • Present my analysis of the research results to management
  • Facilitate the problem’s re-definition
  • Paper and wireframe prototyping
  • User testing

Hypothesis validation

Through several iterations we tested many hypotheses:

Our users…

  • …value a desktop website as the main point of contact
  • …view positively a website with the same type of information as the competition only if it is easier to use
  • … highly value simplified views with the option to delve deeper
  • … benefit from a welcome screen with consolidated payment information

Additional findings

User personas and mobile site usage

  • User reported mobile site usage
    • Business manager and Cashier: 75% of visits on mobile
    • Business owner: 50% of visits on mobile

During the first stage of live testing, we discovered that 90% of visits came from desktop, contradicting what they had reported earlier for similar sites.

They desired to use the site on mobile however it was not practical for their workflow to do so. They liked to have the option of checking the data on the go.

Therefore, we dropped the idea of a mobile-first site and concentrated our efforts on the desktop experience and maintaining responsivenes

About other customer service channels

Fundamental Channel:
Call Center

Ideal Channel:
WhatsApp

Project’s stakeholder map

Wireframes

Implementation of the platform

Outcomes

By the end of 2020 we had:

  • Create and maintain KPI monitoring practices to proof ROI
  • HEART UX metrics framework focused on Adoption & Retention, to make evidence based improvements
  • +10% Brand recognition
  • +20% Customer Satisfaction Score
  • Saving +700 hours of manual processing
  • Improvement in employee job satisfaction

Opening a path for internal efficiencies

Through analyzing the real workflows and needs of the employees in a multidisciplinary fashion, we discovered how different areas of the company could benefit from creating new modules and how other tools could leverage the platform.

These are some of the initiatives that sparked from the platform:

Customer Service experience re-design

Dispute management platform

Fraud preventing tool

Operationalization of core processes