Elevating holistic CX for India’s largest and most reputed credit bureau

My Role

Outcome

Context

Existing situation

• C maintains credit records and gives credit services to over 600 million individuals and over 30 million businesses
• C’s CX across all channels, is inadequate and sub-par
• The design goals were to:
  • completely revamp C’s mobile app
  • giving a visual overhaul to C’s web dashboard
  • improving C’s core website and sub-product landing pages
  • improving C’s brand perception through marketing strategy
  • improving C’s credit reports sent out to all its customers & B2B partners

Team

• 1 Senior UX designer (me)
• 1 UX designer
• 1 Visual designer
• 1 Front-end developer

Time

2 years + (as a long-term engagement)

Mobile app

Overview

We redesigned the C mobile app from the ground-up.

The existing app had usability issues stemming from poor navigation, incoherent copy, vastly outdated layout, and sub-par visuals.

We conducted secondary research for each aspect of the mobile app –

• defined guidelines
• did benchmarking of existing platforms & their journeys.

We used each of the modules for all core features of the C app to define our feature set, and overall navigation structure.

We first created a low-fidelity level-1 IA – where we defined the skeletal structure.

For each user journey within every feature, we dived deeper to create the content structure and rough layout of screens.

This level-2 IA served as the basis to start creating wireframes.

We also created user journey maps for particularly complicated user flows.

This helped us understand areas of delight and distress for users, and improve on experiences for the same.

Based on that, we crafted wireframes, followed by the visual design

A new visual language was set, a holistic style guide and component library were created, and the overall visuals of the new C app got a holistic refresh.

Notable aspects

Subscription plan page design

Screens that were live before we started the revamp:

The goals of the redesign on this page were:

1. Increase readability, scannability, and overall comprehension of the plans being offered
2. Allow users to realise the difference between each of the plans, and compare them to make an informed purchase decision
3. Enhance visual appeal while adding delight and reducing friction

First, we studied the best practices and the platforms putting these practices to use with success

We iterated on different variants of the layout to best accommodate the business requirements while maintaining high usability

In Phase 2, we refined the screen and its components, eventually landing on a compromised design (marked in green):

1. Clients’ business need to not give prominence to the Free & Starter plans
2. Most seamless flow for a user to view the plans, understand their details, compare them, make their selection, and proceed – all from one screen

A glimpse of all other variations that were tried and tested, before reaching the final design:

Usability testing (2 phases)

We conducted 2 phased usability tests to test the desirability and usability of the core app features – the tests were task-based primarily, and only a few questions were exploratory to understand the users’ sentiments and perceptions.

Sample size: A total of 20 candidates over the 2 phases

The UT report was created after synthesis of the observations and task-based analysis.

We generated problem statements, categorised them and also indicated their severity and criticality for rework / revamp.

The UT report presentation was crafted for the senior leadership from the client team. It contained tactical points for immediate improvement on all app screens and user journeys.

Web dashboard

Overview

We revamped the aesthetics as well as the core features of the C Web Dashboard for free and paid users.

Initially we worked on uplifting the user interface design, and created a holistic style guide for the same – while maintaining consistency with the C mobile app.

Credit Report revamp

We undertook a thorough revamp of the representation of C’s credit reports.

We started off with background research to understand the current landscape of credit reports.

We defined the IA for the same, based on:

1. Legal & compliance requirements
2. Usability studies with candidates

We brainstormed with the stakeholders to arrive at a detailed & segregated content inventory – this helped us realise how best to visualise the complicated information.

We then proceeded to create the design for the pages. 2 notable pages were:

1. Cover page

   

2. C Summary page

   

Eventually we landed on these as the final designs – marking a consensus between usability and business requirements.

Note: This exercise was done for the PDFs, the in-mobile-app views, and the in-dashboard views.

Introducing C Podcast

As part of a campaign to:

1. Increase user engagement with the platform
2. Enhance credit awareness and financial literacy

we proposed and incorporated a full-fledged podcast section with the C web dashboard, and further expanded it to the C mobile app.

Illustration library

We revamped the entire C illustration library, creating custom atoms and molecules for every possible feature & journey.

Acquisition boost strategy

We reimagined the new user enrolment strategy from a high-traffic landing page:

1. we reduced the compliance-heavy process by 1 step
2. we reduced initial friction, ensuring lower drop-offs and higher new user enrolment numbers

Refer to Figma file for more details

Marketing strategy

We catered to many marketing needs, like:

1. Introduced a first-of-its-kind rewards & referral program for the C platform
2. AMP-based emailers to increase user engagement and feature-adoption
3. Cross-selling opportunities to increase mobile app downloads
4. A dedicated pricing plan landing page to check different subscription plans and make an informed purchase decision – something that was hit-or-miss before
5. A feature strategy document to introduce new features into the platform to increase C’s competitive advantage

Notable mention: Onboarding email strategy

The business goals were to:

1. Increase awareness about the features of the C platform
2. Increase engagement and feature adoption as paid-users
3. Increase retention among users and get them to resubscribe
4. Increase up-selling among users and get them to upgrade to higher tier plans

Strategy: Onboarding emails for all first-time and returning paid users of C

We conducted detailed secondary research across different domains

For example, the following were the findings from platforms spanning finance & personal finance, marketing, project management, and edtech:

Eventually we devised a strategy for the same for trial on WebEngage

Based on the defined strategy, we crafted emailers to showcase appropriate features & nudges to the customers, to upgrade.

Retrospective

What went well?

• We were able to work efficiently with multiple stakeholder teams including devs and product leads to ensure complete cohesiveness of all factions
• We were able to expand our reach to over 50 million users in India with AMP email campaigns for maximum engagement
• We increased responsiveness and performance for 70% of users (mobile users), optimizing user experiences across all device touchpoints
• We improved efficiency, user satisfaction, engagement, and completion rates across the board, for all campaigns and facets of the C platform

What could have been done differently?

• More frequent testing would have helped us move faster and realise breaks in our hypotheses before going through long internal approval cycles
• I would have liked to craft a separate improved visual language (instead of simply adhering to the existing design language), in parallel to the existing one –
  • This could have been tested in isolation with non-trivial samples of users for constant validation & iteration
  • This could have shown non-ambiguous differences in visual quality leading to a higher chance of buy-in

Key learnings for future projects

• Being mindful of the entire user journey as improvements can be made throughout all possible touch-points across all C platforms – just as easily as devastating breaks can happen at any possible touch-points across all C platforms
• Adhering to the existing design language while making minimal changes to enable quick implementation of the solution – and in other cases, defining a holistic design language from the ground up – this balance was a valuable skill to master

Thank you for reading! 🤍