Adding design value to a technical solution.
As Liberis Finance experienced exponential growth, the company recognized the necessity to integrate UCD design and design thinking to enhance value within their existing onboarding quote journey, which had previously been engineered for delivery output. The objective was to spearhead a human-first onboarding experience, ultimately boosting conversions and reducing call handlers' labour costs. Additionally, embedding design thinking within the broader company would facilitate the companies longer term strategy—to build out a dedicated in-house design team.
As the key design professional within a 120-person company, I orchestrated the redesign of the customer quote experience, from analysis to conceptualization, through refinement and proposal suggestions. The main challenge of this work was the rationalisation of the question set and improving communication and collaboration across departments.
As the key design professional within a 120-person company, I orchestrated the redesign of the customer quote experience, from analysis to conceptualization, through refinement and proposal suggestions. The main challenge of this work was the rationalisation of the question set.
This initiative served as a strategic blueprint, offering clear guidance for the company's future product trajectory. It enabled senior stakeholders to implement new features and drive improvements over the upcoming years. Below is the process with showcasing the experience design thinking and primary screens.
Outcomes
• End-to-end online conversion completion improved by 31%
• Developed a white-label quote experience, adaptable across partner merchant sites
• Increased the number of business merchant partners from 5 to 8
• Launched new product & platform features in 2023, built on original design thinking
• Secured further design buy-in, with continued growth of design work based on the templates, suggestions, and guidance provided and hiring of a user-centric design team
What I did
• Led two cross-functional ideation and customer journey mapping workshops, collaborating with Data, Product, Marketing, Fulfilment, and Tech teams to streamline the onboarding experience, ensuring company-wide alignment of insights and user needs
• Defined and mapped five quote journeys and user flows in partnership with Product, Fulfilment, and Data teams, synthesizing user insights and competitor research
• Enhanced the digital platform for improved accessibility and user-friendliness through design
• Guided teams through the end-to-end process, delivering documentation with wireframes and clickable prototypes capturing key recommendations
Original Quote Journey
I spearheaded the project by conducting in-depth competitor desk research to uncover key selling points and strategies used to attract business owner customers. This analysis also revealed our current market differentiators strengths as, offering cash to defined SME's, and our weaknesses being not providing instant quotes fast against the industry standards expected by end users.
In alignment with Liberis' strategy to follow up and convert drop-offs through customer call-ups, call handlers regularly engage with customers about their business cash advance application & needs. To gain deeper insights into customer challenges related to the user experience, I reviewed 6-7 customer calls.
I also gathered strategic business and research documents from Marketing, Product, and Fulfilment departments to compare theoretical plans with practical execution. Despite limited accessible data, a fulfilment team member highlighted business constraints related to data sync & transfer from partner merchant hubs and legal regulations dictating some questions asked on the existing solution.
I then orchestrated journey mapping audits with the Product team and some members of the C-suite across all five existing business merchant partner sites. From these sessions, we strategize to first create a unified and consistent, efficient flow that would be white labelled and implemented across all five sites with associated branding.
To ensure company-wide awareness of the holistic customer journey, I planned to facilitate a workshop with business leaders, emphasizing our gaps and the importance of a seamless and efficient customer user experience.
Listening to customer calls & notes with product team
5 varied complex merchant user flows into one master flow
I spearheaded the summarization of my research into an overview of trends, pain points, user needs, and strategic suggestions. This provided essential context about our customers' priorities, enabling the design phase to be well-informed and user-centric
Deck presented to Product, Marketing and IT teams
Communication of most critical usability issues
"I was filling in the form online, but got stuck on one of the questions. I wasn't sure how to answer it correctly! I've already been rejected by my bank. I got your email, so I just wanted to know if I can get a cash advance, can you help me?".
- Customer call quote
Together with the Head of Product, we spearheaded a customer journey and ideation workshop, bringing together Product, Marketing, Sales, IT, and Fulfilment teams. Driven by the research I had uncovered. Our goal was to:
• Raise awareness of the gaps and seams in the customer journey
• Generate ideas to enhance the customer experience,
We then ranked the ideas based on perceived customer impact and feasibility for the company.
From the workshop, I took all the team's ideas, reflections and insights made. Together with the Head of Product, I teased out the best approaches that we later ended up wireframing and testing internally.
The new solution addressed the primary business need: changing the login detail from a merchant number to a government-registered business number or business email address. This key change aimed to reduce the highest drop-off rates from which were at the beginning of the journey, as most users did not remember their merchant customer number and left the screen.
Additionally, I recommended filtering customers based on their browsing behaviour versus those urgently needing cash. Browsing customers, who are less likely to complete all stages immediately, would receive a high-level general estimate with fewer questions.
1. Simplified Structured Information Architecture
Research showed user confusion with question order and homepage navigation after email redirection. To address this, information should be structured to meet market-specific needs for growth and monetization. The proposed design recommendation included two main zones on the screen:
• Top Menu Navigation Zone: This zone remains visible at all times, providing users with clear and consistent navigation options.
• Active Zone: Central screen area displaying the current stage of the application process, further helping users understand their progress.
This approach provides clear signposting and improves the logical flow of information.
2. Stage Reduction & Clarity
Reduced the number of stages from 7 to 5, resulting in a quicker experience with supporting tech and procurement / finance process. This was because people wanted improved efficiency.
3. Integration Full End-To-End Journey
For customer continuity, integrate confirmation, approval, check and contractual stages needed to complete the cash advance process with feature enhancements to make online contractual singing legally binding.
4. Quote flexibility
Research revealed most customer calls were to reconfigure quote amounts / repayment lengths. Embed an ability to customize cash amounts, according to level of urgency or, business sales - a huge pain point for customers urgently needing cash.
5. Assistive Features
Push data sync with partner sites and add autofill. Make using the platform intuitive and reduce the burden of accurate form filling - inaccuracies can lead to fund rejections and further loss of conversions.
6. Conversational Experience
Research revealed people were commonly stressed when applying for business funding. A user need to have a softer, positive, approachable tone of voice was valued.
7. Mobile Version
To match modern times and to empower people to instantly onboard from any marketing emails.
8. Progress Bar
This is because people had no indication how far they were to getting a quote.
The trade-offs of these combined would be achieving higher usability, flexibility and completion of online journeys, with customers able to do the end-to-end process all online. However, limitations included the timeframe for the tech build and the need to set up accurate data accessibility with partner data hubs.
With business as usual priorities in mind, we streamlined the experience to what we could deliver and test quickly in an in-office and remote format. I engineered how the journey could be represented as wireframes and orchestrated the workshop plan.
User Workshop Plan
Setting up (user testing)
Testing revealed the experience had a 55% quicker completion rate.
People felt the journey was more logical, informative and easier to complete.
Most were pleased with the added in stages, of signing final contracts, providing a holistic end-to-end journey.
Testing bought up further needs to resolve issues of joint business owners logging in and adding their credentials as part of cash advance application process.
During the unexpected outbreak of Covid-19, my tenure with the company concluded before any further iterative testing and synthesis could be conducted. The teams planned to spearhead the validation of designs and strategy remotely with Marketing & Product Managers after my departure.
