Capital One
Reimagining Escalations
End-to-End Research and Service Design project to reimagine current approach to servicing customer escalations across credit card LOB - enabling better resolution of customer issues, and improved customer experiences while also improving operational efficiency.
✱ Multi-Modal research process to understand root causes of complaints
✱ Holistic service design interventions to help across journey
Brief
Reimagine the approach to servicing escalations and improve customer experience while enhancing operational efficiency.
Results
✱ Interventions launched in pilot
✱ Reduction in repeated calls after initial case
✱ Novel IVR system brought into full production
Project Scope
✱ Role: Design Lead, Research Moderator, Partner Lead
✱ Current and future state maps, research synthesis, pilot tested artifacts
The Opportunity
Each year, there are 1.3 Million escalated complaints, each of which represents a customer experiencing an issue they want solved.
The Impact
By reducing escalations, COF can increase customer retention and reduce current OPEX costs.
In order to fully understand the top drivers of customer complaints, I drove for a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to both understand root causes at an emotional level and determine their scale.
Literature Reviews
Understanding what leads to complaints across Capital One and analogous service based businesses at large.
Agent & SME Interviews
Agent interviews to gain empathy and understand techniques used to de-escalate customer complaints.
Data Analysis
Keyword search and call listening with high volume of customer calls to determine key drivers of complaints.
Customer Empathy Interviews
Interviewing customers that represented a full spectrum of needs across multiple user groups.
Learning Approach
Through empathy interviews and call listening, we uncovered 3 distinct “behavioural archetypes” who each have different needs as they navigate the same journey.
The Passive Solver
Reimagine the approach to servicing escalations and improve customer experience while enhancing operational efficiency.
The Wary Warrior
The Wary Warrior presents the most complex issues, often requiring multiple callbacks and the highest degree of empathy and understanding.
The Reactive Navigator
The Reactive Navigator calls in seeking understanding, and without it, they call back.
I created a detailed Journey Map to identify moments that matter across the customer and associate experience.
At a high level, the Tier 2 Escalations journey has 5 core phases, each ideally leading to a first call resolution, but often requiring follow up because a determination could not be made.
Service Blueprinting
These five critical points in the journey identified through research and validated with agents and customers alike
became the direct foundation for the concepts that were developed and piloted.
Meet them where they are
Customers don't always understand the responsibility related to products they've signed up for so agents must educate.
Policy Gridlock
If an agent isn't able to help a customer understand the "why" behind a decision, it's likely to result in a callback.
Hands Tied
Agents provide customer with resolution options available to them. Often, they are not options that the customer wants and they do not have leeway to change outcome.
Cumbersome Verification
Customers expressed issues with digital-first verification and servicing tools, especially ADA customers citing difficulty following processes with low hearing or vision.
Matching De-Escalation
Agents are often balancing performance metrics with connecting to customers. De-Escalation is an informal process whereas time on calls is measured.
Moments that Matter
Interventions were designed to address escalations across the customer journey, and down-selected via participatory research.
24 concepts were tested via resonance research, and 5 were further developed as initiatives for piloting
Personalized Learning Rewards
Learning Modules that are tailored to top drivers of complaints, and matched with customers based on specific needs.
Learning rewards show up in context of everyday banking, and within transaction history logs.
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Get ahead of complaints by addressing common complaint drivers via education (tailored to customer context)
Customer/Agent Matching System
Customers cited the need to get directly to the right agent to solve their complaint, citing cumbersome verification.
To solve this, the matching system parses attributes of agents and customers, and finds the best available agent.
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Matching the agent to the customer complaint reduces time wasted with the wrong agent, reduced call back rates, and increases positive post-call NPS.
Enhanced Resolution Pathways
Enhanced resolution delivery aims to ensure full understanding of resolutions and determinations in an effort to reduce complaint
Additional resolution pathways are available to customers in a way that empowers them.
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Limiting repeated calls and offering de-escalation pathways for follow up that are more efficient.
Customer Care Log
The care log shows which channel the customer used for servicing of complaints, for record-keeping and in an effort to shift their preference to digital self-serve.
The Care log shares customer centric information on what happened in a case.
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Provide evidence on both sides (agent and customer) to ensure that all notes were recorded accurately.
Enhanced Tier 2 Agents
Some customers require more “white-glove” servicing, especially when dealing with life’s largest moments.
For customers that need extra help, a dedicated agent is assigned to their case, from start to finish.
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To truly meet certain customers where they are, retaining the same agent they started with reduces attrition risk, while meeting customers where they are in their major life moments.
The Outcome
Launched In Pilot
Concepts were picked based on their initial customer resonance and ability to be integrated into existing processes. Five initiatives aligned to engineering and product roadmaps to improve triaging (patent pending), first-touch de-escalation, and high-frequency complaint handling