Self Help Discovery
Problem: The search and help features on TD.com play a pivotal role in assisting customers to find the information they need swiftly and effectively, thereby significantly impacting sales conversion rates and reducing the call volume to contact centers. Recognizing the importance of optimizing this experience, and the issues with the experience at the time, our goal was to understand our customers’ information seeking needs and how we can provide an exceptional experience that not only meets but surpasses their expectations.
Goal:
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Increasing findability and self-serve, and driving low quality support calls out of phone channel.
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Envisioning a future state of the search and information seeking capabilities.
My role:
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Reviewed past discoveries, usability testing, live search capability and contact us pages, SEO requirements, and competitive analysis.
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Defined opportunities for improvements.
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Creating ideas and concepts for usability testing.
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Revised designs based on usability testing results to optimize user experience.
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Presented design solutions to stakeholders for feedback and approval.
Design and Working team:
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Design Director, Design Manager, Sr. UX Designer, Research Manager, Sr. Researcher
Digital Self-help, Digital Performance, SEO Marketing, Public Site Owner
Outcome:
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An experience brief with recommendation for future actions.
01 - User Interviews
Collecting feedback on the experience of seeking out content and resources in the context of learning about financial concepts as well as learning and making decisions about financial products that meet the needs of customers and prospects.
The key objectives of this research were to:
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Understand the mental models around search.
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Understand if users have specific expectations of bank search and bank information seeking.
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Understand participants’ expectations & unmet needs around the experience.
02 - Competitive Analysis
Through meticulous examination and comparative analysis, we delved into various aspects of competitors' websites, including layout, navigation, flow, content organization, and interactive features. We identified notable differences between competitors' websites and TD's site pinpointing areas of improvement and innovation.
03 - Knowledge Harvest Summary from previous research
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Prominent search bars which deliver high-quality results, can help reduce the volume of phone channel calls.
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Search feature allow users to take control of their actions to find what they are looking for with intent.
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Formulating a good search inquiry can be difficult for most users. Those individuals who are not financially literate may have further difficulty formulating searches around topics they are not familiar with.
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Banking websites were not thought of as a go-to for financial advice, instead participants would start their search on Google.
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Filters and related topics help participants to quickly locate content that interested them and keep the information they were digesting to a manageable amount.
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Search boxes and navigation need to work hand in hand to deliver the best possible experience.
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A study by Comm100 (an omnichannel software company) reported that 82% of customer were satisfied with live chat experiences, compared to 61% with email and 44% with phone channels.
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Canadian and American banking customers were most interested in the following information when researching banking products online:
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Product fees, interest rates, and rewards and benefits for checking and savings accounts.
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Product fees, cash back/credit rewards, and categorized spending rewards for credit cards.
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Interest rates, payment terms, and product fees for both mortgages and loans.
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04 - Ideation
We had several brainstorming sessions, during which we generated and developed a number of ideas for Contact Us Homepage:
We also generated ideas for Contact Us Detail Pages, Search Capability Auto Suggest Recommendation, and Search Default Result and No Results Null State:
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Search bar: the search bar is always visible on the Dynamic Navigation modal for the user to perform new searches. Voice search is also available.
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Auto suggestion: As the user types in, we will automatically suggest some search terms based on what they have typed in. We also highlight the words that match between what they've typed in and what we are suggesting.
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Recommended for you: data comes from any information we collected from the user based on cookies.
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Segments: dividing the search results into different segments to help the user navigate the results faster and easier.
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Trending FAQs: If we continue using IR, this data will come from IR. Trending FAQs should keep changing with the trends.
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Trending learning articles: The learning center articles that have been trending.
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Trending offers: This section should truly reflect the popular offers that users are interested in.
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Chat: connecting search with chat, in case the user wants to continue with chat.
And we generated ideas for New Framework for all Segments in Canada and US site:
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Search Bar: introducing a search bar to make search more prominent.
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Search Bar Mobile interaction: Search link is sitting right next to the login link outside of the hamburger menu. On click, the search modal would open.
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Products: exposing the products to reduce 1 click to get to the most important sections of the site.
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Contact us - Header: contact us to come to the header to remove user frustration.
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Contact TD - Footer: creating a section for contacting TD with three areas of contact us, Book an appointment and Locate us.
05 - Usability Testing
Self-help discovery conducted over 24 weeks focused on creating a conceptual experience strategy to evolve and improve self-help elements of the TD public site, specifically 'Search' and 'Contact Us' sections. The discovery was a collaborative project that included partner stakeholders at both working and executive levels.
Current Stage
We delivered the discovery results, which informed the new experience design. This design led to the creation of new components and recommendations for changes to the site structure. Some of these changes have already been applied, while others are currently in process.