Enabling customers to see recurring expenses
Commbank 2018
While working at the Innovation Lab, I was tapped on the shoulder by another team to help solve a problem: How do we make it easier for a customer who has lost their credit card, to update all their subscriptions?
I found myself working on the first iteration of solving this problem, without really knowing where we were headed.
Research from Roy Morgan (2019) shows that nearly 14 million Australians over 14 years old have access to a SVOD (Subscription Video On Demand) service like Netflix or cable service. Another report by Suncorp Bank (2015) found that 4.6 million Australians have gym memberships. 7News reported (2019) that Australians have 56.7 million subscriptions, about 3 per person.
While the convenience of direct debits scaled well with the availability of subscription services, it gave rise to a new problem.
The Problem. People subscribe to heaps of subscription services. Just think about what you’re subscribed to now: streaming services (Prime, Netflix, Spotify), apps (Dropbox, MyFitnessPal, Calm), and utilities (water, gas, electricity). And then there’s gym memberships, car and insurance, and that subscription to The Atlantic you no longer read but still pay for (guilty 🙋♂️).
Combine that with the propensity for anyone to lose their credit card, or have to get their card replaced because of fraudulent activity, and we’ve got our pickle: all these services are charging my now-lost card. How do I know which ones to update with my new payment details?
A mock-up of how recurring expenses would appear at the end of a customer's bank statement.
The Solution. As a first iteration, we showed customers a list of recurring expenses in their bank statement. This way, if their associated card is lost or stolen, they’ll have an idea of which services need to have their payment details updated.
Laying the foundation: An algorithm detects a pattern of regular transactions from a customer’s account over the past 12 months, to generate the list of recurring payments. This lays the groundwork for future capabilities to help them manage their finances.
Natural entry point: User research showed that customers naturally went to their bank statement when looking for recurring transactions, but would have to manually search through their transactions.
Out the door: While many locations were considered for customers to access this data, the bank statement had the lowest technological effort needed to rapidly bring this information to customers.
Upon Reflection. When I say I didn’t know where this was going, I really didn’t. I imagined the ideal experience for the customer could have been us telling a customer in their account and on the app that these are the companies that need to have payment details updated at, triggered by the request of a replacement card. At the time, I didn’t know what we were building towards, because I was a departmentally an outsider and we needed something fast.
As a UX Designer, it’s often easier to ask less questions and keep our mind focussed on the scope handed to us, because it means we get to skip a few steps and go straight into designing a solution. When we do that, we lose a broader perspective that would have enabled me to think more strategically, and have more impactful conversations with stakeholders about the direction of the experience.
The constraints and scope lead us to this solution: Showing customers this list in their bank statement. It wasn’t perfect— it was buried in a PDF, on the last page of their statement. But it got the information out there, and we pointed customers to that page when they asked a customer service rep.
It’s a manual experience. The MVP sometimes is.
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