Enhancing the customer experience with a one-stop portal

Have you ever used one website to access a bank account, another to manage trading, and a third to review investments? If you have, you'll know that switching between different systems to get a complete view of your finances is time consuming, and having to remember multiple passwords can be frustrating.

Customers and fund administrators who accessed our client's online services to manage their portfolios and investments faced this situation every day. There were four portals to review, processes were very complex, and some relied on paper-based steps. As a result, customers often called the company's help desk to resolve login issues.

The company wanted to create one comprehensive portal to offer a better experience to existing customers and help it scale to serve new ones. To do this, it needed to create an intuitive user interface based on customer needs and modernize the underlying platform.

You wouldn't lay the foundation for a new house without first drawing up the overall plan. Similarly, when it comes to platform modernization, it's important to start by considering the future state. To do this, we had to understand what customers wanted and needed.

Our experience experts began by conducting qualitative research – through observations and interviews – and quantitative research – through a survey of approximately 20,000 customers – to uncover user needs, behaviors, motivations, and frustrations.

Based on these findings, we developed data-driven customer personas to summarize what customers were looking for in an online portal. Using these personas, we conducted customer journey mapping workshops with subject matter experts and key stakeholders to understand how to best redesign internal processes and workflows.

Our user research informed what the ideal user interface would look. To bring it to life, we built wireframes to illustrate the layout of the portal. We also developed visual design concepts, which could be easily customized and updated for new brands or changing customer needs. Throughout the design phase, rapid prototyping allowed the team to explore and adapt different concepts to reach the final, ideal design at speed.

To support the new portal, we had to modernize the underlying platform. We worked with the client to develop a selection methodology to find a platform that would make their vision a reality. Specifically, we:

• Defined a list of evaluation criteria
• Assigned priorities and weights to the evaluation criteria
• Created a scorecard to rank potential platforms
• Collected pricing information from each candidate

Because the portal could be adapted to work on any platform, the client had plenty of choice. Together, we shortlisted the platform candidates and, after we made a final choice, were able to hand over designs to the chosen provider to accelerate the build of the new portal.

As soon as the new portal launched, the company saw an increase in positive customer feedback and a reduction in help desk calls. Today, the consistent visuals and intuitive design position the company as an industry leader in customer experience.

Employee productivity has also improved because employees now spend less time managing calls and only need to work with one portal instead of having to juggle four. The scalable, custom portal has also allowed the company to serve new customers to support profitable business growth.

In the end, the company saw the tangible benefits of putting the needs of the customer first. It plans to use experience as the North Star of its future digital transformation initiatives and, in doing so, it will continue to shine.