Case Study: CheckFree

CHALLENGE

A responsive, efficient call center is a vitally important part of a customer’s brand experience. Loyalty can be won or lost in minutes.

CheckFree’s call center is its primary channel of customer communication. The company asked Lextant to study its call-center and information systems, and to develop a faster, more effective web-based application that helps phone reps reduce call-handling time, improve productivity, and achieve “first call resolution.”

SOLUTION

To understand the call center customer experience, we used contextual inquiry and ethnographic research to understand the “customer service ecosystem” that the call reps inhabit. We discovered it’s an often tense and emotional place. Many calls involved missing or late payments or problems with logins and passwords. Aggressive performance metrics added to the stress.

Lextant designed a system that reduced the steps necessary to access information and provide it to the caller. To identify specific user needs, Lextant and CheckFree collaboratively developed eight distinct “personas” that described the reps’ behaviors, motivations, attitudes, and work practices. These personas helped our designers prioritize efforts and make user-centered decisions.

RESULTS

When the new interface was tested in a pilot program, the response was immediate — and dramatic. Call rep stress decreased, and user satisfaction scores jumped from 70 percent to an unheard of 94 percent. Before the new system was created, one rep told us, “I had to click through 17 screens in three systems to authenticate my customer and get a basic profile. Now I have everything I need on one screen.”