My team focuses primarily on customer support features to ensure merchants can make transactions across various SumUp products without friction. Below is a case study that outlines my design process and applied research methodologies throughout the development of a feature to drive merchants' engagement in account verification before they hit an initial transaction limit.
Top 3 contact reasons in all support channels
Support touchtpoints are reviewed quarterly as one of the key performance indicators (KPIs) of the team's impact.
Thematic analysis
We analysed 300 "Account" related cases individually. Our goal was to look for similarities in those cases. We grouped the cases by themes and found "verification" to be the biggest contributor to the touchtopints.
title | Quote | Theme |
|---|---|---|
 | "All transactions have declined and the app tells me to verify my account?" | Verification |
 | “I cannot find where I can make change my business details?" | Account info |
 | "I just set up my account but can't log into the app why?" | Sign in |
 | "Oh, I thought my account is verified? Now I'm blocked from transacting?!" | Verification |
 | "I need to verify my account quick, how to proceed?” | Verification |
Merchant interviews
To get more context in the problem space, we interviewed merchants who have contacted customer support regarding verification issues.
Participants
Active merchants who have contacted customer support in the last 90 days regarding verification.
Methodologies
One-to-one 30 mins interviews via video call
Interview insights
Problem statement
Merchants generally ignore the verification button until they've reached their transaction limit and having their account blocked. It is estimated that 37% of merchants hit the limit without having their accounts verified. This leads to increased work for support team to ensure that these merchants can quickly return to transacting again.
Hypothesis
We believe by improving the information scent (with sufficient cues and context) will help merchants to estimate the perceived value of having their account verified.
We know this to be true when we see a decrease in case number and a higher conversion rate.
Product requirements
In order to better express the importance of the verification process, the transaction limit component needs to explain:
- why a merchant needs to verify
- what will happen should they not
- how much more they are allowed to transact before being blocked
Job stories and design requirements
A / B testing
Markets:
🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇮🇹
Duration
4 weeks
Result in the new component:
iOS: 46% increase in conversion
Android: 15% increase in conversion
Dashboard: 18% decrease in conversion
Proportion of new merchants hitting the limit
As of end of February, we saw a 4% increase in total new merchants having their account verified without hitting their transaction limit.
With the higher conversion rate in A/B testing and the increased proportion of verified new merchants, we believe the new transaction limit component has provided sufficient information to help merchants make transactions across various SumUp products frictionlessly.
