Ford + Lincoln Rewards Loyalty
This project involved a redesign of key moments in the “Missing Points” journey for customers engaged in the Lincoln Access Rewards or Ford Rewards loyalty programs. Within Ford and Lincoln’s global web teams I was assigned to support customer loyalty and engagement. My team was tasked with crafting solutions, within the existing rewards experience, to more effectively offer moments of discovery and self-servicing for problem resolution. Our efforts were driven by critical client KPIs to reduce call center volume related to missing points queries (key burden for the call center).
CHALLENGE
Call centers, and the time and staff needed to properly support them, can have a real financial impact on client’ bottom line. Analyzing call volume, and the key topics driving those calls, helps identify opportunities to better support their customers before they feel the need to resort to contacting a call center.
Our client came to us after identifying one of these key volume drivers for the call center, customer’s calling to ask questions related to missing rewards points in their member accounts.
For context, other than having separate design systems, the Ford and Lincoln web experiences, information architecture and interface structures are very similar to one another. This often means that when one client is seeking changes to support their KPIs it often filters over to the other brand, as was the case here.
APPROACH
Current state user flow analysis
Current state iterative design opportunity assessment
Market research and competitive landscape
High fidelity design
Cross functional team stakeholder reviews
Delivery handoff and launch
PROCESS OVERVIEW
Iterating an impactful design took a few steps across our CRUX team of strategy, copy, design and client engagement. Our initial task was to assess the current Ford and Lincoln rewards experiences. Our discovery phase identified a lot of missing content in the live experience. These lapses, brought to light with our own team trying to clearly identify the myriad reasons points might be missing from an account, illuminated areas of opportunity within the customer journey to better inform/educate our customers on possible reasons why they might be missing points in their account. During discovery we also identified an opportunity, within an existing points assist finder, that would benefit from a more thoughtful design implementation and structure.
Our key goals were to better inform, educate and ultimately increase awareness of the most common reasons for missing points and offer an improved query tool that would allow customers to self resolve their needs.
Once these areas were identified we looked specifically at which moments in the existing journey these implementations could/should impact. I worked closely with copy, strategy and a junior designer to craft our process, deliverables and goals to present to clients for approval. Once our outline was approved our team started iterating on our proposed design iterations.
Role: Associate Director, UX
Timeline: 8 Weeks
Platform: Mobile + Desktop Adaptive
Team: Claudia Zacharias, Natalie Cavanaugh, Lauren Alley
Figma, Miro, Monday
Missing Points Tool
How might we better educate, inform and provide self support tools to our rewards customers seeking answers related to missing points in order to reduce call center volume, and related costs of customer queries.
Hypotheses and Assumptions
With that in mind we were working with the following assumptions.
Users cannot find adequate answers as to why their account is not showing rewards points they believe they have earned
Users are frustrated that they are missing points and run in circles around the site trying to find answers and resolution before ultimately resorting to the call center
Users are not finding FAQs that provide the answers they need
Users are reaching out to the call center when they can’t find answers in Lincoln.com or Ford.com
Users are finding the existing tool, used to search for missing points, inadequate to provide the answers they are looking for
Missing Points Tool Changes - Previous Current State vs New Iteration
The Research
In the research phase we looked at four things: current state screens within the Rewards experiences, current state user journey related to missing points, competitive audit of other automotive rewards programs and missing points related content, comparative audit of non automotive companies and missing points related content.
THE DESIGN - CURRENT STATE DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES
Within discovery the following represent the three pages in the existing customer journey where we would focus our efforts.
Rewards Account Dashboard
Points Assist Tool Page
History Page
PRIMARY FEATURES
Rewards Account Dashboard
Added a featured component clearly calling out “Missing Points?” As the headline and a clear CTA to “Find Missing Points”
Added more informed and descriptive FAQs around missing points, frequent causes of missing points, time parameters for different earning activities and expirations and more relevant details.
Points Assist Tool Page
Added a new “Points Troubleshooting” component under the tool providing more education information to the customer and pricing links to more in-depth content
Added a “Get Support” component so that if the tool and the troubleshooting content don’t provide the answers the user needed they can still reach out to the Call Center when necessary. This was deprioritized on the page to try to get users to resolve their query using the tool or the troubleshooting content and links first.
Missing Point Tool was transformed with more informed copy content providing context, frequent causes (identify before using the tool and having no results returned) to reduce customer frustration
History Page
Added a new “Missing Points” component, below the customer transaction history list, to educate and inform on common reasons why the points they have earned/believe they have earned are not appearing in their history. This new component also contains a clear CTA to “Find Missing Points”, leading users to the new and improved Missing Points Tool.
Conclusion
Due to an urgency for speed to market these experiences went live without rigorous user testing. Instead the program was assessed post launch. We looked at web traffic data and engagement as well as followed post launch reporting provided by the call center teams for Ford and Lincoln. In the end we were able to successfully meet our goal to reduce call volume related to Missing Points queries by 10%.