Enhancing visibility of customer feedback at Experian

Service Design

Role:

Research, UX lead and customer voice advocate

13 stakeholders involved in the process
Research presented to senior stakeholders with positive feeback
Chatbot technology now being further discussed by the business
300 new customer advisors created
Customer research sped up by 5x
Customer voice starting to be centralised

Objective

After completing a formal qualification in Design Thinking, I saw an opportunity to apply these methods to drive real change. The goal? To create a seamless, customer-first support experience that would not only improve internal processes but rebuild customer trust and satisfaction.

The Opportunity

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Key Project Phases

Digging into the problem

1. Stakeholder Mapping and Assumption Testing
I began by conducting a deep dive into the ecosystem of our support processes, identifying key stakeholders across departments. Through mapping stakeholders into different quadrants of influence, I ensured that the right voices were prioritized for further exploration. The assumption phase highlighted potential pain points that had previously gone unnoticed, allowing us to focus on the highest-impact risks early.

2. Interviews with Customers and Stakeholders
To bring the customer’s voice directly into the design process, we conducted customer interviews with customers who had faced issues. Their feedback was instrumental in identifying breakdowns in communication and gaps in the support process. Internal stakeholders contributed insights on process inefficiencies, allowing us to bridge the gap between the customer’s experience and internal operations.

Assumptions were ranked into four quadrants by the level of risk i.e. what's the financial or other cost of getting this wrong?, and uncertainty i.e. how much data do we have to answer this?

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Persona for Customer Success Managers.

**Key points:**
- Hard to know where to send the feedback
- Often don't hear back and have to chase

Persona for 1st line support who often don't get enough information about the problem to be able to respond effectively.

Persona for the customer. They feel like their feedback isn't getting heard and can wait indefinitley for a response.

3. Uncovering Systemic Issues Through Case Studies
Analyzing case studies of support failures, we mapped out the journey of customer requests across different teams in a series of blueprints. This revealed systemic issues that could be targeted for improvement, from lost feedback in multi-channel systems to support requests languishing in silos.

I mapped out some example cases through a blueprint showing the process and the teams the feedback goes between. This was mapped out using desktop research and stakeholder interviews.

This causal loop diagram shows the different cause and effects of the process. The various loops of information cause infinite loops e.g. Without access to customers, product teams can't make good decisions, and without being able to make good decisions, and this key product feedback isn't getting resolved. and customers feel frustrated.

Driving Solutions Through Ideation

4. Collaborative Ideation Workshops
I led a series of workshops with cross-functional teams, using “How Might We” frameworks to turn customer pain points into opportunities. Over three sessions, 12 stakeholders helped storyboard new processes that redefined the customer journey. This collaborative process was a turning point, allowing us to visualize how we could realign internal workflows to better serve our customers. The final output was represented by a customer experience map showing the current, and desired experience.

After ideation and storyboarding workshops, an experiance map was drawn up combining all of the best ideas from the workshop into a better journey that captured the right data up front, notified the right team up front and centralised customer feedback into a central place.

5. Introducing AI-Powered Solutions
One of the critical outcomes was the design of an AI-powered chatbot that would act as the first touchpoint for customer feedback. By automating the initial triage, we could ensure requests were accurately categorized and swiftly addressed. This concept, which is now under further development, has the potential to drastically reduce delays and miscommunication.

Delivering Lasting Impact

6. Improving Cross-Business Visibility
One of the most significant challenges uncovered was the fragmentation of customer feedback across systems. To address this, I became a key member of a cross-business working group dedicated to unifying customer conversations. After a 6 month selection process we chose a tool, Great Question which has centralized customer feedback and research in one place, improving both visibility and access to actionable insights. Future plans include importing support tickets directly from Salesforce.

Within six months of launching in 2024, we had onboarded 50 customer panel members, conducted as many conversations, and started using AI to generate insights that directly influenced product development. This work not only improved how we listened to customers but also provided teams with the tools to act on feedback faster.

AI integration into research workflow — Image from greatquestion.co shown an an example illustration of what is possible.

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Outcome: A New Approach to Customer Feedback

The project has set a new standard for how we manage customer communication across the company. By centralizing the feedback process and leveraging AI tools, we've streamlined customer interactions and drastically reduced the time it takes to respond to issues. This initiative is now a cornerstone of our customer-centric strategy, promoting alignment across the business and ensuring every customer feels heard.

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