Reviewing a digital bank's support page

Banco Inter Support Page

Summary

Introduction

Briefing

Aela MID Bootcamp's Level 0 project is to Redesign a Support Page for a well-known company that already has a Support Page and is either:

A coffee machine company (eg. Nespresso); or

A digital bank; or

An e-commerce; or

An online game; or

An electronics company (eg. Samsung, LG).

🎯

At this level, the goal is to design a support page (web version) that helps users get easier and faster assistance. Analysis and hypothesis here are based on Secondary Research.

Why Banco Inter?

With a quick look on the company's social media pages, I could see hundreds of users complaints about some aspect of the digital bank's service and most of them wrote that they couldn't get the support they needed.

I personally know some clients of Banco Inter and use it myself for personal and professional purposes, having faced some difficulties with their support service first hand.

Project deliverables

After some desk research and problem discovery, a few ideas to solve the users' real problems will emerge. Working from that, expected project deliverables are:

UX Wireframes

Style guide

Visual design proposal

Secondary Research

Company Introduction

Banco Inter, formerly Banco Intermedium, is a Brazilian digital bank based in the city of Belo Horizonte. It is one of the first digital banks in Brazil, with the release of their free 100% digital account in 2014.

Banco Inter was the first Brazilian digital bank to carry out an IPO, which contributed to the expansion of its business model. According to the company, they have over 6 million users as of July 2020.

Engagement: active clients by quarter (up to the 2nd quarter of 2020 = 2T20). Source

Company History & Business Goals

The company was founded in 1994 as a Financial Foundation and over the years it became a bank (first regional then national), then from credit to multiple services, and after 20 years in business it launched a digital account. In 2017, it went through a rebranding and changed its name from Intermedium to Banco Inter. Today, it is a well established and fast-growing fintech.

Banco Inter's strategy is to bring "the best of both worlds" (banks and fintechs) to their service. Its primary business goal is to provide complete digital banking solutions, but from 2017 it has also positioned itself as a service platform with various solutions for their users. In addition to banking services, they also offer an investment platform, lines of credit, insurance and even a marketplace inside their app. According to them, the brand aims to simplify its users' lives.

Market share of digital banks in Brazil per number of withdrawals. Source

Banco Inter's Clients

According to their Institutional Presentation, about 70% of their clients are under 36 years old. From this 2019 report, I could see that 67% of the clients are married and 63% identify as male, with 27% in the 24-30 age bracket. Most of the users live in the State of São Paulo.

The digital account is the main product at Banco Inter and it offers free transfers, withdrawals, schedule payments, use of boleto (payment slip), etc. This service is the one with most users, who are usually searching for financial solutions that are easier to use, less bureaucratic and more efficient than traditional banks. 35% of clients use Banco Inter's account as the main one and 40% as the secondary account.

On blogs and social media, most people mention the ease of use, no fees, comfort and time saving as advantages for Banco Inter and their primary reason for using it. The user wants to have a bank (pay their bills, transfer money, manage their paycheck, etc) on the palm of their hands because it is much more efficient, convenient and quick than having to physically go to an agency. Using the app for investments is the second most mentioned reason.

Users' Complaints

On Reclame Aqui (one of the biggest websites in Brazil where customers can post their complaints about companies and often get a solution quicker than through traditional channels), and social media pages, most complaints about customer support were related to:

Inneficiency of the bot support service;

Inneficiency of the customer support phone service;

I have a protocol number 33804690866803 and after many unsuccessful calls to support and over 21 days of waiting, I would like to know when my problem will be solved. To make things worst, my account is locked and I cannot use it. As a customer I have had no support from the bank whatsoever and would like feedback on the matter.

Opening a support ticket and not getting a response;

Had an issue with Banco Inter yesterday and got no support from them. I need urgent response!

Scam or fraud victims don't get the support they need from the bank;

Waiting for an analysis of fraud on my account and the deadline I was given is up with no response. Contacted support againg and was informed that I must pay the disputed amount before the analysis is completed. It doesn't work that way. JUDICIAL ACTION..

Mobile app's chat support service doesn't work or users get only automatic responses.

Their chat support is only for pre-defined responses and they don't solve anything.

Current Version

Banco Inter has two official contact options for Customer Support: an online Help Centre with a chat service and a phone support service.

Problem Statement

Banco Inter's support pages are functional and look good, but the information is not entirely clear. For instance: there are 2 different phone numbers to reach support, but which should the client call? Will they get the same type of customer service (ie. bot vs. real person) across all channels?

On the Help Centre page specifically, there are problems such as:

Confusing navigation through categories;

Too many options and categories to click;

There's no hierarchy or prioritisation of the most important or most searched topics;

Many of the descriptions of what each category contains are missing or vague;

Too many clicks between the user and the solution.

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Problem Statement: Banco Inter's users face confusing navigation when trying to contact Customer Support on the company's web page. Our solution should deliver a way for them to easily find the topic(s) that are relevant to their issues so that the experience feels less stressful.

Hypothesis

Customer Support for Banco Inter gets a lot of complaints about not being efficient and the website offers several options that could lead users to get contact on the wrong topic or channel, which could contribute to the late reply (or no reply at all) from the support team.

Furthermore, offering too many options on the first page could lead to users getting frustrated because they can't find the proper topic to help them.

💡 Based on the previous steps of this project, possible solutions include:

Consolidating categories so the Help Centre home page doesn't show too many options right away;

Working on information architecture of the page to make the hierarchy of categories and topics clearer;

Improving (and, where absent, including) descriptions for the categories so the user knows what they can find inside;

Working on the search box and results page to make it easier for users to find relevant topics;

Improving some aspects of visual design keeping the current visual identity for Banco Inter.

Wireframing

Competitive analysis

With the problem and hypothesis in mind, it was time to do a UX competitive analysis of some of Banco Inter's main competition. The goal was to better understand where the company's customer support service stands in the market, to know some strengths and weaknesses of the competition in this area and help solve usability problems.

Based on the market share infographic from April 2020 mentioned in Secondary Research > Company Introduction > Company History and Business Goals, Banco Inter's main competitors are Nubank, Banco Next and Banco Pan.

Nubank

Pros: Visually appealing, strong design and typography, consistent with branding

Cons: It is just a Frequently Asked Questions page, so if the user couldn't access their mobile device for some reason they would need to send an email or call the company instead of getting more personalised support via help centre

Banco Next

Pros: Strong design and typography, consistent with branding, has a search box, possibility to filter topics by category

Cons: It is a Frequently Asked Questions page with the option of contacting the company via website, the page displays all the topics at once and support is not as personalised as the help centre service

Banco Pan

Pros: Good organisation of content, design makes topics easy to identify and stand out and it is simple, clean and easy to navigate with a visually appealing page, the consolidated categories and menus that show or hide content when clicked make the page slicker

Cons: Various forms of contact with no directions to the user about the best option for each type of inquiry can be a bit confusing

Design Review

Current Support Page

Inter - Central de Ajuda

Informações sobre a abertura e características da conta

https://ajuda.bancointer.com.br/pt-BR/

Header

The header is clearly highlighted from the rest of the page with no menus or any other points of distraction. The search bar is clearly signaled with a different colour, the magnifying glass icon and microcopy ("search for answers...")

Body

Pros: iconography, visual separation of categories, text colours and weight convey the hierarchy of information, good readability

Cons: there are 20 categories for the user to choose from right away - some of them very similar to each other, some categories have descriptions and others don't, the number of articles within each category is irrelevant to this user journey, not very intuitive

Pros: breadcrumbs, category description (absent in some), subcategories, clearly written titles

Cons: author of the article is irrelevant to the user (especially considering this is a virtual assistant character, not a real person)

Pros: breadcrumbs, clear hierarchy of information, 'last updated' information, quick and easy user satisfaction survey, the possibility to open a support chat clicking on the lower right corner icon, very good readability

Cons: author of the article is irrelevant to the user (especially considering this is a virtual assistant character, not a real person), 'last updated' information has only two options: 'updated today' or 'updated over a week ago' (weakens the point of this feature)

Footer

The footer is very clean with only minimal information, such as the brand's value proposition statement ("Inter. Simplifies life!") and social media channels. It also has the possibility to open a support chat clicking on the lower right corner icon

Benchmarking

Before proceeding to sketching and prototyping solutions, benchmarking was a necessary step. In order to set expectations, identify best practices and pinpoint performance gaps that could lead to improvement, I studied some other companies' support pages. The process included banks and other businesses, with best practices and opportunities highlighted below.

HSBC's support page has helpful microcopy and categories structure

Barclays' support page uses helpful iconography and provides examples of questions answered in each category, with the most popular ones featured on display

ManyChat's support page also uses iconography and helpful microcopy, with descriptions in every category

Delighted's support page is another good example of iconography and category descriptions

Personas

To generate a clearer understanding of Inter's Help Centre users, I looked at the information found in this report and also the company's followers on social media channels to help me create some proto personas:

This step helped me to better understand some users pain points before moving on to potential solutions.

Sketches and wireframes

Considering the problems mentioned in Secondary Research > Problem Statement, I sketched a couple possibilities on paper:

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Suggested changes: reviewed information architecture; consolidated categories; more scannable content, including clearer iconography; shorter page to reduce scrolling; the possibility of displaying popular topics on the top of the page Keep from the current version: clean header and footer; online chat.

To consolidate the ideas that came up on the sketches and make them more tangible, I designed a low-fi wireframe:

Refining

Moodboard

Card sorting

Before moving on to the prototyping stage, I did a card sorting study with 10 respondents. The goal was to get insight on user's expectations for the information architecture of the page. Based on the results, I created this sitemap for the first 2 levels of navigation.

Style guide

Typeface

Colour palette

Search bar

Icons

Avatars

Social

Visual interface design

With all studies and previous results in mind, I designed a new interface for Banco Inter's Help Centre home page. The main proposed changes were:

Working on UX Writing to make the content inside each category clearer and invite the user to browse or search;

Use of information architecture to organise the hierarchy of items;

All categories have a brief description of its content;

Consolidated and reorganised categories to avoid long scrolling;

Use of iconography to aid scannability;

Highlight of the most popular and accessed topics;

Display categories in columns for better scannability;

All items fit into 6 main categories (as opposed to the previous 20): Transactions, Account, Credit, Security, Rewards and Other;

Include a login option in the header so the user can login at any point.

Thank you!

References

Banco Inter Homepage

Banco Inter Help Centre

Banco Inter Institutional presentation (2019)

Banco Inter Institutional presentation (2020)

Banco Inter reference form (2019)

Market share statistics for Brazilian digital banks (2020)

Other projects