Discovery surfaced a lot of problems within contact centre but we focused on the ones most relevant to handling debit card actions.

Users were frustrated with the overwhelming existing process.

For agents to complete standard debit card action requests for customers they needed to navigate several different apps and flip back and forth to verify customer information. The friction from this constant switching meant that the system was more likely to freeze or crash, agents sometimes struggled to locate information quickly, and to customers there was no indication for why an agent would be pausing before giving answers to their questions, leading to increased tension.

The existing debit card solutions across the bank, wouldn’t fully work for call centre agents.

Existing patterns for transaction views, debit card actions, and customer information on the public site and retail branches were generally treated as separate pages, not one large app. Research into retail systems had shown that tellers benefitted from debit card actions being executed in steps with only 1 step in the process being shown at a time. Limiting the information on screen helped them focus on completing the current step accurately before proceeding to the next. We didn’t have research to support if this conclusion was true for call centre agents as well.

Stakeholders had never worked with the design team before.

Funding for research and design in the call centre was not common and teams typically operated amongst themselves resulting in each app, feature, and update lacking any consistency. Teams were unsure where design should be brought in during the project timeline and some project teams assumed that the design role would only be providing input on the final visuals of the project. This uncertainty of the role design played in the success of the project would prove to be a problem.