Account Limit experience of XP Investments
Context
XP Investments is one of the largest financial companies in Brazil.
+ 1.4M active users in bank accounts
+ 4M active users in investment accounts
R$ 1.06 Trillion in total client assets
R$ 9.7 Billion in payment transactions over Q3 2023 only
After integrating XP's Digital Account product team in 2023, I was assigned to lead the design of the Account Limit, a new service that allows customers to transact beyond their account balance. In other banks, it is also referred to as an overdraft.
The project emerges as a business strategy to bring significant financial results to XP Investments. Additionally, it serves as a way to compete with other banks, and addresses frequent requests from XP's customers and advisors.
My role
Design lead - responsible for guiding all design and research activities. I collaborated with the Cash In squad, a multidisciplinary group composed by 7 team members from business and engineering orgs.
Over the course of 6 months, I was responsible for leading the discovery, ideation and design solution for both the end user journey and the internal customer care tool.
Problem
Unlike other major banks, XP Investments did not offer a transactional limit to its customers, causing:
🔴 Significant decline in customer satisfaction due to a high number of failed transactions caused by insufficient account balance
🔴 Loss of revenue, given this service is highly profitable for the business.
🔴 Big competitive disadvantage compared to other banks.
Project goals
🟢 Craft an intuitive and consistent onboarding flow that empowers customers to learn about the account limit and quickly activate the service.
🟢 Foster transparency and informed decision making, allowing customers to track their limit usage effortlessly.
Key project phases
Following the human-centered design process, the key activities included:
• Desk research study, including a competitive analysis describing the biggest gaps from each competitor.
• Creation of concepts and high-fidelity navigable prototype.
• Usability tests focused on validating the user journey and gathering insights for future improvements.
• Handoff with a detailed description of each user interaction, accessibility best practices, communication rules and the set of metrics to be tracked once the app goes live.
At every stage, the work in progress was presented and validated by the product team and stakeholders.
Desk research
To deepen my understanding of the Account Limit service and the current market practices, I conducted a desk research study as part of the effort to strengthen the strategic positioning of the product.
Benchmarking
By mapping the experience of 5 key competitors in the sector, it was possible to assess and compare best practices, identifying design opportunities.
• The possibility of viewing details of service consumption, including fees and charges
• Provide usage warning to the customer, ensuring transparency and avoiding debit
• A quick and hassle-free cancellation
Competitor pain point analysis
To identify opportunities for the business, I led the team through the analysis of key pain points and concerns shared by our competitors' customers. By mapping important customer service platforms such as Reclame Aqui, we gathered strategic insights that highlighted essential service aspects, ensuring a top-quality product with a significant competitive edge for XP Investments.
User flow
Before moving to the solutioning phase, a user flow was created to guide the team through the key aspects of the experience, encompassing the main touchpoints within the application and the communication scale.
The user flow significantly aids the engineering team in anticipating technical requirements and helps stakeholders validate and prioritize features for the MVP.
Design solution
Based on the insights gathered throughout discovery, and the analysis of business requirements, it was possible to kick off the design explorations for the new Account Limit experience.
At this stage, the main concern was to establish the touchpoints within each transactional journey, taking into account key business challenges that could significantly impact the designs. These challenges include:
💸 To avoid debt encouragement, the service should clearly inform customers of its terms and conditions
🕓 To complete the service activation, customers must wait for fraud and credit analysis
💳 Customers that already have some type of credit or are used to special checks are more interested in this type of service
Targeting a fluid and consistent experience, the solution prioritized:
🔒 Creation of an integrated experience that brings security and transparency to customer transactions.
👍 Activation strategy to avoid unwanted actions. Creation of a quick and easy service cancellation flow.
📢 Definition of communication rules to guide customers through the activation process.
After creating the concept, I conducted a validation workshop with the team and main stakeholders. All feedback collected was prioritized for the design of the final MVP solution, both for the customer and advisor journey. Evolutions for future releases were also mapped.
Usability test
To validate the proposed experience, we engaged a large number of eligible customers in an unmoderated usability test. The main objectives of the test included:
•Validation of service naming
• Usability validation: service activation journey, bill payment with account limit, limit consultation
• NPS evaluation
• Interest in the service and product features
Strategic insights
Through testing, we gathered key insights that helped identify the service aspects most relevant to XP customers.
• The benefit of 10 days with no interest holds strategic importance for attracting customers to the service
• The communication of fees must be transparent and objective
• The main target audience are customers who already use special limits at other banks
Design impact in business
Customer feedback played a key role in formulating business requirements and guidelines, and helped to effectively translate the value of the human-centered design process for the business, while ensuring a strong user-centric experience.
Design Challenges
The project presented important challenges that required flexibility and strategic approaches.
⏳ Short deadlines to complete each stage of the project.
I prioritized activities and optimized processes to manage the tight deadlines.
👨💻 Some stakeholders were unfamiliar with the value that design brings to all phases of a project.
I promoted the design culture to business and engineering partners, demonstrating the value of design through strategic insights and metrics.
✏️ Insufficient time to create new components for the design system library.
I adjusted existing components to ensure top quality and accessibility compliance.
⚙️ Technical limitations in the implementation phase required adaptations to the final solution.
I worked in close collaboration with the development team, remaining flexible to accommodate any changes.
Final experience
Customer
Customer service
Product Setup is the platform used by customer care agents to assist customers who contacted the XP call center. This is the tool used to locate customer's information, as well as every detail related to the product(s) or service(s) they acquired.
To support the new Account Limit service, the tool was enhanced to provide customer care agents with easy access to key consumption and limit history information. This empowers them to make quick decisions on providing additional limits or charging fees, thereby boosting efficiency and productivity.
1. Customer care agents can view details of the consumption, including the current, minimum and maximum limit amounts.
2. It’s possible to easily check the customer status and whether or not they are eligible for the service.
3. There is a summary of important customer information such as billing dates, fees and exemptions.
4. Agents can check the customer history and view details of any limit changes, activations and cancellations.
Next steps
To monitor the success of the project post-implementation and identify opportunities for future iterations, I proposed the following steps:
Metrics tracking
• Implementation of parameters to capture usage patterns and flow breaks in the MVP
• Analysis of metrics captured through analytics tools
• Analysis of customer feedback captured through service and NPS platforms
Customer feedback
• Customer interviews to identify opportunities for improvement
• Survey with customers to collect adoption and service quality metrics, as well as general insights to identify opportunities for improvement
• Conducting A/B tests to evaluate different hypotheses
