Enhancing billing experience to reduce customer service load

Client

Timeline

Role

Securitas

August 2022 - May 2023

UX Designer

Challenge

Securitas has been rapidly expanding its customer base and growing its business, which has led to a notable rise in customer inquiries, especially around billing. To address this, the company aimed to develop a user-centric billing platform to enhance the customer experience.

Impact

By offering users the right information and simplifying the payment process, Securitas saw impressive results, with customer service calls dropping by 32% in the first quarter alone.

Digging Deeper: A Simple Request with a Complex Core

The client’s initial request was simple: redesign the billing platform. However, I believe in starting every project by digging deeper into the core problem. Sometimes, this exploration uncovers clues or valuable resources. In this case, it revealed the increasing customer complaints, which became the catalyst for the project to take its initial steps forward.

To get a clearer picture, I spoke with the customer service agents and the billing team to understand how invoicing worked and what issues were being reported most frequently. My team and I also analyzed nearly 150 recorded customer service calls. These recordings turned out to be a goldmine, helping us identify the common reasons customers were reaching out. While some issues were unique, a clear pattern emerged—most calls were driven by a lack of sufficient information or feedback being provided to customers.

What 150 Customer Service Calls Taught Us

Of the 150 calls we analyzed, a staggering 88% revolved around a common issue: customers weren’t receiving the right information at the right time.
The majority of these problems stemmed from the processing of missed payments, particularly for customers managing multiple sites. Without an aggregated view of billing of various locations, they often overlooked payments for one or two sites, leading to confusion and frustration.

Missed Payments and Many Frustrated Customers

Imagine you're Joe, a gym owner who relies on Securitas security services across multiple locations. To pay for these services, Joe enters the invoice number for each location individually. However, every now and then, Joe accidentally misses a payment, leading to late fees being added.
Frustrated, Joe has to call customer service to figure out where the extra charge came from. After some back and forth, he realizes what happened and then makes the payment over the phone.

This whole situation could be easily avoided if Joe had a consolidated view of all his invoices and pending charges in one place. It would save Joe the hassle of missed payments and cut down on the time he spends with customer service just to sort out his billing.

How can we centralize billing information across multiple sites to provide customers with better experience ?

The Path to Centralized Billing: Securitas' Untapped Potential

Next, I explored whether it was possible to centralize the billing information, and it turns out there is! The Securitas billing system is structured with a "bill to" address for payments and multiple "shipped to" addresses for where services are provided. So, a client with multiple accounts can have one unique "bill to" address, while the services are spread across different locations.
We confirmed this setup with Securitas' finance and billing teams, which reassured us that centralizing the information was not only possible but already partially in place.

From whiteboard to Information architechture to wireframes.

With a clear understanding of the user pain points and the best practices in billing, I decided to jumpstart the process with a whiteboarding session. Given our time constraints, it made sense to gather the team for a collaborative session to quickly brainstorm how the layout and information architecture should come together.
This hands-on approach helped us map out the basic flow of the billing portal and create a checklist to ensure no critical page or piece of information was overlooked in the design process

Testing and refining the wireframes

With a clear understanding of the user pain points and the best practices in billing, I decided to jumpstart the process with a whiteboarding session. Given our time constraints, it made sense to gather the team for a collaborative session to quickly brainstorm how the layout and information architecture should come together.
This hands-on approach helped us map out the basic flow of the billing portal and create a checklist to ensure no critical page or piece of information was overlooked in the design process

Adding Breadcrumbs for visibility of system status

Auto payment status on/off added as part of system status visibility

“Make payment” button as primary action on Invoice breakdown page

From low fidelity to polished designes 

Key Screens

The new Securitas Billing Platform centralizes and simplifies billing for multi-location clients, offering a clear home screen with essential account details, an itemized invoice breakdown, and a unified view of all site statuses. Users can track payments across locations easily, reducing missed payments and late fees. This streamlined experience has led to a 32% drop in customer service calls, reflecting an improved, user-friendly approach to billing.

Impact and Learning

32% Decrease in customer call volume

By providing users with the right information and streamlining the payment process, Securitas achieved remarkable results—customer service calls dropped by 32% in just the first quarter.

It goes to show that a lot can be understood and solved when we truly listen to the voice of the customer. After all, they are the ones we’re designing for.