Mobile operator 3 offers advanced customer self servicing capabilities on its web and mobile portals. Around half of 3's customer base regularly use a service called My3 to check their minutes and texts or make changes to their plan.

3 wanted to understand how it could reduce the costs of servicing customers as well as increase the perceived value of being a 3 customer by encouraging increased take up of My3 and improving its usability.

Interviews and usability testing with customers

We recruited eight 3 customers including users and non
users of My3 paying by both contract and pay-as-you-go. We talked to them about their experiences of managing their spend with 3 and had them perform tasks such as checking how many minutes they had left and topping up their credit.

They used the current design on their own phones, and a mocked-up prototype on a test phone. Customers thought out loud as they performed the tasks in our usability suite. At the same time 3's user experience team viewed a close up of the phone’s screen with an inset image of the participant in a room next door.

Observing customers check their own accounts was an eye opener for 3

During the testing we had customers check details of their own accounts on their phones, in some cases for the first time. 3's user experience team watched and listened as one financially-conscious participant expressed genuine surprise as she realised she had gone £20.32 over her allowance that month.

Getting this information from her phone was helpful but she still didn't understand why she had incurred this extra cost. Findings like this provided 3's team with valuable evidence to support the case for enhancing the user experience and giving customers greater control to avoid similar experiences.

Aligning the experience to users’ key goals

The findings underlined the value of providing customers with easy-to-use self servicing. Although 3 leads the industry in this regard there were still opportunities for improvement. We were able to discern both contract and pay-as-you-go customers' top four goals and then
make recommendations around information architecture, nomenclature and data presentation to support customers in achieving these goals.

During the testing sessions we also talked to customers about replacing paper billing with e-bills through My3 – an option 3 has now implemented.

What 3 had to say about the insights they gained

"There is nothing like seeing your customers undertaking real tasks to understand the issues at stake. new experience's testing of our My3 self-servicing functionality along with their insightful analysis and recommendations will help us reduce customer queries and enhance customer experience." Julie Kennedy, Head of User Experience