Orientation for new users
Project background
JPMorgan Chase is the largest financial firm in the US. This project is focused on an experience within a new banking platform that services business clients from start-ups to mid-sized businesses.
Traditionally, to gain access to our platform, clients would have to go through an orientation with Onboarding specialists, serving as a white-glove experience but also acting as a bottleneck in other ways:
Orientations had to be scheduled and were dependent on the availability of the onboarding specialists (OS) and clients
Start-up clients generally want to hit the ground running and use the platform right away, though they may be the most likely to need onboarding help
Not scalable, reliant on manpower to walk users through the platform
The
Role:
Lead product designer
Tools:
Figma
Deliverables:
User interviews, research synthesis, mid-fidelity wireframes, high-fidelity prototype
How might we help startup clients become familiar with our platform?
Creating and establishing a foundational pattern for current and future onboarding flows would not only reduce the learning curve for our clients but also our bankers. The long term vision was also to reduce the average onboarding time from 2 weeks to 24 hours.
Research
User interviews
To get a better idea of bottlenecks and pain points our users were facing currently, our researchers led interviews with our bankers and treasury management officers. I participated in the interviews to help take notes and synthesize what we learned from our subject matter experts.
Competitive analysis
Our target audience were primarily startups and small to mid-sized businesses. I, alongside 2 designers, reviewed companies within and outside of the financial sector known for creating a frictionless onboarding experience for complex products. Turbotax was especially notable as it was referenced multiple times in our user interviews.
Identifying opportunity
Insights
After collecting information from user interviews and competitive analysis, we identified key pain points and areas of opportunity. We better understood user expectations, motivations, needs, and behaviors. These insights helped shape the MVP for our onboarding process.
Inaccurate data: Getting the correct information was a huge bottleneck in the onboarding process. Clients who found it difficult to understand financial jargon were likely to input wrong information. Finding an error in the application led to longer onboarding times since it required going through multiple channels to finally getting the right information.
Reduce financial jargon: Startup clients especially may not be well-versed in financial jargon; there is a need to reduce complexity by using simpler language to collect the information we need.
Reduce manual input: To assist with getting accurate information and reducing the number of fields our user would need to input, how can we leverage existing information to pre-fill portions of the application?
Lead with simplicity: Our competitors utilized visual aids to supplement their onboarding process, reducing chunks of text and adding delight
Stakeholder alignment
I presented our competitive research findings in 3-day workshop with cross-functional stakeholders, spanning across our legal, risk, product, and development teams.
The design team also led activities to define current customer problems and bottlenecks. We were seeking to find areas of opportunity and identify existing experiences within the company where we could leverage data, designs, and infrastructure.
The product design timeline
The collapse of a competitor
When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, our timeline was immediately escalated to address the influx of thousands of customers scrambling to find a new bank. We now needed to push out designs within 2 weeks to meet demands.
We narrowed our scope strictly to designing for an account opening experience which would serve as a foundation for the rest of the onboarding experiences.
Adjusting to the chaos
Given the rapid pace of change, continuously communicating with our stakeholders was essential. To ensure alignment, I facilitated daily meetings with the product team to review any design updates and gather feedback.
To be efficient, we chose to adapt an existing onboarding experience rather than start from scratch. Fortunately, we already identified key insights from our research so we were ready to hit the ground running and this approach allowed us to quickly implement a tailored solution.
Designing within constraints
Together with one other designer and content designer, we pushed out the MVP for the end-to-end onboarding experience.
Because we were working with an existing infrastructure, we worked closely with our stakeholders to simplify and chunk the information so our clients could go through the onboarding seamlessly. From our research, simplicity and clear instructions were key to mitigating user error.
It was crucial to gather only essential information from our users to open an account to minimize redundancy and eliminate unnecessary details.
Validating our designs
After gathering feedback from 10 pilot calls with startup clients, we identified key pain points and areas of opportunity. We then worked with stakeholders to prioritize the most pressing issues, organizing them into the following buckets: immediate solutions and long-term solutions.
Immediate solutions:
Minimizing financial jargon: While we kept this in mind for our MVP, having real startup clients opening a business account for the first time was invaluable to see what phrases and terms stumped our users in real-time.
Streamlining the process: Our users typically had to gather information from multiple sources and people, causing minor disruptions in their workflow. To ensure a smoother experience, we provided clients with a checklist in their welcome email, outlining all the necessary information they need to gather upfront.
Clarifying questions for newer clients: Some clients, especially those with new companies, were unsure how to answer certain required questions. For these situations, we identified that exact answers weren’t always necessary and allowed for estimates. We applied this principle to similar questions, ensuring clients could provide general answers without being stopped by the process.
Long-term solutions:
Buggy password requirements: For security purposes, our password rules had an extensive list of requirements to meet. However, this caused problems for 6/10 of our clients as they used a random password generator that could not pass our strict password requirements. This caused our clients to have to create passwords multiple times or manually change the pre-filled passwords to fit our rules.
Simplify data collection: In situations when our client didn’t have other people’s information on hand, they had to call/text/email their coworkers, skip the question, or end the application. How can we find a way to help our clients gather personal information from others more easily?
Contain all required steps in one flow: Historically, filling out the application is only the initial step of the onboarding process. Users would have to work with their banker to fill out required forms to consent and send in documents through email. How can we consolidate all these separate steps into one unified flow for our clients?
Startup client
“It's very easy, I will say. I give you guys high marks.”
Startup client
“This feels more secure than other applications. I usually get a bunch of docs.”
Impact
500+ clients have gone through the flow and are fully onboarded
Average duration from submission to final approval is 3 business days, an improvement of 70%.
Winner of 2023 APAC CEO Award
Among 103 projects across all business categories, this project and its impact emerged as the top contender, securing the number one position in JPMorgan Commercial Banking.
Foundation for all onboarding flows
This flow is designed to serve as the foundational flow for all future and upcoming product onboardings, with three other product onboarding flows already utilizing it as their base.