BACK
JACK EMERSON
About the project
When O2 and Virgin Media announced that they were merging, I was working in an embedded design team for Priority, O2's loyalty app. We were tasked with evaluating all 12 consumer-facing apps across both O2 and Virgin Media estates, defining a strategy to consolidate the duplicate functions and identify opportunities to improve the overall customer experience.
My team, which included the head of strategy, design director, and a UX designer, worked together to gather information from stakeholders and create a customer blueprint.
Two additional designers were added to the project, one of whom I mentored, to help visualise our ideas and design a presentation to stakeholders.
As the project progressed, we held regular workshops with the Head of Digital Transformation for Virgin Media and the Head of Product at O2 to ensure alignment with their strategic goals and to provide updates on our progress.
Despite the project lasting for approximately three months, I had to switch project in the summer of 2022, just before the final presentation was delivered.
The problem
Duplicated functionality across the brands
The O2 and Virgin Media digital estate encompasses a total of 12 consumer-facing apps across Android, iOS, and TV platforms, as well as two websites. Once the brands fully merge, the duplicate apps will become redundant.
When to web, when to app
While some of the apps have similar functionality to the websites, the instances where these functions are duplicated do not offer the maximum value to the customers. For example, the O2 Network app allows customer to check network coverage, something available on o2.co.uk.
Fragmented tech infrastructure
The tech infrastructure behind the apps is fragmented, with O2 and Virgin Media apps running on different tech stacks even within their own brands. To make informed decisions, we would need to work closely with the engineering leads to streamline the tech infrastructure.
Handoff between apps
Transferring between apps is inconvenient, and it requires customers to log in via the web for each app, which is a clunky process. Additionally, customers are forced to download separate apps for different tasks. For instance, troubleshooting WIFI requires a different app from managing broadband packages.
We had a plan!
Conduct workshops with each product lead to gain a deeper understanding of each product.
Utilise the information collected during the workshops to create a customer blueprint that identifies opportunities throughout the customer lifecycle.
Develop a strategy and align teams based on the blueprint and identified opportunities, and then visualise these opportunities.
Validate the customer blueprint and opportunities with VMO2 customers by conducting extensive user research.
Challenges and opportunities
A complex customer lifecycle
The customer blueprint we were tasked with developing was at a level of complexity and altitude that neither I nor members of my team had tackled before.
Trust in each app owner
We needed to trust that the Product Owners had conducted the right user research and measurements. Not only that, but our recommendations could result in the removal of some apps, potentially leading stakeholders to emphasise the data they provide as their jobs may be at risk.
With a vast amount of data available to us for each app, we had to be selective and focus on the most valuable information.
Avoid world domination
The project was initiated by the head of Priority and was not part of the VMO2 leadership team's agenda. As we were working with Priority as a client, it was crucial for us to remain impartial and avoid any bias towards Priority or O2 throughout the project.
Now, soon, later
The digital estate spans across various platforms, including TV, iOS, Android, and web, and integrating the products could be a complex process that may take more than five years. It was essential to envision an ideal state while also identifying what can be done in the meantime.
First round — Talking to all 12 app owners
What we did
Our head of strategy developed a questionnaire to interview the head of each product. The questionnaire was designed to gain a comprehensive understanding of each product and its features.
We conducted interviews with the product heads using the questionnaire in an interview-style format. During these interviews, we jotted down notes on their responses.
We analysed the information gathered during the interviews and visualised it across the customer lifecycle that Virgin Media had previously used in other projects. This allowed us to easily compare the products and identify any differences.
What we learnt
Virgin Red and The O2 apps were not technically part of the VMO2 brand. However, customers may not notice this, so we made sure to highlight this distinction in our blueprint.
We were also able to gain a thorough understanding of each product's features and identify any frustrations the product owners were experiencing.
Playing back the visualised questionnaire to app owners
Once we had incorporated the responses to the questionnaire, we shared the visualised version with the relevant stakeholders. We asked them to review it and suggest any necessary changes.
This step proved to be invaluable as it helped us to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their respective products and uncover additional information that helped us to further refine our understanding.
In particular, we focused on business outcomes to ensure alignment with the suggestions of other app owners.
It also gave us an idea — by mapping each app and highlighting the interactions between them, we gained a better understanding of how they could work together to achieve common objectives.
Using a blueprint to map the current state
The blueprint
We plotted the customers' thinking and actions at every stage of the journey, along with the business outcomes and data collected from each app. We also added questions and considerations that we would highlight to the app owners.
Using the "Attract, Engage, Evolve" framework, we aimed to make the journey feel more customer-centric, rather than a customer funnel. Although the blueprint was linear to an extent, it allowed us to display non-linear sections, such as the extensive "In-Life" stage where customers can have various experiences.
Workshops
To give an update, gather feedback and discover any missing information, we printed out the blueprint and conducted a workshop with the senior leadership at VMO2.
This was extremely valuable as it gave us insights that we had not seen before, such as how people are notified when their contracts would be ending or how customer service teams are structured behind each product.
We also shared this with each app owner through another series of workshops. This all went smoothly, and giving the app owners the opportunity to get into the details uncovered more information
Learnings
However, we realised that the blueprint was still too focused on functions rather than behaviours, so we need to find ways to adapt it in the next version.
Four new customer types, no brand names
At this stage, it was essential to remove the brand names to detach ourselves from the current ecosystem and avoid any bias.
Each app has its own definition of personas, segments, and customer types. However, we couldn't plot all of them on one blueprint as it would make the blueprint too complex, and not all customer definitions would be relevant in a new world.
To achieve the goal of highlighting the best opportunities, we created four customer types that would help us achieve this. By doing so, the blueprint helped us prioritise opportunities that aligned with our overall strategy.
A customer focused blueprint
This was difficult! We tried to create with a blueprint that might cover enough of the end-to-end journey to be able to spot the best opportunities. However, when we sketched this it was still too complex, so we decided to retain the customer stages.
But for each customer type we added; what users would do, what they might think, how they might feel, their behaviour at each stages. The act of doing this created some fantastic conversation between the team to create some really interesting ideas.
These ideas were whittled down to a maximum of five for each stage, the best of which would then be visualised in a presentation format.
We also separated these ideas into ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’, to understand what we can do in the next year, and what we can do in future.
How do we best express these opportunities to share with stakeholders?
To demonstrate the value of an eco-system, we prepared a deck to present our findings to share with the app owners and senior leadership team.
I led the process for creating the design language for three separate, but coherent, design directions to be used for each new product type; Customer care, digital entertainment, rewards & experiences.
The presentation was split into two sections; today and tomorrow.
Today—What can be done in the near future?
What can we do today to deliver more value to VMO2 customers? Here are some highlights from the presentation that were visualised.
Tomorrow—What are we aiming for?
Rather than look at reappropriating our current app portfolio, or making small iterations aways form what we have today, we allowed ourselves the freedom to imagine what a desired future state could be.
So, what’s next?
Just before the deck was presented, I had to switch projects unexpectedly. However, I later heard that the presentation was a great success, and we were eagerly awaiting the senior leadership team's decision on how to proceed with the project.
Since then, there may have been changes to the senior leadership team, given the recent merger of the two brands, so progress might be a little slow.
Project learnings
Using customer lifecycles
I hadn’t worked at that altitude previously, so it was interesting to learn more about customer lifecycles an how they differ and are used with other frameworks.
Visualising ideas for presentations
I greatly improve my presentation skills here, how to visualise ideas without being too literal. It was refreshing to create designs that weren’t too reliant on using the classic phone screen mockup.
Work with stakeholders in a sensitive way
A merger can be an uncertain time for employees at a company. Because of this, I learnt how to deliver workshops and liaise with stakeholders using considerate language, respecting the sensitive matter.
Improve my mentoring advice
During this project, I was able to work closely with someone at Else who I was mentoring.
Working so closely with my mentee allowed me to get a better idea of how my advice had been digested during our sessions, and played out in day to day work. It then allowed me to analyse where I could make improvements.