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Aligning Design and Business to build a new phygital sales operation for financial products
My Role
Design Lead
Team
Business Developer
Business Partner
Main Skills
UX Research, Data-Driven Design, Design Strategy, Service Design, Business Strategy, Workshop Facilitation, Blueprint Mapping, Cross-Functional Collaboration, User Personas & Journeys, Go-to-Market Strategy
The Basics
Getting to know the company
Escale is a B2B2C e-commerce company that offers products that control the entire lead acquisition and conversion journey—from the moment they are captured to their conversion into signed contracts in three main market units: Finance, Health Insurance, and Telecommunications.
The product ecosystem is divided into proprietary branding and white label, with design operating at various points of contact. From acquisition campaigns and landing pages, to e-commerce sites for product presentation and conversion journeys via chatbot, online or by telephone with operators.
For data protection reasons, some private information has been hidden from this case study. On the other hand, public information has been kept open.
Context
Connecting Design with Business
Before this project began, the company only had two business units in operation: Telecommunications and Health Insurance. However, the Business team was already finalising a commercial partnership agreement to begin expanding and creating a new business unit already planned in our Roadmap: Finance.
Although we had all the necessary knowledge about our operations and our products, we did not know how to implement them to sell financing services.
It was at that moment that the Business team made a challenging proposal: to call on the Design Ops team to understand, research, and lead the construction of the finance operation based on our expertise and the particularities of the products in question.
Research
Immersion in the topic
My first challenge as UX Lead and head of this project was to understand what financing products were and which ones were available in Brazil. In addition, I had to understand the bureaucratic side and all the laws involved in this process.
To do this, I enlisted the help of our Business Partner at the financial institution where we were going to start applying our product, and requested training similar to what they provided to their own employees.
It was a week of immersion, doing the same training as the company's employees, but with one major addition: gathering as much information as possible so that I could pass on this important information to my company's internal training team if our operation was successful.
Research
Database Analysis
Brazil has a law called the “Open Data Law,” which allowed me to access, anonymously, all records of financial loans made in the country, in all financial institutions registered and authorised by the Central Bank.
However, in addition to being a huge database—with over 60 million records—it also had an extra difficulty: it was separated by month. So, in order to analyse this database, I had to use SQL to clean up and make the data consistent for my analysis work. To do this, I:
1. I created a unique ID for each transaction—which could be repeated for the same transactions—so that I could gain quantitative insights into the transaction records;
2. I grouped all 12 spreadsheets—relating to one year of transactions—into a single data source that could be analysed individually;
3. I removed all transaction records defined as ‘Credit Card’ because there was no business interest in operating in this line of credit;
4.I organised the existing data in the spreadsheet in order to categorise what was presented, facilitating the analysis of the existing data.
Initial Solution
Potential Market Analysis
As negotiations with our future business partner were extensive, our Business team needed some guidance on prioritising products that we could start working on within the company.
So, my first deliverable related to the project was a potential market analysis to present the growth curve for each product, the earning potential of each product, and how much we could earn in commissions if we had a good sales operation and user journey.
The outcome of this meeting was the definition of the first products we would operate with our commercial partner. This concluded the first part of my research and moved on to the second part: analysing user profiles and how we could sell these products with our omnichannel and phygital journey.
Research
Definition of profiles
Another possibility that this database gave me was to create a Protoperson, using the demographic data in the database (region, state, marital status, profession, and age). It was with this data that I created protoperson profiles for each of our main users and used them as a basis for recruitment.
Research
Recruitment
Unfortunately, we did not have the budget to hire a specialist recruitment company for this project. So I had to actively search for people who fit the selected profile, through posts in specific online groups and filtering applications to ensure that people met our criteria, which were:
• Be the exact profile of one of our prototypes;
• Have taken out financing in the last 6 months;
• (business requirement) Have not participated in these surveys for our business partner;
• Have taken out financing for yourself.
Research
User Interview
To further improve the quality of the information obtained from the quantitative data, I decided to delve deeper into the universe of our future users by talking to them. There were 20 interviews, with 5 users for each type of financial product chosen as most suitable for our company.
Solutions
User Personas
At the end of the interview process, I was able to expand on the information about the prototypes and actually create User Personas for our new operation. These Personas would be used as a basis for our upcoming projects and for operational projects such as: sales journey design, marketing campaigns, training with the operations team, etc.
Solutions
User Journey
Armed with this information and aware of the journey that users took to purchase the financial products they were interested in, I contacted our business partner again for a process interview.
Within the business partner, I spoke with the areas involved in the current financial product sales process. With this information, I was able to develop a user journey that would serve as the basis for designing the future journey of operations within our products.
Solutions
Future Blueprint
With all teams aligned, we needed to understand how we could set up our operation and how we could start capturing and converting these leads into new contracts. To do this, I needed to talk to all areas responsible for the new product: Growth, Product, Operations, Automation, and Business.
Through these conversations, I was able to analyse our current product, understand how it could be adapted to the new product definition, and how we could start a basic operation that would be optimised over the course of several months.
Solutions
Integration workshop and materials
As it was a new area and a new product, the areas that would be directly involved in this new business unit needed to understand what the product was, its legal aspects and characteristics, among other important details for the business, which would serve as a knowledge base for day-to-day work with it.
To this end, I decided, together with the Business team, to create a quick 2-day training course - applying some facilitation techniques - so that employees could have an online immersion in the product and understand how they would start working with it and what to expect from the new operation.
Results
Key Results
The new operation was implemented and proved successful, becoming one of the company's most profitable fronts. This research served as the basis for the creation of this new operation and the alignment of knowledge and expectations, which were reflected in surprising figures in the first year. Such as:
Over 2,700 sales in the first year
With an average annual conversion rate (leads x sales) of 0.85%, our operation and the optimisation of our products, initially implemented with the results of this research, yielded more than 2,700 sales in the first year.
Over R$23 million in sales in the first year
At the end of the first year of operation, we managed to total more than R$23 million in sales with the first product implemented, through the results of this research.
+ R$820,000 in income in the first year
Relying solely on the product implemented by this research, at the end of the first year the company managed to earn more than R$820,000 in sales commissions.
Next Project
Understanding a product and its market for the creation of a new business unit operation for the company
Use of design methodologies and research, for a complete understanding of the new product and market scenario, for the definition of a new business unit operation.
Let's work together?
Let’s build, learn, and create something meaningful together
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My portfolio isn’t available on mobile just yet
For the best experience, please visit on a desktop.
As a little thank-you for your patience, here’s a cute dog gif