AGL Rewards

It all started when…

During AGL's digital transformation, a major focus was to enhance engagement with existing users and establish ongoing relationships to foster brand identity and loyalty. The company heavily invested in a rewards program as a means to achieve these goals, aiming to engage users, boost retention, and create cross-selling and upselling opportunities. However, the business identified several challenges with the rewards program:

• Low awareness of the rewards program

• Access barriers - The program's accessibility posed challenges due to the requirement for multiple platforms and logins, discouraging users from participating.

• Difficulty finding relevant offers

• Limited engagement beyond pay bills and checking usage

Goals and measures

Based on our review of previous insights, our team has identified the main objectives as driving engagement and optimizing the core experience. To measure progress, we will utilize various methods, including tracking logins, redemptions, retention and conversion rates, SUS score, customer support interactions, NPS scores, and exit surveys. These metrics will provide valuable data to assess and improve user engagement and enhance the overall experience.

My role and responsibilities for this project

• Identifying experience gaps and contributing to product decisions

• Conducting customer insights research and sharing findings

• Leading design directions and providing guidance

• Facilitating workshops and collaborative sessions

• Gathering requirements, prioritizing tasks, and defining project scopes

• Creating service blueprints and concept sketches

• Designing the overall experience and website information architecture

• Prototyping and iterating on design solutions

• Conducting usability testing to validate design choices

• Executing and delivering design assets

• Mentoring and managing other design team members

• Building a product backlog for future experiments and improvements.

Talking to customers

After conducting 1:1 user interviews with 10 participants, in collaboration with a UX Researcher, we gained valuable insights into how customers are using the current rewards program and the value they derive from it. From synthesizing these insights, we have identified several key learnings:

Service blueprint

There is a need to assist the core team in understanding the internal channels and processes involved in running the rewards program. This will enable us to identify areas for improvement and optimization. By gaining a deeper understanding of the existing internal workflows and channels, we can streamline processes, enhance communication, and identify opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness in managing the rewards program.

Competitor analysis

During the competitor analysis, I examined various popular rewards programs to understand the industry standards and identify key elements of successful programs. Here are some noteworthy findings:

• Single sign on

• Integrated with user account portal

• Clear navigation

• Accurate search results

• Offer relevance

• Personalisation

• Unique value propositions

Starting with questions…

We created a list of “How might we…” statements to help us better align our user’s tasks and goals

• How might we provide a seamless and engaging experience that delivers value to our customers?

• How might we enable customers to easily access their rewards program within the AGL platform?

• How might we personalise the rewards experience to make customers feel that offers are specifically tailored to their needs?

• How might we enhance the value of rewards to provide more meaningful benefits to our customers?

The redesign process & key activities

During our collaborative workshops, we did posties and concept sketching many ideas. We then voted on the best concepts to pursue. To validate these concepts, I created low-fidelity prototypes and tested them with additional users. Based on the findings, we narrowed our focus down to six key areas:

• Increase awareness of the rewards program

• Improve the customer access point

• Streamlining and simplifying the navigation

• Optimising the search feature to provide more relevant and accurate search results.

• Enhancing the rewards offering to provide more value to customers

• Introducing personalized recommendations to tailor the rewards experience based on individual needs and preferences.

Explore concepts

All the conversations, analyses and research helped to generate concepts and validate them with users. I have initially done multiple sketches and wires to get feedback internally before we decided on 3 mid-fidelity concepts to test in front of more users.

UI exploration

As we gained clarity on the design direction, I delved into exploring the visual treatment. I utilized the existing UI library and brand guidelines, incorporating a mix of illustrations and real person imagery. Additionally, I explored grid systems and typography to elevate the design, resulting in a clean and refreshing new look.

Work with constraints

In reality, we encountered the challenge of the rewards program being built and managed by an external party. This constraint required us to work closely and collaboratively with the external engineers to understand the flow and technical limitations. Our goal was to successfully integrate the rewards program into the "My account" portal, necessitating effective communication and coordination to overcome this challenge.

Here’s what we launched…

• Integrated the rewards program into "My account" service portal for seamless access and management

• Streamlined redemption experience to make it more intuitive.

• Improved navigation and search functions for enhanced usability and more relevant search results.

• Introduced unique value propositions, including birthday offers, bill discounts, and "Coffee on us" rewards.

• Integrated PayPal as a payment option for added convenience

• Launched the “Refer a friend” and “Go Carbon Neutral” initiatives to promote upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

• Introduced personalization features, offering location-based and interest-based offers to enhance the user experience.

Key achievements

• "My account" traffic increased by 21%

• Rewards membership increased 135%, 9,912 above target

• Rewards website visits increased120%