Re-imagining the bill

The Challenge:

Virgin Media’s ethos is a customer champion and customer experience through innovation.

Virgin Media approached Engine Service Design to support them in continuing their tradition of putting the customer first, specifically for supporting their Mobile customers.

Virgin Media Mobile wanted to help increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and to reduce the traffic going to call centres for queries and confusion over unexpected billing.

The Approach:

Engine used immersion sessions and mapped the existing journey to explore the common problems and complaints encountered by Virgin Care Agents.

Immersion sessions with the Virgin Media team

Using these insights, some of the key barriers around communication were identified. The main reactions were surprise, confusion and anger upon receiving bills where information, breakdown and analysis were not clear enough and the totals of which were frequently unexpected, or much higher than thought, for the customers receiving them.

Helping people understand why they were going over packages and how to prevent it in future emerged as the primary issue to tackle.

To address this, Engine, the Virgin Media’s Customer Experience team, with Virgin mobile billing, all worked together in co-creation workshops to explore the Virgin Mobile experience as a whole, and to identify points at which more information could be provided to increase users knowledge and awareness of their package and usage.

A wireframe concept of the eBill, produced by Engine, to clearly highlight relevant information

Outcomes:

Solutions to greater understanding around billing were identified at key points of the whole customer journey through Virgin Mobile: from joining and selecting a package, to usage and then receiving a bill.

These solutions sought to provide clear information and reassurance through these key steps, resulting in more comprehensive understanding of use and ways to avoiding over-spend, and therefore managing expectations upon receiving a bill.

The new bill formats for both hard copies and online billing were a key enabler of this clarity - presenting information in self-explanatory and usefully analysed information such as filtering options, personalisation of frequently-called numbers and itemised cost.

Impact:

Virgin Media mobile have rolled out the eBill for online billing and are already seeing the results in feedback from their Customer Care Agents about customers’ responses. See some of the best below:

“Have found the new billing system really great, it is really easy to see what the extra usage is and its cutting down on call length...Overall a fantastic new system.” (Customer Care agent)

“Easy to understand Unlike old bill, states if there is extra usage outside of package, and gives good definition of what extra use means.” (Customer Care agent)

“I love the option where you can change the number to a name so you can recognise who you have been calling.” (Quality Specialist)

Features of the new eBill, being rolled out on the Virgin Mobile website