The Client / The Economist
“The Economist’s strategy is to maintain sustainable top- and bottom-line growth while staying true to its values“
A global news source and one of the world’s leading journals of its kind The Economist is known its focus on data journalism and interpretive analysis which it delivers to its digital and print subscribers worldwide.
The Economist’s 2024 annual report summary includes the following subscriber numbers: 1.22 million subscribers, 86% of new subscribers are digital-only, and Digital subscriptions grew by 13%”
(Project: London, 2018-19)
The Challenge
“How do we enable our subscribers to make simple changes easily? “
Losing business to the FT and WSJ, the respected publisher’s surveys revealed that poor customer service impacted retention and repeat business.
Was there a way to help solve customer service issues faster and build subscriber confidence?
Research
“What does our CRM look like and where are the main issues facing our subscribers?”
To address this, they wanted to implement a self-service CRM so that call centres could be prioritised for complex or escalated problems.
Research was to define the needs of customers, the business and those handling CRM related queries.
Activities & Outputs
User interviews, departmental workshops, gathering usage analytics, user journey mapping, content mapping, content analysis, information architecture, technical reviews, design review, competitor & market analysis, academic research into search psychology and behaviour.
Analysis
“Mapping user needs against problems can we locate where we need solutions fast?”
By identifying core archetype-based customer cohorts we were able to arrange user journeys into an eco-system map which tracked the needs of different archetypes against potential features.
This highlighted which feature journeys covered most use cases and would improve the web experience for the most subscribers.
Activities & Outputs
Ideal path user journeys and gap analysis, user archetypes, role definition, departmental need definition, technical ecosystem map, content ecosystem map, skeleton IA, problem definition statement, research response matrix (hi-lo severity, hi-lo importance) and design mood-board and workshops to validate analysis with users and stakeholders.
Solutions
“By identifying priority subscription features, we phased the app rollout to deliver benefits faster.”
With technical leads, we collaborated on the core user journeys for portfolio managers and developed a plan. We conducted ideation workshops with stakeholders to brainstorm potential solutions based on user research, which were later tested as wireframes and prototypes with our user groups.
Working with the design library we were able to ‘sketch’ wireframes and prototype using hi-fidelity components.
Iterating our designs with users to maximise accessibility, ease of use and comprehension we able to soft-launch the app with beta testers prior to general roll out.
Activities & Outputs
Solution ideation workshops, wireframes, prototypes, user testing of solution flows, user testing of page layout, delivery workshops with technical teams, liaise with global brand leads on design, design library integration, interaction UI design, cross-departmental review, risks and issues log, alpha and beta user group definition, senior stakeholder presentation and strategic delivery sessions.
Realisation
“Subscribers felt their subscription details weren’t available to them, by enabling them to control their subscriptions we instilled confidence and built brand loyalty”
Since the majority of customer service queries were about addresses or payments by simplifying the CX and using language which reflected the problem (rather than the system) we decreased the time it took for customer queries to be closed.
Aligning paywall registration with sign-in during the self-service CRM process boosted subscriber onboarding and built customer service confidence before purchase.
Activities & Outputs
Alpha testing, bug tracking and stress testing, UI review, alpha launch, alpha user review, promotional plan and delivery, beta testing, beta launch, UI and Bug review, stakeholder presentation, version one launch.
