As CX Design Lead for the Account Management portfolio at Verizon, I lead the redesign of the Account Activity Timeline.
The timeline is a visual record of every transaction a Verizon customer takes on their account. Whether they're paying their bill, trading in their phone, changing their calling plan or returning a set of headphone - everything is recorded on the Account Timeline.
The account activity timeline that I inherited when I was first assigned to the project was a simple vertical line with a description of transactions running alongside. After conducting some competitive analysis across several different markets, and looking at the leading corporations in those markets, it became clear that Verizon needed to "raise the bar" on how we presented a customer's transactional history.
Our main take-away was we needed to redesign the timeline and move to a "card-based" or "tile-based" approach. It needed to be better organized with a clearer visual hierarchy, and it needed to utilize a few more important visual elements to help our customers more easily scan for what they wanted, and take action.
Additionally, we conducted user surveys with customers as well as with Verizon's Customer Care Agents - to gauge how the two groups used the timeline and what their perceptions of it were.
Amazingly, only 15% of Agents and Customers even knew about the timeline. But those that did thought it was tremendously useful. To me, this meant we were in position to score some low-hanging fruit! If we could make the timeline more discoverable, as well as redesign it so it was easier to use, we could really deliver a highly useful tool to our customers and give them a much better account management experience.