Corpay is all-in-one spend management software from San Francisco. This case study outlines user experience work which impacts all customers. After conducting, analysing, and synthesising interviews (internal stakeholders and users), quantitative data analysis, and much debate over constraints, we built a new sign up process and guidance for users, so they can automate their payments.
We saw a jump in subscriptions. This contributed to the acquisition of Corpay later the same year.
As a result of adding credibility and social proof elements to the website we saw an increase in people creating an account.
In 6 weeks I conducted research, validated and got buy-in to tackle the problem from multiple angels.
Before
The website and product didn't effectively convert visitors and free trials into paid customers. Less than 3% of website visitors created an account and 51% of new signups dropped off and didn't come back.
After
To provide a personalized experience, we request the user's use case to determine their persona and tailor the initial product experience accordingly. This allows us to offer a relevant list to get started. We ask of estimated usage as it's factored in lead scoring. Depending on response we provide contextualised assistance and shorten the sales cycle.
The website and product didn't effectively convert visitors and free trials into paid customers. Less than 3% of target visitors created an account and 51% of new signups dropped off and didn't come back.
There were unmet user needs, but we were yet to learn about those. Also, we didn't know enough of how different personas interact with the product and the frictions they have in adopting the product.
For in-depth qualitative understanding of the problem I conducted stakeholder interviews (engineering, sales, support). Also, I shadowed our accountants in residence in a few conversations with customers.
For in-depth quantitative understanding I performed data analysis using Mixpanel. I looked at user funnels and flows to understand what are the major friction points for visitors and free trial customers.
We validated three different personas with separate use cases. Customers were looking for a more intuitive way to get started with the product on their own. Also, some of them needed assistance with setting up complex bill-automation processes. A big part of customers needed clarification on KYC documents and why that is required from them.
SME owner
Cares about the P&L and expense statement at the end of the month. Does KYC and most often lets an accountant set up automation and sync systems with existing accounting workflows. Has great use of the mobile app, but it's hard for them to discover and download it.
External accountant
Aspires to increase client base. Sets up bill-pay processes for clients and manages clientele through a Corpay product for external bookkeepers with different pricing. Has difficulties navigating between their own centralised dashboard and setting up rules for clients.
Internal accountant
Strives to eliminate repetitive operations. Sets up complex bill-pay automation processes and oversees an expanding finance team's accounts payable in a growing SME. Find payment automation workflows & rules greatly beneficial, but hard to grasp.
The quantitative research surfaced that 95% of the customers who automate 2 or more bills in their first 28 days will retain for more than 90 days. Also roughly 1/3 of new trials that created an automation rule and run it one or two times become paying customers within 7 days. Yet, on average it took customers roughly 13 days to complete KYC
So, the question was how might we help different users get the value out of Corpay faster... We prioritised the potential solutions based on impact and the effort to implement (technical feasibility, resources, and time). The process involved speaking with the CTO (co-founder), Front-end engineer, and Head of Product. We focused on 4 separate solutions that won't take more than 1-2 days of work to release.
After we've validated the key important steps in the user flow with all stakeholders, we run wireframes through power users to validate if design meets customer requirements and needs.
Testing helped us verify the right content and order of steps for the contextual get started guide for each customer type. We asked open questions to understand the critical ingredients and what is missing.
The first thing you'd see after sign up will depend on your use case. It was reported that the fast scanning of receipts was a WOW factor for new customers. The wireframe includes a proposal for improved upload with less effort from customers.
Contextual question which will help customer success and sales assign a score to the account. We ended up moving this question earlier in the journey during sign up.
We knew the mobile app was popular amongst customers, we also needed phone for KYC. The idea was to incentivise people to give us their phone number.
Collect information that helps us contextualise. We wanted to suggest payment automation templates and rules based on our knowledge of customers.
We've added testimonials on the right-side of the sign up screen to increase motivation and balance out the friction we were imposing with the extra screens.
Asking the user for their use case help us contextualise the first encounter with the product
The estimated usage is an important factor in our lead scoring. It also toggles on a feature in the onboarding guide for high-value customers.
This is the first product experience immediately after you land in the product. The steps will be different depending on the answers the customers filled out during sign up. The steps from the guide above are the steps that would bring the SMB owner to value in the fastest way possible.
High value prospects would get access to a personal account manager. If the expected usage was more than 100 bills and the accounting software was supported by Corepay we scored the sign up with enterprise-grade and pushed the information to salesforce and intercom. Those integrations increased ability of our sales and support teams.
