Problem: The Submit a Complaint portal is the Bureau’s flagship tool—the Bureau ensures that consumers get a response from the offending company, and aggregated complaint data is used to shape Bureau policy and agendas. The Submit a Complaint stakeholders were struggling with low engagement and incomplete submissions.
Roles: Content strategy, content design, UX research and design
Process: In order to use the tool effectively, consumers needed to understand how the complaint process works and what kind of issues it can address.
Together with a UX researcher and UX designer, I started by analyzing heatmap data and interviewing the legal team to understand patterns in submission errors. We realized the FAQ search bar wasn’t utilized the way stakeholders had hoped—people didn’t know what they didn’t know, so they wouldn’t be able to ask, and it deterred people from submitting a complaint. Plus, the “start a new complaint” button was below the fold and hard to find.
Instead, we prototyped and tested a version with specific, more directive FAQs nested in accordions, and added a video to explain the complaint process. We also added more information in the hero to help set expectations about what the CPFB did with complaints and when users could expect a response.
Impact: All in all, we cut wordcount by 40%, increased time on page and boosted submission by 1000 per week.
