How do you fix a broken user experience?

When one of the world’s biggest banks asked us to improve the sign-up process for business bank accounts, we went hunting for ‘friction’ that might cause people to drop out of the process.

And we found exactly that: a point where the bank would ring up applicants to confirm their identity. Unsurprisingly hardly anyone ever answered, and after that, the onus was on the applicant to chase the application – which often didn’t happen. We wrote a text message, warning people to expect the call in the next 30 minutes. So people picked up.

And so did the stats: a month or so after adding the text, the number of people getting to the end of the process had jumped by 20%.