The Lowell app is now available to our customers through the App Store and Google Play. But that’s just the latest chapter in a story that goes back much further. A tale of customer-centricity, world class development and embracing diversity lies behind this industry-leading piece of technology.
It’s all about improving the customer experience
So where to start? Our client satisfaction survey told us the best possible customer experience with Lowell was high on our clients’ agenda. It’s something we hold very dear too.
An app seemed a natural way to help us deliver a great customer experience. After all, we knew 86.8% of people who visited the website did so using a smartphone. So it made sense to ensure this experience was as rewarding and positive as possible.
Ensuring a best in class performance
To create a best in class app naturally needs best in class development and design skills. To help us in this respect, we enlisted the proven branding and development skills of our partner agency Engine. Working alongside them, we tasked AND Digital, one of the industry’s most respected UX and build partners to help us construct an app that met customers’ real needs.
Putting customer needs at the heart of things
When it came to defining those needs, we first looked at data which identified what some of the most common tasks our customers used the website for. While this was all well and good, it didn’t necessarily tell us about which problems our customers may have been looking to solve.
Not wanting to base anything on assumptions, we went about researching our users’ needs. Using qualitative research we drilled down to what our customers felt they needed to become debt-free. Only then could we go on to create an app that really added value to their experience with us.
An Agile approach enabled a fast efficient build
Taking a visual cue from the existing website, we went about designing the app using an Agile approach. This enabled an iterative build that helped us identify what customers needed as we went – then quickly address that need with relevant change.
To re-enforce this, we got real customers to put the app through its paces in beta testing. Their reactions and feedback were invaluable in informing us on how to best serve genuine customer needs.
Recognising our diverse audience
Which brings us to designing for diversity. Each and every customer has a different story and their experience on the app needs to reflect that. To achieve this, we focused on ‘inclusive design’. This approach enables services and communications that benefit everyone, no matter their disability or situation. By humanising the design in this way, we were also able to embrace people who are often excluded in the design process. For instance, this could be someone on a low income, has below average literacy skill or belongs to an identified vulnerable customer group.
And this is just the start. Now that the app is up and running, we’re already looking at ways we can improve it. So watch this space…
‘Well I love the Lowell website as that's very user friendly and well laid out, I can see the app is going to make the Lowell experience even easier, I'm coming to the end of my overall Lowell experience as my accounts are close to being paid off, but I love Lowell, they've really helped me and now the app is here I'm tempted to run up more debt just to continue with Lowell and get to use the new app. just kidding? Great job though guys.’
Customer, beta testing.
