Building Trust & Confidence
Redefining Pre-Authorization Experience to Reduce The Cost-to-Serve
🏢
GrabFin
🗓️
2022
🚀
Launched
🎯
-15% Cost-to-Serve
Why Pre-Authorization
The GrabFin Trust team aimed to improve user trust and confidence in our digital finance and payment services. From a business perspective, the team sought to reduce customer engagement (CE) costs, as pre-authorization related tickets accounted for over 11% of inquiries in the Southeast Asia region. This initiative was crucial for lowering the cost-to-serve.
Context
Pre-authorization places a temporary hold on funds in a user's credit or debit card to reserve products or services, making those funds unavailable for other transactions until the hold is released or captured by the merchant.
The Problem
Users believed they were charged for unsuccessful Grab bookings.
My Role
To improve user trust and confidence in card payment methods, I collaborated with external teams to identify UX gaps, developed and led the strategies in pre-authorization communication, and created a standardized info banner component for the design system. Additionally, I worked with the Product Marketing Writer to enhance help center articles, significantly increasing their helpfulness.
Early Inights
Dialogues with various stakeholders enabled me to map out the user journey during unsuccessful bookings. Users typically received charge notifications from their banking apps, leading them to believe they had been charged. This misunderstanding intensified as they navigated the journey without finding answers to alleviate their concerns.
Deeper Insights
In discussions with country teams, I discovered two primary reasons users contacted customer support:
61% of users wanted to know when their money would be returned because banks outside Singapore and Malaysia can take up to 30 days to release funds depending on local policies, and many were unaware since banks do not explicitly inform them.
34% did not understand why their money was being held because when users checked their bank statements, they saw a "pending charge" status but lacked clarity on how pending transactions work.
Additionally, banks typically do not notify users when funds are released from a pre-authorization hold, prioritizing alerts for charges instead.
Identifying Gaps
Since we couldn’t improve how local banks communicate with users, we focused on addressing our own communication issues. Collaborating with external teams (i.e Transport, Food, and Logistics), we identified UX gaps in a typical pre-authorized booking flow.
The combination of delayed notifications about fund releases in our app, local banks not releasing funds immediately, and misunderstandings of "pending charges" led users to assume they had been charged.
Opportunity
HMW enhance pre-authorization to build user confidence that Grab did not charge for unsuccessful bookings?
The Strategy
Improving the user journey
My goal was to ensure users trusted that they were not charged for unsuccessful bookings by minimizing their need to contact customer support.
We need to provide timely alerts for each pre-auth event and make it easy for users to find information regarding pre-auth post-booking. Most importantly, all messages had to be concise yet informative.
How We Got There
Where users go after a booking?
Quantitative insights from Product Analysts indicated that most users check the Activity booking summary during and after bookings — a behavior Grab has encouraged over time.
Some users also navigate to the Finance booking summary particularly when facing payment issues. These insights informed my team’s decision to include pre-auth information in both booking summary screens.
Constraints and challenges
However, due to resource limitations from external teams on ongoing projects and future plans for booking summary improvements, we were asked to keep iterations minimal.
I also had to consider my team's limited engineering resources and project timeline; even small changes often required extensive time for my engineers to understand source codes from other teams.
Above all, each booking summary screen has its own unique layout and information architecture, which added to my challenges.
Opportunity
HMW integrate pre-auth details into existing booking summaries with minimal iterations while ensuring users can quickly find needed information?
What are the common elements?
To determine a consistent way to display pre-auth information across different booking summaries, I began searching for common elements. That was when I noticed a standardized high-level structure across them.
A simple solution: Info banners
I proposed that when pre-auth information is needed, it should appear above the booking summary details. This approach keeps the solution consistent across screens, captures user attention effectively, and does not interfere with existing designs.
Contributing to the design system
While searching our design library for existing info banners, I discovered no standardized component.
When should we inform about pre-authorization?
Together with my PM, we identified all possible pre-auth scenarios and determined when pre-auth information should be available in booking summaries.
Pre-auth messaging for clarity
Many users found pre-authorization confusing as banks often don’t provide clear information. To address this, I collaborated with our content designer to clarify the details that banks typically leave out. We also added actionable steps for users when required, which were previously missing.
With these principles in mind, we ensured that all new and existing messages provide clearer timeframes, reassurance, and next steps using concise and easily understood language, reducing users' mental load and confusion.
Last line of defense: help center articles
Impacts & Outcomes
-15%
12x 'Likes'
+4pp
Learnings & Takeaways
Complexity of trust
Initially, this project seemed straightforward, however, increasing user trust involves more than just reducing support tickets. Trust is intangible and fragile – it must be nurtured over time but also easily eroded even by the smallest mistakes. While lacking in-app pre-authorization information may seem minor, regaining user trust might not. If I could start over, I would advocate for long-term investments in monitoring and strategizing trust-building initiatives.