IMPROVING renewal experience for Amazon FIRETV Hotspot

From a broken system, 
to one-step renewal using any payment method. At anytime. From anywhere!

Note: Because of the non-disclosure agreement, some of the information on this page has been replaced with fictitious ones or has been blurred out.

Project summary

Biggest challenge

Working with different teams

Technical limitations

Scalable: Use any payment method to renew

Sustaining the experience after implementing

Fire TV Hotspot?

Fire TV Hotspot allows customers to enjoy Amazon Prime membership while watching shows on Amazon Fire TV stick using Amazon WiFi! 

Team composition

Our 2-pizza team
I was the only UX designer on the team (Guardian tells more about Amazon’s 2-pizza teams)

 Problem: Amazon Fire TV Hotspot suffers a setback  

… with COVID-19 lesser number of customers were renewing

There were no clear insights into the customer behaviour or how we can solve this.

The rate of customer renewal was dropping over quarter (representative graph)

 

Marketing was aimed at Age 30 – 45 yr.

People between 30 – 45 years age were major buyers

Marketing campaign poster when I joined the team

FireTV Hotspot used same renewal system as Amazon Prime.
We did not have our own dedicated system for renewal.

 User Reasearch

Answers to these questions will help us solve the problem

Research outline

1. Who are the users?

Customer demographics

2. Customer stories

Use cases for (1) Renewal (2) Non-renewal

3. Problems faced

What is stopping renewals?

4. Motivations

What would drive the renewals?

Process of screening and interviewing

Process used to call and gather customer data. Gift card to incentivize participation.

 

Intervew logs and synthesis

How do we keep and process raw data?

Actual customer calling log (Sensitive information blurred out)

Excel sheets are still the best way to log data!

For all the customers we called, we (with the help of marketing interns) maintained careful notes and logs in shared Excel sheet.

 

Shocking Discoveries!

We were targeting wrong audience all along!

Seniors (60+) made up most of our viewers!

And about 50% times, young (30 - 45 yr. old) people purchased it for them!

Yet, the marketing targeted the youth!

Surprisingly, a large number of our subscribers were elderly folks

Finding 2. Customers find existing process tedious and rigid

Renewal over app and website are insufficient to meet the customer demands

Finding 3. Customers don't like auto-renewals!

About 40% customers turn off auto-renewal: The number of videos on YouTube shows how to turn off auto-renewal!

 

Vision setting workshop

Running a 2-days vision setting workshop to bring the team on same page and seek diverse solutions

Photos from the data synthesis workshop

“As-is” customer journey map shows all the findings visually. “Would-be” map (not shown) helped to identify opportunities and build consensus.

Outcome: How I defined successful renewal experience

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” – Peter Drucker, Management Guru.

UX measures

Measured by

Business impact

Renew without any problems ≥ 90%

  1. Usability tests before launch
  2. User insights after launch
  1. Less expenditure on call-centre 
  2. Increased retention
  3. Help customers serve themselves

Time for renewing < 30 seconds

  1. Usability tests before launch
  2. Amazon Quicksight data after launch
  1. Increased retention and revenue

Users satisfaction > 50%

  1. Asking and comparing ratings
  1. Early problem detection 
  2. Increased loyalty

Vision statement

Anyone should be able to renew,

using any method,
at anytime,
from anywhere!

 

RENEWAL SERVICE BLUEPRINT

Formulating FireTV Hotspot Service model (Green = New innovations)

I innovated a lot of new services to improve renewals

 

Solution: Scan-to-renew

Showing renewal notifications and QR code for renewal payment on Fire TV

Renew while watching!

 

Working around technical limitations

 How to sync the devices

Embeding the Customer ID in QR code to find out which customer renewed



Designing and testing concepts

Here, it shows the feature rotator option and “Expt 3” refers to iteration so that in the recording we know what was tested.

 

Working with engineering: Defining all scenarios

Interactions for self-service and help on-screen
I created all the interactions and that the users can use to self service.

 Method 2: No smartphone? Renew by cash!

Elderly who dont have a smartphone can call us and pay with cash!

Working with engineering: Implementing cash-on-delivery

How about seniors not having smartphones?

Cash on delivery workflow
I influenced Amazon Last Mile team (who deliver parcels to doorsteps). They finally agreed on using their cash-on-delivery system.

 Method 3: Renew over a call

Removing barrier: Customers can renew over a call to number at back of the remote contro

Renewal number sticker on Fire TV remote
Sticker pasted on Fire TV remote so that our customer can quickly call for renewals and for any problems

 Method 4: Simply Ask Alexa to renew!

Influencing Amazon Alexa to build the command to renew

Using Alexa for renewal
This workflow shows that Alexa checks if customer has an Alexa device and knows who is asking for renewal.
Influencing Alexa Skills team was the biggest challenge.

 

Feedback incentives

Get a gift card if you rate us

Asking to rate and get paid on renewal!
This is what I designed for gathering customer’s feedback more effectively. We enticed them with a gift card.

 

marketing no longer targeted 30 – 45 yrs.

This project led to change in the strategic direction

To convey a good customer experience, I helped marketing create promo material.
I worked with a design agency to help maintain the quality bar of the customer kit.

Marketing focus shifted from target age group to value-based approach

AI dashboard: Sustaining renewals

Dashboard with AI insights: Catching customers before they churn!

Getting rid of problems is one step,

next I needed to make sure that the solutions are sustained.

Solution

  1. Using QuickSight AI for dashboard: Amazon AWS offers a beautiful solution to visualize data.  Learn more about QuickSight here.
  2. Insights using AI: Easy to understand AI generated insights. Learn more about Auto-narratives here.

Renewals dashboard
I helped create this AWS QuickSight dashboard to help our business track and sustain the solutions

Results 

Renewals are up!
The renewals were up again and back to normal inspite of COVID!

Comparison of old and new experience

The new design definitely improved the CX
Based on the pre- and post-launch usability tests and QuickSight data, I quantified the improvement for our business

UX success

Task completion rate ≥ 90%

90% of users were able to renew without any problems

Time-to-task < 30 seconds

Renewals take no more than 30 seconds.

Increased satisfaction > 50%

50% more user satisfaction than what it was

Business success

 

Renewals are up by 25%

More than 70% are renewing by themselves

90% churn prediction accuracy thanks to AI Dashboard

50% more acquisitions

Shut down!
Unfortunately this division of Amazon was shutdown in September 2022
They displayed this on their website.