Shift Culture
Storyboarding to create customer empathy
Leadership, Payments Strategy, Service Design, Visual Storytelling, Customer Advocacy
As a payments leader, I used storytelling to shift the industry - demystifying tech and creating customer empathy. This sparked the use of design methodology in payments strategy.
Role
Payments design leader
Team
Corporate strategy, Government relations, Product, Legal
Design problem
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sought to increase competition, but risked exacerbating existing consumer problems with a new ruling. Introduce an effective way to communicate industry impacts to non-technical audiences.
Business goals
Drive accountability for servicing across all parties in a complex, multi-actor network
Results
Measurable improvement in comprehension of consumer problems
Unified point of view across JMPC consumer and merchant leadership
Stronger JMPC partnership with industry groups
Acknowledgement of issues by regulators and establishment of an industry governing body
We began with complex ecosystem and jargon.
I reframed - putting the customer problem at the center.
“The stories were relatable and memorable.”
— JPMC Government Relations Leader
Here are some of the approaches I used.
1
Mined research and call listening for customer problems
To address concerns that online shoppers will be increasingly at risk as new payments technology enables payments from a bank account. We identified the top problems found during research sessions and call-listening sessions. This includes:
problems resolving issues with purchases when paying with a bank account,
difficulty ending subscriptions and unwanted recurring charges, and
account takeover by a third party, resulting in the bank account being closed.
2
Developed storyboards with partners
With our partners, I developed a relatable character, wrote multiple customer stories and drafted visuals to accompany the narratives.
3
Adapted stories for a wide audience
The stories were used in multiple contexts, including:
the official JPMorgan Chase response to the Personal Financial Data Rights Ruling (1033) to raise awareness of the existing customer problems face,
at payments industry conferences to educate participants, and
with internal audiences.
This led to a measurable improvement in folks understanding the challenges shoppers encounter, a unified point of view across stakeholders and stronger industry partnerships. As a result, there has been ongoing demand for storytelling.
4
Conducted workshops to rapidly democratize this method of storytelling
Due to increased demand for storytelling, including for corporate strategic initiatives, I experimented with using internal AI tools to rapidly generate imagery. I am currently conducting storyboarding workshops to unlock storytelling across the organization.
