Tactical & north-star solutions for payment disputes

About the project

The client, a major UK high street bank, was facing scrutiny over its high volume of customer complaints. Payment disputes were a leading source of complaints and generated significant demand on contact centres.

Senior leadership wanted to address the immediate issues quickly, with low-cost improvements that could reduce complaints and avoidable calls.

Alongside these tactical fixes, the project aimed to define a longer-term vision for a fully digital disputes journey, giving customers greater visibility and control while reducing reliance on phone calls, letters and branches.

Understanding the current journey

We worked with subject matter experts and front- and back-office colleagues to map the end-to-end payment disputes journey, covering customer interactions, operational processes and the systems supporting them.

Alongside this, we reviewed complaints data and call analytics to understand where customers were experiencing difficulties and what was driving repeat contact.

Our analysis highlighted several recurring problems:

1. Dispute logging: Errors when recording disputes over the phone created problems further down the process.
2. Inconsistent advice: Customers received conflicting or inaccurate information from frontline colleagues.
3. Limited visibility: Without digital status updates, customers regularly called to check progress.
4. Disconnected systems: Poor information sharing between teams made it difficult to provide accurate updates.
5. Reliance on letters: Delayed or missed requests for supporting evidence caused frustration and could affect dispute outcomes.

Prioritising tactical improvements

Payment disputes are often stressful for customers, particularly when money is missing and there's little visibility of what's happening. Limited digital self-service meant customers were heavily reliant on contacting the bank for reassurance and updates.

Inconsistent or incorrect advice from frontline colleagues added to this frustration, driving repeat contact, eroding trust and contributing to complaints.

To address these issues, I facilitated a workshop with product owners, business analysts and operational colleagues to identify improvements that could be delivered quickly, without significant changes to existing systems.

We used How Might We questions to explore potential solutions, then mapped ideas against customer impact and implementation effort to agree where to focus.

Two opportunities were prioritised:

Proactive dispute updates

Introduce semi-automated SMS notifications to keep customers informed as their dispute progressed, reducing uncertainty and the need to call for updates.

Better visibility for frontline colleagues

Improve the flow of case information between back-office and frontline teams through shared case notes, helping colleagues provide more accurate answers when customers made contact.

These improvements offered a practical way to address immediate customer frustrations while the team developed a longer-term digital experience.

North-star journey workshop

With operational teams progressing the tactical improvements, we shifted our focus to defining a longer-term vision for the disputes experience.

I planned and facilitated an on-site workshop with the client, bringing together stakeholders to explore how we could move towards a more proactive, digitally enabled journey.

Alignment to north-star metrics

Ahead of the workshop, I worked with the journey owner and product owner to agree how we would measure success.

Our priorities were to reduce complaints, customer calls and dispute resolution times, while increasing digital adoption, self-service and customer satisfaction (NPS).

We kept these measures visible throughout the workshop, using them to guide discussions and assess potential solutions.

Aligning on the current journey problems

We began by reviewing the existing journey analysis, recent complaints data and findings from customer research into the experience of disputing a transaction.

This gave everyone a shared understanding of where the journey was falling short, from inconsistent advice and limited case visibility to the anxiety customers experienced while waiting for an outcome.

It also helped ground the workshop in real customer and operational problems before we moved into exploring solutions.

CX principles

We worked together to establish a set of customer experience principles to guide the design of the future disputes journey.

These focused on clear, jargon-free communication, proactive updates and helping customers understand what was happening, what was expected of them and what would happen next.

The principles gave us a way to challenge ideas throughout the workshop and assess whether proposed solutions would genuinely improve the customer experience.

Design ideation

We used Crazy 8s to generate ideas before splitting into smaller teams, each assigned a different payment dispute scenario.

Teams developed storyboards to explore how customers could move through the end-to-end experience, drawing on the research findings, north-star metrics and CX principles we'd established earlier.

This allowed us to explore different approaches to the future journey without being constrained by existing processes or systems.

Prioritisation

Following the ideation exercises, each team presented their proposed journey and the thinking behind it.

We reviewed the ideas against our agreed north-star metrics and CX principles, considering their potential to improve the customer experience, reduce operational demand and support greater digital self-service.

This helped us identify which ideas to take forward into the design and prototyping phase.

Designing the digital disputes experience

Following the north-star workshop, we began translating the prioritised ideas into digital journeys and prototypes.

The focus was on giving customers greater control over their disputes, from submitting supporting evidence to understanding case progress and receiving updates.

Working alongside the wider product team, we explored how these capabilities could fit within the bank's existing app, balancing customer needs with operational and technical constraints.

Making it easier to provide evidence

Customers were often asked to provide supporting evidence after raising a dispute, with requests and responses handled through letters and manual processes. Delays in the postal system could mean evidence arrived too late, potentially causing disputes to fall outside card scheme deadlines and preventing cases from progressing.

We explored bringing evidence collection into the initial dispute journey, allowing customers to upload documents, screenshots and other supporting information directly through the app.

The design focused on making evidence requirements clear and relevant to the type of dispute, helping customers provide the right information first time and reducing the risk of missed deadlines and follow-up requests.

Making dispute progress visible

One of the biggest frustrations for customers was not knowing what was happening after raising a dispute. With no way to track progress digitally, many resorted to calling the bank for updates.

We explored a dedicated dispute details screen within the app, bringing together the current case status, a timeline of updates and any actions required from the customer.

The challenge was providing meaningful reassurance without suggesting that resolution dates were guaranteed, particularly where investigations depended on merchants and card schemes.

Explaining temporary refunds clearly

Customers could receive a temporary refund while their dispute was being investigated. However, this money could later be taken back if the dispute was unsuccessful, creating the potential for confusion and further frustration.

We explored how to communicate temporary refunds within the app, making it clear that the money had been credited but that the decision was not yet final.

The design made it clear that the refund was temporary, why the bank might need to take the money back and what would happen if the dispute was unsuccessful.

Keeping customers informed

Without proactive updates, customers often had to contact the bank to find out whether their dispute had progressed or a decision had been made.

We explored using push notifications and SMS to communicate important changes in a dispute's status, directing customers back into the app for further details.

A key consideration was deciding which events warranted a notification and how much information to include. We needed to give customers useful updates without exposing sensitive dispute details on their lock screen or encouraging unnecessary contact.

This included notifications when evidence was required, when a decision had been reached and when a temporary refund might be reversed.

Research

Testing the proposed experience

We knew there wasn't sufficient budget to deliver the full north-star experience immediately. Before deciding what to build first, we wanted to understand which capabilities customers valued most and weigh those preferences against implementation cost and technical feasibility.

Working with the research team, we tested the proposed digital disputes journey with customers, exploring their reactions to features such as dispute tracking, digital evidence submission and proactive notifications.

Proactive updates were the most favoured feature, with customers particularly valuing the reassurance of being kept informed without having to contact the bank. Dispute tracking and digital evidence submission were also well received, offering greater visibility and control over the process.

The findings gave us a clearer picture of customer priorities and provided an evidence base for discussions with product and technology teams about what to deliver first.

Delivery prioritisation

Following customer research, we worked with product owners, solution architects and technology teams to assess the proposed features against delivery cost, technical feasibility and their potential to reduce complaints and contact centre demand.

Although the longer-term vision included digital evidence submission and a fully self-service disputes journey, delivering these capabilities would require more significant changes to existing systems and processes.

In-app dispute tracking, supported by proactive notifications, became the priority for the first release. Customers would be able to check the progress of their dispute without calling the bank, while push notifications and SMS would alert them when something changed or action was required.

This offered a more achievable first step towards the north-star experience, addressing a major cause of repeat contact without requiring the full journey to be rebuilt.

Designing the first release

With the scope agreed, we focused on developing the in-app dispute tracking experience and the proactive notifications supporting it.

Working with product, technology and operational teams, we mapped the different dispute statuses and identified which events should trigger a customer update.

One challenge was that disputes could remain at the same stage for several weeks, particularly while awaiting responses from merchants or card schemes. We needed to keep customers informed without suggesting progress where none had occurred or promising resolution dates we couldn't guarantee.

The changes to the tracking experience were subtle but important. We made the current stage of a dispute more prominent, introduced clearer expectations around merchant response times, and made it explicit when customers didn't need to take any action.

We also explored how notifications could connect customers to the right information in the app. Digital evidence upload was identified as a valuable capability, but couldn't be prioritised for the first release due to technical and delivery constraints.

Instead, we designed a way for customers to access a digital copy of the letter requesting further evidence. A push notification would direct them to the app, where they could understand what was needed, view the letter and follow the existing process for submitting information.

This allowed us to improve the experience without introducing a new evidence submission capability, while laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive digital disputes journey.