Saving Business Costs in Times of Corona

A case study on how product & design collaborated to leverage existing systems and help conserve funds when it needed it the most.

Snapshot of the feature launched during August of 2020

Context

In March 2020, when India was in COVID lockdown, the economy suffered a setback. Like most businesses, UC was not left untouched. We had to find ways to save costs. The demand took a nose-dive and our partners were facing a cash crunch.

Something had to be done to give flexibility to partners for purchasing new leads from the platform while also finding alternatives to save business costs.

Research

For finding affordable payment methods, we dived deeper into the partner platform. This was important because:

1. The expenditure on the partner platform was a fixed cost to the company as we processed partner payouts on 3 days of the week.
2. Apart from this, a user behavior we observed was that partners would recharge their UC wallet multiple times with a small amount rather than recharge it once with a substantial one. This naturally added to significant overall operating costs like payment gateway fees (it is charged per transaction)
3. As for the payment methods — not all are the same in the eyes of payment gateways. Credit cards and net banking incur higher transaction costs per transaction than UPI. So we had to find ways to nudge not only partners but our customers to use UPI so that it could help us save transaction costs.

Hence, a two-prong approach was undertaken:

• Facilitating UC partners to recharge their UC wallet via upcoming Payouts.
• Designing nudges for UPI as the preferred payment method for both partners and customers.

Recording research findings in a document & testing version 1 of designs that eventually was rejected after usability tests

Final Designs

To make the calculations clearer, we showed how credits will be recharged at the adjusted amount. There was a clear way to know the balance limit and detailed information.

Live design for RFP (Recharge from payout)

The complete flow for the RFP (Recharge from Payout) feature

The Impact

This went live for 4850 active pros. Within a week of its launch, 1910 pros had used it to recharge their UC wallet. Today, about 22% of the total UC wallet recharges are happening via RFP. While 190 partners opted out from using this feature, 40 of them again gave consent to opt back in.

We ran a quick survey on the provider app, asking them how this feature performed:

• As of August 1, 2020, RFP has helped Urban Company save 1.1 million INR
• 70% of Partners liked the feature

Appreciation from UC partners

₹1,100,000 INR Saved as Payment Gateway Charges

79% Credit recharges via RFP in Dubai

56% Credit recharges via RFP in Abu Dhabi

Adoption in Dubai and Abu Dhabi

👏️ Personal Learnings

• That design is collaboration, not isolation.
• Early validations help in defining and even pivoting the idea to a more useful one.
• The more we put our work up for critique, the more we learn about the rationale. Handling critiques to distil good feedback is also a skill.

Awarded UC ownership award for driving business outcomes with designs

Next Steps

UPI as the payment method can help us save further, raising about 25% more savings.

We also are brainstorming about the idea of having a UC Savings Plan that would allow the partners to save a part of their upcoming payouts. UC will give preferred discounts to these partners for on-time renewals.

This recharge from upcoming payouts can serve as a viable alternative payment method within the UC platform. The partners can use this to order their products & equipment.

Credits to the team I worked with:

• Product — Akanksha Sharma,
• Engineering — Sourav Gupta