Redesigning the Customer Signing Experience

Role: Sr. Product Designer

Date: 2021 - Present

Overview

The Clicklease signing experience is a pivotal step in the customer journey, enabling small business owners like Rose to finalize their lease agreements seamlessly. After selecting the equipment they wish to lease and coordinating with the vendor, Rose enters the signing process—a critical moment that solidifies trust and ensures compliance.

This case study explores how I redesigned the signing flow to enhance usability, improve efficiency, and simplify the experience for both Rose and the vendor (Edgar). The redesign focused on clear communication, intuitive navigation, and seamless integration of essential steps, from selecting lease terms to completing tasks like uploading a driver’s license.

Problems

The previous signing experience presented several challenges that impacted both usability and efficiency:

  • Outdated UI: The interface was not aligned with the updated style guide established for our Sunburst projects, resulting in a disjointed user experience that lacked clarity and polish.

  • Bank Account Verification Loops: The integration with GIACT and Finicity created frustrating loops for customers. If a bad bank account was entered, the fallback process to Finicity often felt cumbersome. Failure with both systems led to lease denial, requiring Rose to reapply after 30 days—adding unnecessary friction.

  • Inability to Resume Progress: When Rose exited the signing experience, there was no clear way for her to resume where she left off, causing confusion and frustration.

  • Lack of Follow-Up Communication: The system did not effectively re-engage customers who had not completed the signing process. Missing reminder emails or texts meant opportunities to complete leases were often lost.

These issues not only affected the customer experience but also impacted lease completion rates and operational efficiency, making a redesign essential.

Signing Before Sunburst

Updated Signing

Research and Insights

Customer Interviews

To better understand the pain points in the signing experience, we conducted targeted customer research using data and interviews:

  • We analyzed Salesforce data to identify Roses who were stuck in the signing process. This allowed us to pinpoint the stages where customers commonly experienced issues and why they encountered those roadblocks.

  • Customers were grouped based on their outcomes in the signing process:

    • Activated Leases: Roses who successfully completed the signing process and activated their leases.

    • Abandoned Leases: Roses who backed out of their lease after starting the signing process.

    • I conducted interviews with Roses from each group to uncover specific challenges and insights.

    • Topics included their experience with the signing flow, any frustrations with UI or communication, and what influenced their decision to continue or abandon their lease.

This research provided invaluable insights into customer behavior, highlighting opportunities to improve the signing process and ensure a smoother, more intuitive experience for all Roses.

Insights Leading to Our MVP List

Our research uncovered key challenges that informed the foundation of our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the signing process redesign. These findings emphasized the importance of creating a more accessible, intuitive, and functional portal:

Improved Security

  • The integration of OTP into the signing experience enhances security while providing greater flexibility.

  • This feature allows Rose to exit and re-enter the signing process without losing her progress. Previously, exiting or refreshing the page would reset all progress, causing frustration and delays. Now, Rose can complete the process at her own pace with confidence.

Review and Verify Lease Details

  • Prior to signing the lease agreement, it was essential for Rose to clearly understand what she was committing to—a need emphasized across all customer interviews. Presenting this information in a clear and transparent manner became a primary goal of the redesign.

  • This effort not only enhances the customer experience by reducing confusion but also supports the business in maintaining accountability. By ensuring the terms are well-communicated, the process minimizes disputes and fosters trust between Rose and Clicklease.

Confirm or Edit Bank Account

  • Enhanced the bank account entry process to provide a smoother experience.

  • The system now verifies the routing number immediately after Rose enters it, ensuring accuracy and reducing potential errors during setup.

DocuSign Flow

  • The signing process had a gap when Rose entered DocuSign, as she was taken to a Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA) page without Clicklease branding, making the experience feel disconnected.

  • Many Roses also struggled with the KBA process, often failing to verify past addresses or provide the required information, leading to drop-offs and loss of customers.

  • By integrating DocuSign into the Clicklease signing experience, we created a seamless, branded process that improved completion rates and customer trust.

Other MVP initiatives include providing Rose with a summary of her agreement and sending an email with the signed contract, ensuring she stays informed without needing to contact Clicklease. Additionally, Rose will be prompted to upload her driver’s license for verification, streamlining the funding process and minimizing the need for customer service follow-ups.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.

Design is how it works.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Ideation and Planning

After defining the product’s MVPs, a developer and design sync was crucial to align on what could be realistically achieved within the project timeline. This collaboration helped estimate the time required for design, testing, iteration, and full development implementation.

Key Features

Here are some small but impactful features that will improve the signing experience:

  • OTP Integration: Adding a one-time password (OTP) to the signing process enhances security and allows Roses to sign at their convenience, ensuring a more flexible and secure experience.

  • Responsive Bank Form: Enhancing the "add your bank" form to provide real-time feedback and assist Rose with accuracy when entering her bank account information, ensuring a smoother and more reliable experience.

  • Finicity Integration: Seamlessly integrating Finicity as a fallback option when issues arise with adding a bank account through the GIACT process, ensuring Rose can complete the signing process without unnecessary delays.

  • Lease Summary Page: A clear pre-signing summary shows fees and terms, with the Documentation Fee collected at signing to streamline revenue capture and prevent payment discrepancies.

  • Integrated DocuSign: Embedding the DocuSign process into the Clicklease signing experience ensures a smoother flow and enhances feel of security.

  • Post-Signing Summary Page: Displays a clear summary of what Rose signed up for, including when the documentation fee will be charged. It also includes a non-refundable disclosure for transparency and better customer understanding.

  • Seamless Next Steps: Ensuring Rose can immediately proceed to the next steps, such as uploading a driver’s license, directly after signing.

UserTesting

To evaluate the signing flow, I conducted user testing using the UserTesting platform. This tool allowed me to upload the prototype and create a test for participants selected based on predefined demographics. By targeting users who closely matched Clicklease’s personas, I could gather valuable insights into how the signing experience would resonate with our audience.

How the Test Was Conducted:

  • Targeted Demographics: I configured the test to find participants whose profiles closely resembled the company’s targeted customer base.

  • Tasks and Observations: Users were tasked with navigating the signing flow, focusing on key MVP elements like choosing lease terms and adding a bank account. The platform recorded their screens, audio, and video, providing a detailed view of how they interacted with the UI and verbiage.

  • Prototyping Challenges: Since testers couldn’t input real bank information, I had to creatively prototype the test to simulate a realistic experience. This involved designing alternative flows that still mirrored the "happy path" (successful completion) and "unhappy path" (errors or drop-offs).

Key Insights from the Tests:

  • Observing how users interacted with the UI revealed areas where the design was intuitive and where it caused confusion.

  • Randomly assigning paths ensured unbiased results, highlighting both strengths and gaps in the flow.

  • Verbal feedback from participants provided insight into how wording and visual cues affected their understanding and decision-making.

These tests were crucial in refining the signing experience, highlighting missing design elements and identifying features that may not be worth prioritizing in the MVP, ensuring alignment with customer needs and business goals.

Challenges

The signing redesign presented several unique challenges, requiring innovative solutions and cross-functional collaboration:

Integrating OTP into the Flow

Introducing the OTP process required developers to learn and implement PROVE, the tool selected for generating secure one-time passwords. Ensuring the OTP integration was seamless while maintaining security added complexity to the flow.

Standardizing Email and SMS Communication

When I joined the team, communication tools were fragmented, with emails and texts being sent through various platforms such as Podium, HubSpot, and Twilio.

To streamline the process, we standardized all SMS communication through Twilio and used HubSpot for email. This effort simplified communication workflows and gave the product team better control over messaging.

Humanizing the Lease Summary Page

Designing the lease summary page to feel transparent and approachable was a significant challenge. Initially, it felt too transactional, resembling a receipt rather than an informative summary. Developers also faced difficulties gathering the necessary information to populate the page.

The final design focused on making the information clear and reassuring. Prominently displaying the non-refundable documentation fee, when it will be charged, the lease terms, and the monthly payment amount ensures transparency while reducing surprises for Rose. This thoughtful approach helped build trust and improved the overall user experience.

DocuSign’s Limited Customization

Integrating DocuSign into the signing experience revealed significant limitations in its customization options, particularly for mobile views. Developers and I collaborated closely with DocuSign to improve its usability and ensure a smoother experience, especially on smaller screens. This required creative problem-solving to align DocuSign’s functionality with the needs of the Clicklease signing flow.

Balancing User Needs and Business Goals

While redesigning the signing concept, balancing the company's business needs with emotional and practical elements Rose faced was no mean feat. Testing users and interviewing revealed some leasing practices made customers feel unjustly sold or caught, creating frustrations and emotional havoc. I heard stories about Roses being blindsided up by agreements they never perceived—some even expressing regret and anger post-signature. While I couldn't change the business's top practices, I concentrated on designing a framework that would heed these concerns and build trust.

My focus on transparency was to ensure that Roses always felt empowered and informed. This meant being upfront and explicit about lease terms and fees while humanizing the entire experience. I conveyed to stakeholders that decreasing confusion and, therefore, preventing negative associations formed about Clicklease was a boon not only for the customers but also for the company's reputation over time. This spurred key initiatives, demonstrating the importance of stakeholder buy-in for combining user needs with business goals. Steps to build trust and decrease the heartbreaking experience of certain Roses.

Beginning of singing for a new Rose

Adding an OTP to the signing process enhances security, allows Rose to re-enter without losing progress, builds user confidence in the platform, reduces errors and drop-offs, and improves overall efficiency for both customers and Clicklease.

Adding the bank account

The improved bank account entry process benefits Rose by providing real-time feedback to ensure accuracy, reducing errors and frustration during setup, while streamlining the experience to make managing payment information quicker and more reliable.

Lease summary

The lease summary page benefits Rose by providing clear, upfront details about fees, terms, and payment schedules, reducing confusion and building trust, while helping Clicklease ensure transparency, minimize disputes, and improve customer satisfaction.

🏆 Maximizing Lease Approval Balances

The signing experience redesign was a transformative win, addressing both business needs and Rose's journey with empathy and precision. Capturing the documentation fee at signing secured vital revenue upfront, while reducing frustration and streamlining the process dramatically lowered drop-off rates, ensuring more Roses completed their leases confidently.

Improving the bank account entry process felt deeply impactful, as it minimized denials caused by simple mistakes, allowing Roses to move forward without unnecessary setbacks. Most importantly, providing Rose with clear, upfront information about her lease terms, fees, and next steps ensured she always felt empowered and informed. This transparency not only built trust but also helped prevent the heartbreak of confusion or regret. These changes represent a meaningful step toward a smoother, more human-centered signing experience.

Outcomes

A large increase in capturing the Documentation Fee

Requiring the Documentation Fee at signing secured upfront revenue for Clicklease, improving cash flow and reducing the risk of unpaid fees.

Decrease in user declined and drop off

Improving the bank account entry process reduced drop-offs by making it easier for Roses to accurately add their bank information, resulting in more completed leases and fewer lost opportunities for Clicklease.

Lower cost per customer

Streamlining the signing process and reducing customer confusion led to fewer support calls, lowering the cost per customer and allowing Clicklease to allocate resources more efficiently while improving overall profitability.

Overall customer satisfaction

Since launching the new signing experience, Clicklease’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) has seen a significant increase, rising from 24 to 65 in the last 3 months. This improvement reflects a strong initial step toward enhancing the customer journey, with optimism that future updates will continue to elevate the overall experience for Clicklease customers.