SRP My Account Web Portal

The original Dashboard page combined several components- including Payment, Billing, Usage, Feedback, and Quick Links for Power customers as well as many of the same components if the user was also a Water customer. All of this content, composed into a single space, caused for an experience that drew the user’s attention into several different directions. The layout also caused users to be distracted by unrelated content if they were focused on a specific task.

For power customers, this included making payments, checking usage, reporting/viewing outages, and being able to self-service their account. For water customers, these tasks were paying their assessment, ordering water, checking their water delivery schedule, and making general updates to their account.

The original dashboard had the capability of providing both Power and Water content if the customer was enrolled in both services. This caused for a heavy cognitive load and was an opportunity to provide clear experiences for both services. By doing so, users would have clear tasks based on their utility service and would be more efficient in their tasks.

While My Account users had no glaring issues in performing main tasks, there were some areas of opportunity to improve these tasks. Making one payment across multiple Power accounts was one these tasks.

At SRP, when larger projects are kicked off, the Customer Insights team will gather background data to get a sense of how users feel about the product as well as where paint points may be discovered. The Customer Insights team would then share these findings with me, and it was my job to determine what the best way would be to implement the user’s sentiments. I would also collaborate with the researchers of Customer Insights to confirm my design decisions fell in line with customer feedback.

For example, users expressed some frustration in the process of signing up for various programs that SRP would offer (like automated payments or average monthly bills). Previously, these forms were entirely manually entered by the user- causing for long time on task and multiple opportunities to abandon the task. With the redesign, manual entry of data was completely eliminated and all stored account information was used to expedite the form. Only data that was necessary to be entered by the user was made manual.

The users of SRP’s My Account, as with any major utility product, are incredibly varied. Users range from first-time apartment renters to landlords managing multiple properties. From people just graduating high school to retirees. With that being the case, the redesigned My Account had to be both accessible and feel familiar. I decided to use the Material UI React component library- knowing that Google’s Material Design is very prevalent in the UI space and has exposure to millions of users. This way, while the My Account tool may technically be new to its users, it would still feel familiar to them at a basic level. It was then just a case of ensuring tasks were made intuitive, and the UI was communicated clearly.

The balance between user wants, business needs, and general best practices can be a challenge at times. As a designer, I want to provide users whatever is necessary in order for them to successfully accomplish their goals without the task feeling like walking through mud. And at the same time, I need to keep the business’s goal of providing a product that meets deadlines and is technically feasible. Then there are also times where I may suggest opportunities for improvement, but stakeholders may not see the overall value- in which it is my job to try and adjust management’s thinking.

The previous version of My Account had a cumbersome process when signing up for email and text alerts, and users expressed this when gathering paint points. Individual alerts needed to be manually expanded to reveal their details, what contact methods were associated to it, and users needed to drag and drop contacts in order to remove them- which felt incredibly out of place on desktop. With the redesign- alerts were categorized to allow for better clarity, adding and removing established contacts from an alert was made more intuitive, while the redesign has also added the ability for users to know which phone numbers have been verified to receive text messages- something the previous version did not communicate.

During exploratory feedback sessions, a group of users expressed interest in knowing where their usage was being spent; Is my air conditioner running nominally? Are my other appliances drawing more usage then I’d like them to? While the ask from the user was valid, and the UI could effectively communicate this data, ultimately there was no feasible way to decipher usage at that granular of a level.

One element of the My Bill section that has remained even after the initial redesign is an embedded PDF of the user’s bill. Navigating these embedded files has proven to be a pain point for mobile users, as being able to scroll past the bill is challenging. I saw this area of opportunity to improve the user’s overall experience, collaborated on user tests with the Customer Insights team, and got great feedback from immediate management. But unfortunately, this update has remained on a backlog due to higher priority projects.

Leadership and management were very pleased with the My Account customer portal project. They were specifically pleased with how the design and development teams integrating the feedback from user research sessions. Other positive feedback included how the portal would improve engagement and overall satisfaction. And while in the short term those improvements were minimal, over the proceeding months the feedback scores continued to grow to all-time highs. By focusing on customer needs, streamlining processes, and addressing pain points SRP leadership was very pleased with the end product.

While the project was being developed, users returning to do feedback sessions noted how pages felt easier to navigate and seemed easier to understand based on their prior experiences with the older pages. Upon initial release, immediate user sentiment was mostly positive- but there were also some concerns about the updated look and feel. This was to be expected, as the site had not gone through any major changes in several years. After a couple months though (a good portion of the user base would only visit monthly), Customer Survey scores took a dramatic uptick. Both overall satisfaction and ease of use scores improved by nearly 20 points in the fiscal year following the redesign project. And scores remained +/-3% in the years after that, demonstrating that the project has been a success.

After launching the My Account redesign, J.D. Power ranked SRP 2^nd overall (out of 48) in their 2024 Utility Digital Experience Study for large sized utility providers. SRP scored 653 points, where in the national average was nearly 50 points lower at 594. The study focuses on how well utilities engage with their customers through digital channels, such as websites, mobile apps, and online billing systems. Users of the study commended SRP’s web portal for its incredible ease of use, easily accessible information, and overall pleasing aesthetic.

Here is a collection of pages showcasing the UI updates of the SRP My Account web portal.