THE CHALLENGE
Before I could help Vodafone refresh customer communications spanning hundreds of use cases, I first had to fix the journeys.
The problem to solve sounded simple: make every email, text and automated call script work together for more than six million people in the UK. Promotions and service updates to late payment reminders, everything needed a review.
But knowing only the customer journeys without understanding the technical process flows that underpin them? That way lay the risk of ignoring serious structural (and potentially costly) flaws.
During a 16-month engagement as Senior Content Designer, I worked on Vodafone’s overhaul of outbound CRM across the UK.
Briefs had already been written. What hadn’t happened was the technical mapping of how communications across different channels worked together.
Without properly co-ordinated journeys, customers could receive messages late, repeatedly, or in the wrong order. Within payment journeys alone, confusion like that meant significant financial risk.
THE SOLUTION
My remit was to rewrite the highest-priority communications in Vodafone’s new tone of voice. But simply layering new copy over existing systems and structures would’ve meant preserving the underlying problem.
When I discovered no process flows existed, I worked with Vodafone’s technical teams to reconstruct every journey I’d been assigned. We looked at what triggered each communication, when it went out, what could happen next, and when a customer needed to speak to a human adviser.
Those flows became the project team’s single source of truth. They exposed gaps and dependencies, allowing me to challenge the process from the customer’s perspective. They also gave everyone a shared basis for creating and sending communications.
Only once all this was in place did I begin writing the many emails, text messages and IVR scripts and all their variants – turning technical and process language into Vodafone’s clear, human new voice.
THE OUTCOME
The early success of this work encouraged further internal investment – the scale of the problem demanding a more thorough review.
The programme continued for several additional months, meaning more customer touchpoints got the same level of scrutiny.
The resulting process flows had brought technical logic and customer experience together, supporting communications used across Vodafone’s customer base.
This scrutiny also meant I was able to catch a serious financial error in a letter intended for tens of thousands of customers, correcting it before it went out. It not only prevented customers from receiving inaccurate and misleading information, but also avoided costing the company tens of thousands of pounds on pulping, reprinting and redistribution.