Delinquent debtors

Symend x UPenn | Summer 2021


Instructor: Zarak Khan, Consultant

Challenge

Symend was working with a client whose customers had fallen behind on payments. They found the high-risk customer segment to be the most challenging to promote desired behavior change (payment).

Our challenge was to determine which messaging strategies would empathetically nudge and empower the customer to act, while positively influencing future behavior so they would be more likely to make on-time payments in the future.

Team

I worked with colleagues in my Consulting in Behavioral Science class to develop customer personas for our client, a leading B2B SaaS consulting agency in Canada. We synthesized secondary and primary research using design thinking frameworks and recommended specific content strategy based on our personas.

Process

TOOLS & Methods

  • Quantitative survey design and analysis

  • Double Diamond Design Thinking framework

  • Qualtrics, Excel, Miro, Zoom, Google Slides


Survey design

  • Survey contained personality and demographic questions relevant to the high-risk customer profile

  • Included open-ended questions about perceptions, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors

  • Conditions were within-subject and outcome measures were self-reported:

      1. Likelihood to open an email given a certain subject line

      2. The level of anxiety induced by certain email subject lines



Deliver


We generated 3 user personas, distilled preferences for and emotional reactions to 6 behaviorally informed messaging strategies, and recommended actionable next steps to take to further understand the customer segment