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Retail · TELECOM · 2026

Reducing billing friction at checkout

CONTEXT

Redesigning the first-bill experience to reduce call volume, improve clarity, and build trust with new telecom customers.

ROLE

Senior Product
Designer

TEAM

Retail design team
~ 2 designers

YEAR

2026

PROBLEM

The company's biggest operational focus this year was call volume. Instead of asking how do we reduce the calls, we asked something different "Why is this call happening in the first place?"

22% of support calls were driven by bill confusion after in-store purchases.

Imagine walking out of a telecom store with a new phone, a new plan, and the confidence that everything is set up correctly. A few weeks later, the first bill arrives. The amount felt higher than expected. And you were left confused.

Now imagine ordering something online, seeing one price at checkout, and getting charged something completely different later. It feels frustrating isn't it?

CALL VOLUME DATA

22%

customers called for clarity in their bill

BUSINESS IMPACT

Multi-million dollar

Operational cost support all the queries

NPS

Double-digit decline

in First-Bill experience

DISCOVERY

And so, we documented the journey to billing

Read customer feedback, heard customer support calls and reviewed billing journeys across the channels to understand what's causing the customer to call the support. The problem wasn't one screen or one charge.

Confusion was building across the entire experience, from the store conversation to the moment the first bill arrived.

We understood the metrics. Now we wanted to understand the people behind them.

So we started listening to customer support calls.

We Scaled Understanding Using AI.

80 calls became 400,000.

AI ANALYSIS · GEMINI + NOTEBOOK LLM

To understand the problem at scale, we analyzed ~400K support call summaries using Gemini.

We then used Notebook LLM for deeper sampling, pattern discovery, and understanding repeated moments of confusion across the billing journey.

FINDINGS

Three moments kept repeating across the journeys

Activation Fees

Customers struggled to understand why adding lines significantly increased their first bill.

Proration charges

Proration charges often made customers feel like they were paying twice for the same service.

Cramming

Some services appeared unfamiliar, leaving customers unsure when they had opted in.

What we found surprised us.. The bill charges were valid

INITIAL ASSUMPTION

We assumed the bill had errors.

KEY FINDING

Bill charges were valid. Expectations were not clear.

TEAM WORKSHOP

We conducted a workshop with the retail checkout team to better understand the checkout experience.

We brought the retail checkout team together to find activation fees, understand proration charges, and break down the checkout journey from a customer's (store agent) perspective.

The same confusion kept repeating.

So we started mapping the repeated pain points.

And that’s when we uncovered deeper friction points across the checkout experience — especially within the cart and order review screens.

PAIN POINT SYNTHESIS

And the deeper we looked, the more cracks started showing up.

What started as a billing issue quickly unfolded into a chain of small confusing moments across the entire journey.

DESIGN

Finally, we started designing the experience we wanted customers to have.

So let me show you the iterations and how we arrived at the final solutions

We quickly explored and iterated on these concepts in Figma make to help the leadership team visualize the ideas early.

The workshop sparked a lot of interesting ideas and discussions.

Conducted usability test and A/B test to validate our solutions

Version B received strong feedback, especially as the broader workspace was already moving toward more AI-driven experiences in upcoming phases.

BeforeAfter

We simplified the cart experience for faster checkout and easier scanability.

We introduced clearer hierarchy by separating one-time charges from recurring monthly costs and giving customers visibility into upcoming bills upfront.

02 — BILL Cylce HIERARCHY

We introduced bill comparison directly into the checkout flow, helping customers clearly understand what would change in their upcoming bill before they experienced it.

03 — BILL COMPARISON

OUTCOME

And slowly, the confusion started disappearing.

Billing-related support calls started reducing as customers gained more clarity around charges and upcoming bills.

Store reps were able to close orders faster with a simpler checkout experience

Customer satisfaction also improved as the experience became easier to understand and navigate.

Thanks for following the journey from confusion to clarity.

22%