Streamlining complaints without losing the human touch

While at Lloyds, the Black Horse customer dashboard was migrating from WSS to MTA. On WSS, complaints were submitted through a standard web form. Instead of replicating this on MTA, I saw an opportunity to create a more human, empathetic experience that reflects the emotional nature of making a complaint.

Tasks
User Experience
User Interface
User Testing
Prototyping

Client
Black Horse
(Lloyds Banking Group)

Year
2025

The challenge

Following the platform transition, BlackHorse customers on MTA were left without a way to submit complaints online. This led to a surge in customer service calls, as users tried to resolve issues through alternative channels. For agents, this created an operational burden: manually logging each complaint often took up to 45 minutes per call.

Additionally, analytics from the WSS complaints form revealed a high abandonment rate.

Reimagining the journey

I decided not to simply bring over the old WSS complaints form. After researching competitors and discussing with stakeholders, we agreed that the new experience should use a conversational bot to guide users through the same series of required questions.

The aim was to:

  • improve customer engagement,

  • reduce operational strain,

  • and create a framework for future AI integration.

Powered by Gemini

Gemini was chosen as the LLM since it's already in use across the banking group.

We defined key parameters for the bot, including the types of complaints it handles (e.g. vehicle, service, finance, payments), actions it can take (respond, escalate, refund), and when to involve a human.

To align it with company policy, we provided relevant artifacts like the complaint handling policy, FAQs, escalation procedures, and agent scripts.

A conditional script to cover different scenarios

Components

Testing and iteration

Two rounds of usability testing were conducted with real users to validate tone, ease of use, and overall trust. Based on feedback, we refined the bot’s tone to be more empathetic and ensured the interaction felt intuitive and supportive during what can be an emotionally charged task.

Doc upload

Key improvements

  • Conversational UX: I designed a more human, empathetic dialogue flow that collected all required information. Conditional logic enabled personalised journeys based on user responses.

  • System Integration: The bot captures all responses and feeds them into Nucleus, a colleague-facing portal used to manage and review complaints.

Results we're driving toward

Increase completion rate to

70%

Old platform rate was 50%

Reduce complaint-related calls by

90%

within 6 months

Decrease time spent logging complaints from

45min to 0

thanks to automated data capture