Content Strategy for TIAA

Challenge

To create an efficient, digital experience to completing financial paperwork. A digital experience would reduce form processing time, days to complete a transaction and customer errors.

Approach

We set out to digitize existing pdf forms. I worked alongside our ux lead, scrum master, business analysts, product owner, developer, project manager, subject matter experts and prototypers as well as legal and compliance to execute a streamlined experience.

We first learned about how the pdf forms were used by customers and financial advisors. There were cases of customer error where the user did not understand what information the pdf form was requesting which resulted in extended processing time and additional customer center calls.

Many forms reuse similar form fields like customer contact information, signature sections and account information. We widgetized the consistently used form sections to be reused in the forms we were creating.

We used the pdf forms as a guide in order to adhere to legal and compliance requirements. We created additional help text around confusing financial jargon which frequently lead to customer calls.

Final Product

Several forms are now available on our website for customers and financial advisors to complete online. TIAA has already seen an adoption rate of over 50% which has significantly reduced the company’s processing time and incoming call volume.

Here is an example of a pdf form. We were able to make several optimizations by converting it to a digital form like pulling in information we already knew about the customer (i.e. name, address, account number, etc.)

Creating the copydecks was a collaborative process. The subject matter experts inserted the widget pieces into the copydeck to mirror the pdf. I reviewed the content and flow as well as edited any custom copy before leading a review session with the wider team.