Transamerica 401(k) Redesign: From Neglected User to Revenue Driver

Transamerica’s customer service (CS) center was overwhelmed by a high volume of calls from users struggling with 401(k) tools and basic financial terminology. These frequent inquiries were negatively impacting quarterly revenue by increasing operational costs while failing to drive meaningful engagement with the platform.

Understanding Rebecca: The Overlooked Persona

Rebecca was a low-income participant struggling to contribute to her 401(k). Transamerica had deprioritized her, assuming she was not a valuable user because she couldn't afford their premium service, Managed Advice. However, through deep qualitative research, we uncovered that Rebecca—and others like her—were actually a key opportunity.

Rather than disengaging, Rebecca was actively trying to understand her 401(k) options but was hindered by financial jargon and platform complexity. Her struggle led to increased support calls, adding to operational costs. If we could educate and empower her, we could reduce service costs while unlocking new revenue streams.

The Research & Data Breakdown

1. CS Data Analysis – I conducted a deep dive into hundreds of user statements from CS and survey responses, classifying issues into clear categories to quantify the pain points.
2. Business Goals Analysis – Leadership presented a milestone deck using third-party market research (Bellomy). Upon review, I found it lacked qualitative insights into user behavior.
3. Competitive Analysis – Since education was key for Rebecca, I conducted a competitive audit of other financial platforms to gauge industry best practices.
4. Refining the Problem Statement – The Participant Experience (PX) Team and I clarified that the real issue wasn’t missing features but misaligned user flows and lack of education.

Business Honors Working Session: A Game-Changer

To align stakeholders, I designed and facilitated a Business Honors Working Session, where we used a custom “Hierarchy of Human Needs” workshop to visualize and prioritize user frustrations.

Key Takeaways from the Workshop:

1. Leadership realized that Rebecca’s needs were fundamental, not secondary.
2. Business Goals Analysis – Leadership presented a milestone deck using third-party market research (Bellomy). Upon review, I found it lacked qualitative insights into user behavior.
3. They understood the cost of neglecting user education—millions in avoidable support calls.
4. They pivoted from feature-building to problem-solving, embracing fixing UX flows and terminology clarity as primary solutions.

Delivering Bulletproof Process Flows

One of the biggest takeaways from the working session was the labeling of user pain points, which revealed a huge gap in customer education directly impacting Rebecca’s experience.

I collected these issues and categorized them into prioritized design solutions to create bulletproof process flows addressing:

1. Educational gaps in 401(k) terminology.
2. Business Goals Analysis – Leadership presented a milestone deck using third-party market research (Bellomy). Upon review, I found it lacked qualitative insights into user behavior.
3. Confusing onboarding experiences.
4. Unnecessary friction in customer interactions.

Early Dev Collaboration – Before presenting solutions to leadership, I worked with the development team to identify potential technical constraints, ensuring our wireframes were feasible and scalable.

Wireframes & Reward-Effort Matrix

To align leadership’s decisions with business and user needs, I designed multiple wireframes with varying levels of development complexity. Each wireframe detailed:

1. How it solved user problems
2. How the backend and database would interact
3. Its effort vs. impact

Using these insights, we ranked solutions using a Reward-Effort Matrix, ensuring leadership prioritized the most impactful fixes first.

Even though I designed solutions with lower effort and higher reward, some of the chosen solutions tackled long-standing critical issues that had been overlooked for years—but were worth the effort.

Design Solutions

1. Users Onboarding

Transamerica faced a surge in support calls from new users confused by the landing page and login process. My analysis revealed that basic users—like our “Rebecca” persona—lacked clear onboarding guidance. I designed a streamlined onboarding overlay that dynamically evaluates user IDs, categorizing them (e.g., frequent, new, or affected by recent feature launches) to deliver tailored guidance.

2. Proactive Design for Market Volatility

When the volatile market of 2020 left users confused about sudden 401K changes, customer calls surged. I designed dynamic, personalized educational experiences—ranging from subtle informational cards to proactive login modals—to clarify market fluctuations and reduce panic-driven financial decisions.

3. Snack, Bite and Meal of Content

TA's customer service was swamped by calls about complex 401K terminology. To simplify this, I introduced a "snack, bite, and meal" strategy—offering quick hover definitions (snack), brief introductory summaries (bite), and full articles (meal) to make legally required language accessible and engaging for our Rebecca users.