Franchisee payment platform

A new way for franchisees signed to a hospitality brand to easily know what royalties and other bills are due.

The starting point

A global hotelier group approached our team to work on improving the royalties, fees and other payment view for their hundreds of franchisees. They assumed many had issues making payments due to the shortcomings of the existing platform, given the volume of calls and types of cases raised with the support desk teams.

Our involvement took a 360 approach, we talked to internal and external users alike to really understand the issues, and then we started to create solutions which we had the pleasure to test with end users.

‘An action-oriented navigation that allows users to view details with few clicks. More importantly, a platform that allows them to never miss any due payment.’

👥 My role

Senior UX Designer, leading research and co-creating with another UX Designer | Managing the customer relation & ensuring feasibility of solutions proposed | Support the translation of designs into product requirements and user stories.

🔧 Skills applied

The process

understanding the existing platform

The first days of the projects were the perfect time to get introduced to the platform franchisees were offered to view what fees and royalties they were billed for and how they could access the payment flow.

In addition to that, we started exploring other products in adjacent industries or with similar applications to benchmark against this one.

internal user research

Whilst we were working on end-user recruitment, we started gathering some insights on pain points from stakeholders, and more importantly internal users in the Service Desk that handle the requests from franchisees.

Our most surprising finding is that the Service Desk team noted the largest volume of calls or requests for help were related to…

external user research

With a sample size of 6 franchisees, we were able to confirm some of the assumptions we made from our initial platform exploration (such as major issues with navigation and way-finding being an obstacle).

Our users did not only tell us how they felt, but also, showed us actively on their screens were they felt the most frustrated.

"Sometimes I do get a little bit lost in going back, cause if sometimes I use the back button it gives me [...] an error page, or whatever" - One participant noted

Articulating findings

After all the research conducted both primary and secondary, it was key not only to relay to the wider team, but to create artifacts to guide our decision-making for the design phase of this project.

From a benchmark analysis matrix to user journeys for key personas, we documented our insights in a way not only UX experts but others could understand.

iterating via usability testing

While designign based on previously conducted primary research is good, for this project, being able to sit down with users once more to test our solutions was key.

We did not onkly consult franchisees on this, but internal users from the Service Desk too.

Relying on SMEs

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) were critical to evaluate the feasability, language consitency and business impact of the design decisions we were making.

A brilliant example of how this made a difference is when we were designing for oversees Franchisees. These users have to modify the total amounts to be paid and justify said change, but some countries have different taxing periods. Without SME support we could have made little difference to these users' experience.

“There are millions of dollars sitting in unapplied payments that could be used towards making royalty payments” - Commented an SME about a missed opportunity

The outputs & outcomes

After conducting interviews and validating sessions with franchisees, internal users and SMEs, we were ready to share a clear vision for the new WynPay. With this new look, clearer navigation and overall functional improvements we expected to see a positive impact on franchise experience, and an increase in collection rates. At the same time, we hope to see a decrease in the volume of calls to the OSD (Operation Service Desk) related to faulty navigation or issues self-serving on WynPay.

For a more detailed walkthrough of these designs, reach out to me via LinkedIn

The future of this platform

Since the designs were finally handed to developers in the fall of 2024, the developer team on the customer’s side has worked to launch the new version by the spring of 2025.

This engagement covered mostly a V1 of the product, further functional improvements are possible and desirable based on the user research we conducted. Hopefully, we’ll be assisting this customer further, as it was an absolute pleasure working with them.