Moving is stressful enough. Moving your internet shouldn’t be.
A large number of AT&T customers who moved from one home in our fiber network to another left AT&T during or soon after their move. But inconsistent move processes across and within channels meant our data didn’t tell us exactly how many movers churn or why.
But we did have a good idea of where to start. At the time, there was no digital solution for processing broadband move requests at AT&T, making AT&T the only major internet service provider without an online self-service option for movers. All broadband move orders went through call centers, which was inefficient and time-consuming.
Our goal was to leverage discovery research, stakeholder feedback, and user testing to discover why fiber-to-fiber movers are leaving AT&T and then design the mover experience that helps them stay. As one of the content designers on the project, here’s what I did:
Led a conversation analysis
Supported user research efforts
Helped develop user enablement statements
Wrote the executive summary
Facilitated workshops with downstream product teams to integrate our user enablement statements into their product roadmaps
My role
Content designer
Deliverables
Prototype
Journey map
User enablement statements
Executive summary
Recommendations for customer communications
Team
Design - Bobby Oakley, Nash Grey, Vanessa Astronoto
Content - Jonelle Wilkinson Seitz
Research - Xiaoning Sun
Ops - Kandice Box, Jen Blake
When
March 2024 - June 2024
Areas of opportunity
Customer impact
A consistent, standardized, and predictable moving experience makes things easier for everyone. We should leverage what we know about customers to anticipate their needs during a move, communicate progress and next steps, and proactively solve problems before they get to the customer. Doing this shows that we value their loyalty and makes them less likely to churn.
AT&T Strategy Connection
Moving gives AT&T an opportunity to cross-sell mobility at several points in the customer journey and to confirm contact information across products.
Business impact
To reduce churn, the mover experience should be easy, frictionless, and communicate the value we place on loyalty in tangible and financial ways. Getting it right will also help AT&T capture improved person- and household-level data to better know our customers, target business strategies with confidence, maximize sales and future opportunities, and provide clarity to shareholders.
Approach
Our team collaborated on stakeholder and SME interviews, AT&T agent and representative interviews, and a customer survey to get our marching orders for designing the new experience. I had two objectives to help me prepare for the content design process:
Understand more about our movers
Previous research found that about 43% of our internet customers experience at least one issue when they move their internet service from one address to another. Some issues directly cause churn. Others likely contributed to churn only when they accumulated to make the experience too onerous as a whole.Focus on the conversations
It’s a little nerdy, but I used Grice’s theory of Conversational Maxims to guide a conversational analysis. I combed through message boards, FAQs, and customer complaints to learn more about what customers were actually experiencing. My findings went on to shape and inform discovery research, prototype development, user testing, user enablement statements, and recommendations for customer communications.
Insights from our user research told us that our fiber customers were ours to lose. Customers prefer to stay with their current provider as long as the speed and pricing meet their needs and expectations. We identified five key areas that may influence a customer’s decision to churn:
Speed and price
Managing online accounts and receiving equipment
Initiating and navigating the moving process across channels
Overlapping service between homes
Working service conflicts due to policy misalignment
Our new insights also gave us our marching orders for designing the new fiber movers experience:
Treat movers like movers, not new customers
Moving shouldn’t negate other parts of the customer’s identity or relationship with us. We needed to provide an easy and consistent approach to moving and communicate the value we place on their loyalty—in tangible and financial ways.
Make the moving process easy and efficient
Moving from one home to another is chaotic enough. Moving your internet shouldn’t be. But AT&T didn’t have a consistent process across channels, which made the experience confusing and unpredictable. We needed to proactively solve problems for our customers and communicate progress and next steps to them along the way.
Solution
DEVELOPING PROTOTYPE CONTENT
Based on our research findings and learnings from the conversation analysis, I worked with our UX designers to develop the user flow across four key moments we found to be make-or-break points in the experience. I also led the UX writing and the development of the executive summary for stakeholders and other AT&T executives.
Results
Our target experience officially launched in May of 2025 and helped AT&T align disparate policies and processes. It’s the first digital solution for processing broadband move requests in AT&T’s 150-year history, putting us in a great position to challenge our competitors. Most importantly, AT&T customers now have greater control and flexibility to move or cancel their broadband service online, ensuring a seamless, transparent experience tailored to their needs.
DEVELOPING USER ENABLEMENT STATEMENTS
As I worked to develop content for the prototype, I supported my colleague in creating a journey map, Jobs-to-be-Done, and user enablement statements to guide our downstream technology teams. After finalizing our designs, I led workshops with stakeholders and representatives from downstream product teams to integrate the statements into product roadmaps.
“It was stunning how you all made the process, storyboard, testing, and implications so clear for our partners while also not stumbling across each other or fighting to get a word in. There were something like 40+ people on the live meeting, and they were on the edge of their seats. ”
