Telstra Bill Re-design

After 12 years with the same bill design, Telstra decided that it was time for a review of their design. The bill was originally designed for landline phones, but over time other services such as mobile phones, internet and cable television had been ‘added on’ resulting in a bill that looked cluttered and was difficult to use. Customer complaints and misunderstandings were on the rise and there was also a high number of customers paying their bills late.

We were initially asked to test the effectiveness of the existing bill with customers, and, depending on the outcome of our research, modify or completely redesign the bill. Our research showed that customers could only use the bill to find and understand 43% of the information that it contained. As a result of this low performance, we were asked to produce a totally new bill design. After seven rounds of testing and refining the bill design was able to be used by customers to find and understand 100% of the information it contained.

After this bill went live Telstra’s call centres were flooded with calls from people complaining about the late fee, even though it had been on the old bill for 7 years previously. This is a common by-product of a re-design that is transparent and can actually be used by people.

The outcome for Telstra was an increase in the number of customers paying their bill on time. And, the bill won a distinction in the Design Effectiveness Award category at the 2005 National Biennial Design awards of the Australian Graphic Design Association.

Around 12 million customers around Australia have used our design (developed for Telstra on behalf of the CRI). According to Telstra’s quarterly Market Research surveys, customer satisfaction with the bill design reached 95% – its highest ever rating. Unfortunately, organisational changes brought with it a change to the way the bills were generated, resulting in a phasing out of this effective bill design.