In-person, on-demand childcare, eldercare & everyday assistance for employees

As product lead I’ve successfully delivered a transition into offering the companiions service directly to organisations as an employee benefit; helping to reduce absenteeism & attrition while improving employee work life balance. This included the design, build and release of a brand new employee app, marketing website and backend admin system.

I was responsible for all design work completed in this project, working closely with senior stakeholders to deliver a product driven by the needs of our users whilst aligning with the wider commercial strategy; delivered through a clearly communicated product roadmap.

What is companiions?

companiions is an employee benefit that supports employees in achieving work-life balance, giving them the flexibility to choose from a wide range of in-person, on-demand services all tailored to their unique needs:

Everyday Assistance

Childcare

Eldercare

Mental Wellbeing

companiions empowers employees to harmonise their careers with life's demands while helping companies tackle absenteeism, retention, sickness and well-being. Our mobile app enables employees to browse, find & book local people for an in-person, on-demand visit, giving them access to the support they need to navigate life's complexities & thrive in their chosen paths.

A change of strategy...

Having initially pursued a direct-to-consumer approach (read about that here), the decision was made to change strategy and move into the B2B space: offering companiions to employees as an employee benefit. There were multiple factors behind this decision:

Affordability of self-funded visits
Individual B2C customers had to fund the visits by themselves, a big barrier to overcome especially at a time where cost of living is high. A lot of time was spent encouraging B2C users to book visits through the use of discount codes and promotions rather than organic usage.
Growing sense of employer responsibility
We'd recognised a considerable shift in company attitudes towards better supporting employees outside of work. We theorised we could still get support to the people who need it but in a way that is more sustainable, accessible and affordable for the end user.
The trust problem
A big challenge we needed time to overcome was trust: especially when booking a stranger to look after elderly loved ones or children. Getting early adoption as a recognised, trusted employee benefit would provide easier access to those who needed support.

Addressing challenges facing employers in relation to to their workforce:

£18b

lost to employers annually as a result of employee attrition & absenteeism

2.6x

likelihood of burned out employees actively seeking a different job

76%

of caregiving responsibility falls to women, with 54,000 leaving the workforce yearly

7.7m

employees juggle work with dependent children, elderly, sick or disabled relatives

companiions empowers companies to...

Reduce costs from attrition and absenteeism

Improve work-life balance and employee wellbeing

Promote gender equality at every level

Attract and retain the best talent

Implementing some quick wins...

As we explored different opportunities within the B2B space and gathered feedback from existing users, four essential features/updates were identified to help us effectively meet the needs of potential clients and their employees. Our approach was to implement a number of smaller adjustments, evaluate the impact and iterate on them accordingly with a few early clients that had onboarded as part of a trial period:

Sign up via SSO

When registering, employees are prompted to enter their work email. For those eligible, this then connects to their companies active directory, prompting them to log in. Their name and email is then automatically connected to their account, tagging them to their employer and the correct funding level.

Benefits:

Users no longer required to remember a password.
Automatically segments users by employer to apply the correct funding level.
Gives clients full control over who can access the benefit.

Auto-filtering & companion list redesign

Before browsing for the first time, employees are asked what type of support they're looking for, with their selections automatically applied to the results list as a filter option they can adjust.

The list itself was also updated to be more engaging, highlighting key information such as experience, distance, price & number of visits completed.

Benefits:

Pre-filtered results removes anyone unsuitable, reducing browsing time.
More informative preview helps highlight potential profiles at a glance.
Better tools for employees to find the right people = less reliance on the customer success team (75% of visits currently booked by CS)

Fully, partially & self-funded visits

Clients choose their funding level, set in the backend during onboarding. This funding level is then reflected in the checkout screens for the employee, where they either approve the visit for free or have to pay a portion of the cost.

For all employees, so as not to restrict access during emergencies, there is the option to self-fund a visit if their employer balance has run out for that month - clearly signposted on the checkout summary.

Benefits:

Clients have the flexibility to set a funding level they're comfortable with.
Employees are only asked to add payment details when necessary, removing a step that had previously created friction for B2C users
Self-funding means employees can always access support when needed.

In-app DBS uploads

A mandatory step in the companion onboarding flow, for those looking to do childcare or eldercare visits, was a valid DBS certificate. This is a requirement for anyone working with children or vulnerable adults & was checked manually during a final interview.

To automate this process and reduce time spent manually verifying documents over email, we introduced a DBS upload step into the verification process - requesting a copy of a valid, in-date DBS certificate. This could then be reviewed in the admin portal and approved in two clicks, populating the verifications section of the companion profile.

Benefits:

Seamless upload process increased number of certificates provided as it was easier to do
More efficient process saves CS teams time, reviewing each upload in one place
Only the companiions team can mark a user as DBS verified if a valid certificate is provided

Post release, we saw a 20% drop in reliance on customer success to book visits on behalf of employees (now 60%).

While this was progress in the right direction it was still far too high and highlighted that users were still struggling to find the right companion for their visits in-app, without external help.

Rebuilding the employer app

While the early B2B updates led to some improvement on CS reliance, it was clear that the booking experience could be improved for employees. The existing app was also unreliable, requiring regular maintenance, and a codebase that was extremely challenging to work with. We therefore took the decision to rebuild it from scratch; separating employees & companions into individual app experiences.

The rebuild aimed to address three key problem areas:

The employee booking experience

Completely rethink the sign-up, browsing & booking flow to drastically reduce reliance on the customer success team

Efficiency of future development

Remove weaknesses, inconsistencies & dependencies to create a solid foundation on which to build, as we continue to scale

A fully functional backend system

Create a new admin portal, mirroring app functionality with full reporting on clients, users, visits and overall usage

Feedback from users, stakeholders and visit data supported the need to address the existing employee booking flow. Users were not able to find & book people themselves with ease; evidenced by stagnant visit numbers and over 60% of visits booked manually by the customer success team.

Primary challenges to address...

The preview list doesn’t sell the service well

The list shows images and general support areas but still doesn’t allow the employee to differentiate clearly between two companions - how would they know who is a better fit without viewing each individual profile?

Employees can't use the app for more than one support area at once

Employees don't want to have to edit their information each time they want to book a different type of visit - how do we give them the ability to create & manage multiple profiles, switching between them seamlessly?

Companions aren't effectively matched to employee needs

In-app filtering is limited & only narrows results to each general category, with no indication of skill or suitability - how do we mirror the manual CS matching process in-app, allowing employees to book independently?

We're too reliant on employees to get companions paid on time

Employees often forget to review & approve the visit once complete, causing a delay in the companion getting paid - how do we remove this reliance on the employee & ensure the companion receives payment on time?

A new employee experience

I started by reviewing the full employee flow, from sign-up to confirming a visit & then approving it once complete: identifying three action types:

An essential step that's mandatory to be able to continue

An important step but one that requires trust or intent to be comfortable doing, especially early in the process

A step that we as an organisation could look to as an indicator that the employee had an intention to book a visit

There were a number of steps we were asking employees to complete early on, that required a high degree of trust or intent; before they’d even seen any value in the app ie. companions they might want to book for a visit:

Push notification permissions
Information about themselves/a loved one, including address and the full profile
Payment (dependent on employer funding) & and emergency contact details

We therefore re-worked this flow, bringing the browsing & booking process forward and delaying sensitive information until we could be more confident they had intention to book. We also looked at ways to reduce friction within the flow wherever possible:

Push Notifications

Requested after sign up instead of when first opening the app, with an additional screen to explain the benefits of them

Recipient Profiles

Only ask them to create a profile & add an address once they’ve found a companion they want to book for a visit

Non-Essential Steps

Verifying the email was no longer required as employees were registering via SSO through their work domain

Revised onboarding & booking flow

Now we'd defined the employee's primary journey, discovery began on the four key problem areas previously identified:

How do we give as much upfront information to the employee to facilitate quick decision making?

How do we give employees the flexibility to book visits, for multiple recipients with different needs?

How do we match employees to the companions best suited to their individual needs?

How do we reduce reliance on employees to approve visits to get companions paid on time?

“

How do we give as much information to the employee up front, to help them make booking decisions?

Browsing: List vs Full profile

Up to this point the browsing experience used a list view with a preview of each companion, allowing employees to view multiple companions whilst scrolling.

However, feedback from users highlighted it was still challenging to differentiate between each companion when solely relying on this list - they had to tap into each profile to view more details.

Early concepts included adding more information to this list view, including skills, qualifications and a bio snapshot, but the list became over-saturated with information and was difficult to take in at a glance.

Companion preview concepts

Learning from customer success...

Upon reviewing the manual booking process with the customer success team, it became clear that employees generally reacted positively to recommendations made by us, as they trusted us to know who would be a good fit for their visit. We decided to mimic this process in-app, showing companions one by one rather than in a full list.

This enabled us to show the full profile at once, rather than a selection of information/skills at the preview level. We also reviewed the companion profile layout, to ensure sections that most influenced decision-making, such as experience and verification status, were prioritised:

Original profile view for employees

The employee can swipe between each companion, viewing the full profile each time rather than only working off a snapshot of information - messaging them if they have any questions. They can also add them to a favourites list - easily accessible from a new homepage or while browsing.

With this change, we recognised the importance of promoting the right people to each employee based on their needs at the time - how would we effectively match them to the right companions for each visit, despite changing requirements?

“

How do we match employees to the companions who are best suited to their current needs?

Auto-matching employees to companions

During this process I continued to work closely with the customer success team, to understand what questions they were asking to matchmake based on the employee's requirements for each visit.

This informed the basic structure for this section:

1. Where will the visit be?
2. What type of support do you need?

The idea was to use information provided by the employee to pre-filter results - only showing them companions who matched this criteria & were suitable for the visit.

While this would start to produce more personalised results, it was still quite surface-level and didn't take into consideration other important parts of the profile, such as past experience, DBS & number of visits completed etc. We needed to find a way to:

Take the entire companion profile, isolating key elements
Compare these to the requirements of the employee
Provide results ordered by suitability, based on how well-matched the companion is to the employee's needs

An internal scoring system...

We developed a scoring system to rank each companion based on specific search criteria. Points are assigned based on suitability to the employees requirements, with each part of the profile weighted in order of importance. The companion with the highest score would then show first, with the rest ordered by total points. Employees then only need to choose from the companions suggested to them, rather than everyone in their area.

Initial scoring system weighting breakdown

“

How do we give employees the flexibility to easily book multiple visits for multiple recipients?

A new way to create the visit

Having given employees the tools to quickly and easily find the right companion for their requirements - our focus turned to flexibility. We needed to ensure employees could tailor each visit to their specific needs at the time, as these often changed from visit to visit and many users were looking to organiser support for multiple separate recipients . The first step of this process was to create more personalisation within the recipient profile.

In the existing app, only one profile with a limited set of fields can be created - in order to create a visit for a different recipient the profile needs updating every single time.

We needed to give the option to create separate profiles in each of the three main support types offered:

Everyday Assistance

Childcare

Eldercare

Original recipient profile

A new profile format was designed with variations for each of the main support areas - making sure to include the right information to help companions determine whether the visit suits their skillset. Users can create as many separate profiles as they need to. This approach was also replicated for the address of the visit - allowing them to seamlessly switch between different profiles & addresses each time they create one.

The Recipient(s)

Name, age and relation to the organiser creating the profile

Key Requirements

Specific support or activities needed by the recipient

Useful Extras

Allergy information and any pets in the house

Bio/Description

Anything else the companion might need to know

Building the visit...

As the final step in improving the visit creation process, we needed to allow the employee to freely switch between multiple profiles & addresses with ease - while also setting up the details of the visit (date, start & end time, description). Originally this was a three-step process and longer than it needed to be - so the screens were combined into one single ‘Create visit’ step:

Original create visit flow

The revised journey takes the user through a simple process, all in one screen, to create their visit and invite the companion:

Select or create a recipient profile

Set the date & time of the visit

Select or create an address

Add any additional information needed

Create visit and send the invitation

“

How do we reduce reliance on employees remembering to review & approve visits, so companions get paid on time?

Tackling a major companion painpoint

Many of our companions had raised frustrations about how long it takes them to get paid after completing a visit.

While we had to work within Stripe’s 5-7 working day payout times, some ended up waiting weeks to receive payment simply because the employee hadn’t approved the visit. This was generally due to two reasons:

They just forgot to approve it, or didn't realise they had to
They weren't sure if they were going to be charged for the visit

To avoid users forgetting, we simply added an automatic approval feature - giving each employee until the end of the day of their visit to review and approve the times. If not, the visit would automatically be approved.

Removing payments altogether...

Client feedback indicated that employees were less likely to use companiions if they had to pay for part of the visit; as it felt like paying to go to work. We therefore moved to a fully funded approach, with employers covering the full cost of all visits and access to the platform limited to employees only - offboarding any remaining B2C organisers.

This change provided an opportunity to further simplify the approval process. With employees no longer required to pay we were able to remove the request for payment details and the visit cost summary screens altogether. This meant employees could approve a visit with a single tap without worrying they might be charged - reducing uncertainty and fast-tracking them through to rebooking their companion.

Original approval & payment flow

Revised approval & payment flow

Other notable updates

Aside from the four focus areas covered, a number of other changes were made to the new employee app to improve general usability, simplify workflows, remove unnecessary functionality and tidy up the in-app experience for our users:

Home Screen

A new-look home screen offers seamless account management and simplified navigation for employees.

Users can quickly browse, create a visit, view favourites, rebook a past visit or access key FAQs - all from one convenient place. Any missed steps from the account setup checklist will also be flagged here.

My Account

Employees can create, update or delete multiple profiles and addresses with ease, set contact details, gender and even add a profile photo for their account if they choose to.

A new account checklist makes it clear to them which account set-up steps still need to be completed.

Visits & Visit Details

A simplified tab system separates active and past visits to aid visit management. Each preview shows the visits date, time, location, recipient, companion & support type required.

Clear status' on each visit combined with a 'Requires Action' section ensures the employee knows when there is an action they need to take.

The visit details screen has been stripped back to remove any non-essential information, reduce scrolling and help users focus on the task at hand ie. confirming the companion or approving the visit.

The list of invited companions now includes their response status - with the employee able to confirm them with one tap.

How it works:

Onboarding browsing, booking & approving a visit in the new employer app

Post Release

After beta testing with a core group of users, we resolved bugs & made tweaks to some backend processes before doing a full rollout - switching all employees to the new app.

In terms of monitoring improvements, we defined success as employees being able to...

Find the right companions using the new matching flow
Easily book them, complete the visit and approve it

...without the need of assistance from the customer success team.

Post release, we've seen over 65% of visits (prev. 25%) booked in-app without any CS input - indicating the new app is far more effective in enabling employees to find & book the right companions for each of their visits.