Say Hi to Redi!

What’s a digital host?

In our bricks and mortar Virgin Money Stores, our customer service superstars are called Virgin Money Hosts. Redi is the digital equivalent! Powered by some pretty nifty AI, Redi is a virtual assistant we’ve launched across our credit card and mobile banking apps. Customers simply ask Redi a question and it’ll answer straight away. Sounds cool right?

Here’s how it works:

Round the clock

Redi never sleeps! It’s available 24/7 whenever customers need help with their accounts.

Expert

Redi gives customers expert answers on a huge range of account queries. From setting up payments, managing their credit limit and updating their personal details, Redi does it all, and more.

Digital

Powered by AI, Redi is a fully digital solution. However, if Redi isn’t able to help, or recognises that a customer needs additional support, they’ll be passed to our friendly Virgin Money digital team.

Instant

Redi is an absolute whizz and gives customers instant answers. It’s a super-quick way to give customers the right support, right when they need it.

You only have one chance to gain trust with a Virtual Assistant and it’s our content that makes Redi feel like a member of the Virgin Money family. It gives customers the confidence to keep coming back for support.

Adam Gwatkin, Head of Digital Propositions

How Content Design was involved

Content Design supported the launch of Redi in four key ways:

1. How Redi talks to customers

All Redi conversations use natural language understanding (NLU). Like Alexa and Siri, NLU helps train Redi to interpret the customer’s question, decide which parts are important and provide an appropriate response.

It was really important for conversations with Redi to feel natural, like a conversation with a real person would be. All Redi’s responses were closely analysed by the Content Design team to ensure they met our standards for reading age and that we took advantage of any opportunities to dial up our inimitable Virgin Money tone of voice. We stripped out complex words and jargon (we don’t do bank-speak!) and kept replies as succinct as possible.

2. Design of the in-app Redi experience

The Content Design team worked in partnership with our talented UI Designers to ensure Redi had a super-slick look and feel. We don’t do bland here at Virgin Money, and our in-app Redi experience was no exception.

We worked on making sure that Redi was well positioned within the app for easy discoverability, trying out several options and getting user feedback. We were also involved in the development of the UX design and colour palette for the chat interface, creating new icons which complemented the name ‘Redi’ and utilised our signature loop font.

3. Website page to launch Redi

We created a bright and bold page on our website to tell customers all about Redi. To bring the page to life and show just how easy Redi is to use, we developed an animation of a Redi chat on a mobile phone screen. In the animation, Redi answers an example customer query instantly, just like it does in the app!

4. Emails to launch Redi to customers

Last but by no means least, Content Design worked with our Digitial Propositions and Marketing teams to create an exciting email launch campaign to let customers know about Redi.

Working cross-functionally allowed us to introduce and talk about Redi in a consistent way across all customer touchpoints. As well as using consistent messaging, we also used similar design assets throughout, so the experience feels authentically Virgin Money at every step.

So how’s it going so far?

Since Redi was launched in March, it has been fantastically well received by our customers.

Redi has exceeded all expectations in terms of customer usage, with over 90,000 conversations every month.