Rhys started his career journey at Vanquis as a Customer Contact Agent six years ago. Now, in his role as UX Researcher, we caught up with him about why his role is rewarding, why he now loves working in the Digital team and his aspirations for the future...
Tell us about your career story with Vanquis
I’m Rhys, I’m a User Experience Researcher at Vanquis Bank. I’ve been at the bank now for what’s coming up to six years. I spent my first four years working in our contact centre speaking to customers in different stages of financial difficulty, doing various different roles.
What made you consider a career in the Digital team?
I was lucky enough to be selected to test the mobile app before it was launched, and that’s when I was first introduced to Digital. I understand that digital platforms for most people are an essential part of life, so I wanted to get my teeth stuck into that and learn all things digital.
What’s the culture like in the team?
The culture in the team’s really good, there’s a big atmosphere. There’ a big talking point within the team which is self-development. We’re all gently nudged to take the time out of our calendar to focus on our careers, focus on ourselves, and basically just learn as much as possible. It’s good to be around that and it’s good to be encouraged to do it.
Like anywhere we do have highs and lows. We work together quite well to ride out the lows and come out laughing and enjoy the highs together.
What’s rewarding about your role at a UX Researcher?
The bank as a whole is very much focused around customer outcomes and doing the right thing for our customers. My job especially is centred around finding out what we need to improve, not just on our digital platforms, but in design as a whole and how we better ourselves as a bank.
It’s good to get those insights from customers, send that off to stakeholders and see that feedback turn into something that’s going to help, not just the customers that said it, but our customers on a wider scale. That’s really rewarding for me.
How does your background in the contact centre help you in your role now?
Coming from the contact centre I know there’s a lot of knowledge in that contact centre with our colleagues there. It’s nice for me to go there, run ideas past them and get their feedback. And I will always to continue doing so.
What does the future hold?
I’ve been in the role now for 8 months and I’ve worked hard to get to where we are today with our customer testing and our research capabilities. For the future, I think it’s to continue to grow those and make them solid. Then hopefully when things return to normal, I’ll be able to travel to all of our sites across the Provident Financial Group and conduct face to face interviews with our customers across all of the businesses within the Group. That’s a big goal for me, and hopefully this year still!
Three words to describe the Digital team…
Challenging, Fun, Repeat. Always those two!
Come join!
