Contact Strategy

UX Researcher/Designer

Contact Strategy, User Research, Journey Building, Visual Design, Information Architecture, Implementation & Testing

Jan 2026 - Current

ROLE

OVERVIEW

Bridgecrest has a Contact Strategy team that is responsible for making customer communications that balances business objectives with customer needs across every stage of the customer lifecycle.

I am the UX designer for this team where my role combined user research with strategy and design to create communications that were clear, empathetic, and effective to customers.

Background

Bridgecrest's Contact Strategy team owns the how, why, and what communications are sent to customers.

I am the sole UX designer on the contact strategy team.

I partner closely with Product, Operations, Development, Compliance, and executive leadership to improve how the company communicates with customers throughout their lifecycle. My responsibilities extend far beyond visual design:

Perform extensive user research. I analyze existing communication strategies, build customer personas and journey maps.
Create and iterate designs. Once the research phase is completed, I create the initial designs in Figma where I then create templates and content blocks in Braze using HTML and drag-and-drop.
Present designs to stakeholders. This ranges from cross-functional teams to the CEO.
Approve and test the final product. Once development is completed, I test the product for detailed accuracy.

Understanding the problem

Customer communications play a critical role in both the customer experience and business performance. Every email, text message, letter, or notification has a specific objective, making it essential to understand not only what information needed to be delivered, but also how customers would interpret and respond to it.

Important focus areas:

Empathy and understanding. It's important to have in mind what the customer would be feeling prior, during, or after receiving one of these communications.
Intentional strategies for communications. Be very intentional with the who, what, when, why, how.
Detailed work to ensure accuracy. One small mistake of leaving out a disclosure could lead to customer frustration, confusion, or worst case, a lawsuit.

User personas

Based on our research, we recognized that there were 4 common user types that our communications needed to account for.

Defining the problem statement

After gathering research findings, I work with my team to define the problem statement.

Problem statement:

The business isn't seeing the engagement rates that they would like to within certain customer spaces. Along with that, there are gaps within the communication space that isn't accounted for that could be an opportunity to bridge the gap.

Designs

Explore a few email design formats and their components that stand out.

*These designs have been stripped of branding and sensitive company information.

Callout boxes

These are used to display information that we want the customer to act on. Whether it's payment options, contact options, etc.

Tables

Tables are to all follow the same design for consistency. These are used when there are values we need to display to customers.

Callout text

The primary message, if it's of utmost importance, should be bulleted in a list so it is easy to read and focused on.

Results and takeaways

This work takes a user-centered approach to customer communications by doing extensive research, behavioral analysis, and journey mapping. Through collaboration, testing, and continuous iteration, communications became more consistent, easier to understand, and better aligned with both customer expectations and business objectives.

Some of the key takeaways from this project are:

Research is essential to effective designs. Understanding context, timing, customer emotion, and intent proves essential in creating experiences that built trust, reduce friction, and help customers confidently take the next step in their journey.
Effective communications extends beyond visual presentation. At the end of the day, visuals mean nothing without proper context and intentional strategy. Something can look pretty, and mean nothing. Make sure what you are creating, you create with purpose and intention.