Voice Payments

 

Designing a Resilient Payment Update Conversation for an Automated Voice System

Domain: Retail membership + payments
Surface: Automated phone system (IVR)
Focus: Conversational flow, intent resolution, error recovery, trust
Role: Senior Content Designer / Conversational Designer

 

The Challenge

As Sam’s Club moved toward an Auto Renew for All membership strategy, capturing and maintaining a valid credit or debit card on file became critical to renewal success, FTC compliance, and member trust.

The existing IVR payment experience was brittle and linear. It assumed ideal behavior, relied on repetitive readbacks, and handled errors and silence poorly. This led to confusion during high-stakes payment moments, increased transfers to live agents, and weakened the broader card-on-file strategy rolling out across digital and in-club channels.

I was brought into the help and support space specifically to ensure the IVR experience could support auto-renew changes and credit card capture requirements without increasing operational load or member frustration.

 

My Role

I led the conversational redesign of the automated phone payment flow, partnering with Product, Engineering, Legal, and Operations to:

  • Align IVR payment updates with auto-renew and card-on-file strategy

  • Redesign conversation logic, not just scripts

  • Improve error handling, recovery, and escalation behavior

  • Ensure PCI compliance while reducing call center friction

 

The Approach

  • I restructured the IVR as an intent-aware conversation rather than a rigid script. The system first determines whether a valid card exists, then adapts the flow accordingly, reducing unnecessary steps and repeated data entry.

  • Critical inputs were redesigned to follow a predictable conversational pattern: prompt, response, confirmation, proceed. This reduced errors and increased user confidence during payment capture.

  • Instead of repeating the same failure message, the system adapts language across attempts and escalates only when needed. This balanced automation efficiency with empathy and prevented infinite retry loops.

  • Language was carefully designed to explain why a card was required, how it would be used, and what would happen next. This aligned the IVR experience with credit card capture changes happening across digital and in-club channels.

 

Impact

  • Improved successful payment updates within the automated system

  • Reduced unnecessary transfers to live agents

  • Increased confidence and clarity during high-risk payment moments

  • Strengthened card-on-file capture as part of the Auto Renew for All initiative

  • Established a more resilient, scalable IVR model that could adapt to future membership and compliance changes

 

Linguistics In Practice

 

Why This Matters

This project demonstrates that conversational design is not limited to chat or AI assistants. Voice systems are often where the highest-risk moments happen, especially around payments, renewals, and compliance.

By treating the IVR as a conversation instead of a script, we reduced friction, supported enterprise-level auto-renew goals, and protected member trust at scale.