Evaluating Self-Service Activation for Charter Mobile Customers
A recurring monthly usability program that caught why customers were skipping past a self-service mobile activation flow's own guidance, in time to fix it before launch.
A monthly research cadence built to move at design’s speed
Every month, the Experience Research team ran a lean round of evaluative testing to keep pace with whatever the Spectrum feature teams had in flight, scheduling the minimum number of sessions needed to catch the major issues rather than a full study for every small change. This round covered two unrelated pieces of work at once: a new self-service flow letting customers activate Spectrum Mobile and transfer an existing number themselves, and a notification on the Spectrum.net homepage meant to tell customers when their internet service would start.
Six customers, two tasks, thirty minutes each
Six current Spectrum internet customers, a mix of ages, income brackets, and household sizes, with primary or shared account access, worked through 30-minute moderated sessions on UserTesting.com. Each participant completed two tasks: using self-service to port an existing number and activate Spectrum Mobile on their own device (bring-your-own-device, keeping their current phone), and separately, finding their internet service start date from the Spectrum.net homepage.
People trusted the form more than the flow trusted them to read it
- 01The entry point worked as designed.
Most participants discovered the activation flow through the "Ready to Activate" notification exactly as intended, rather than navigating there manually through account settings.
- 02Auto-filled fields got skipped, even when they shouldn't have.
Nobody interacted with the account number and PIN link once it auto-populated. Participants said that if the data was already there, they didn't feel the need to check it, and when asked how they'd normally find that information, most said they'd dig it up from their old carrier's portal or a past bill.
- 03Core terms didn't mean what the flow assumed.
"Number Transfer" wasn't understood as simply moving an existing number to Spectrum Mobile, and "Transfer PIN" was frequently mistaken for a security or device PIN. Unfamiliarity with eSIM technology led several participants to expect a physical SIM card, and to misread "Install eSIM" as an instruction to insert one.
Participants skimmed past the irreversible warning on the "Are you ready?" screen without registering what it meant, and did not treat the homepage notification as a primary channel for anything time-sensitive, several said they only trust email or text for that. Both findings echoed an earlier December 2020 study almost exactly, showing this was a standing gap in how the portal communicates with customers, not a one-time fluke.
Fixes aimed at the exact moments people misread the flow
Recommendations followed each finding directly: reorder the flow so guidance on finding an account number and PIN appears before the input fields rather than alongside auto-filled ones, add plain-language education on eSIM and why Wi-Fi is required during installation, and let customers pause or revisit the flow’s “Did You Know?” prompts instead of losing them after a few seconds. The notification finding fed back into the broader Experience Research program’s standing question about whether the portal is the right channel for time-sensitive account changes at all.