Can a single word from a customer change a service?

Toss listens to hundreds of VOCs every month and applies user feedback to the product in no time—from small texts, screen layouts to new features. The principle Toss has always upheld, “User Centric”, isn’t just some grand slogan, but something that sits at the core of our daily conversations and questions.

Numbers Don’t Tell the Full Story

Data tells us “what” happened, but not “why.” That’s why we always listen to the users. When we set a goal, verify a hypothesis or identify a problem, real insights come from real conversations, not just numbers and assumptions. That is why our UX researchers build hypotheses based on various sources then validate them through tests and user interviews. The result isn’t guesswork, but insights rooted in real context that bring depth to every product decision we make.

Tools That Connect Us with Users

Back in 2020, all research had to be done by the UX researchers. But as Toss expanded into banking, securities, insurance and more, research became broader and more complex, which led us to build our own tools to hear the voices of our users more clearly.

The first tool we built was the “Toss Form,” a simple way for anyone to create surveys, send push notifications to users and collect responses. This allowed not only UX researchers but also designers, product owners, and developers to run surveys themselves and get direct results. Next came the “Ask Me Anything” program. User research originally required recruiting participants and juggling schedules. Now, this program makes research effortless. Teams can instantly run online interviews with random users anytime, and uncover what data alone can’t tell us: When do people use Toss the most? What do users make of this phrase? Are our screens too complicated?

Conducting research became much simpler thanks to our internally developed tools and processes, but restrictions still remained. Usability Testing (UT) required preparing app prototypes and questionnaires, which took at least an hour for even the simplest tests. This kept us from conducting larger and more frequent tests. We needed to find a completely new way to check usability much more frequently and easily. That’s how “Huri-bot,” our AI-powered usability testing tool, was born. Trained on Toss user patterns, the bot can evaluate early prototypes and help refine designs and products with ease.

UX Researchers, Drawing the Bigger Picture

Once the environment was set up for anyone to run tests easily, UX researchers were able to focus on more complex, in-depth problems. Their roles expanded beyond product features, into areas like analyzing business domains such as commerce and ads, and reviewing Toss’ overall UX flow to suggest improvements. They also dived deep into specific topics, such as studying the financial lives of senior users, testing accessibility for users with visual impairment, and validating interaction and graphic designs across the app.

On top of that, they find entirely new approaches to solve problems that existing methods could never uncover. Toss, which began with a single simple transfer service, now offers over 100 services. With so many services, it takes much more than a usability test to check if users are easily accessing their desired services. For that reason, we created TNS(Toss Navigation Score). TNS measures how easily users reach a service, and the results are used to improve entry points and information architecture across the app. For example, we might ask a user, “You can file a hospital bill with your insurer through Toss. Where would you go to do that?” We then track how they navigate the app and give a score. TNS helps us refine the overall service structure by analyzing what confuses users and what doesn’t.

We are continuously improving the way we collect VOCs and reflect them in our services. But every journey starts with the same question: Is this service truly for the users? The tools may change, but Toss principles remain the same. We keep our ears open to users every single day, because the best answers always start with them.

Research Story 1 : Finding answers where users get stuck

The “Personalized Loan Finder” service, launched in 2019, allows users to compare loan products and apply for the most favorable option when they are in genuine need of a loan. The TNS score for the service is 66, which is higher than the average of 59, but it still leaves room for improvement.

A closer look at the user journey^* through TNS revealed that many users struggled to find the entry point to the service.The reason was obvious. The entry button was labeled, “My Loan Limit,” which wasn’t enough to show that the users could actually compare loan products there. Some users even went straight to the “My Assets” page, thinking that loans were also part of their assets, only to find no path to the service. In other words, the user journey was cut off mid-flow. *The end-to-end experience of a user interacting with a product to achieve a certain goal.

First, we changed the label of the button. We tested 3 variations to replace the “My Loan Limit” label, and changed the label to “Compare New Loans,” which had the highest conversion rate. Second, we reinforced the link between the service and the “My Assets” page. By adding new content that displayed estimated interest rates and limits, users in need of a loan were directed more seamlessly into the “Personalized Loan Finder” service.

The impact was immediate. The internal data showed that the number of preliminary loan applications coming through the “My Assets” page jumped 144% MoM and 124% WoW.^* This experience was a clear reminder of one simple truth: every answer can be found in the user. *As of July 2025

Research Story 2 : The Toss Identity in the Eyes of Users

In 2023, Toss expanded its simple payment service, Toss Pay, into the offline world. Users could now pay with Toss not only online, but also at convenience stores, cafés, and restaurants. But this sparked a new challenge: How can we make Toss and Toss Pay known in the offline world?

Until now, Toss had thrived entirely in the digital world. The challenge was to find a way to present Toss in a consistent way in the unfamiliar offline world. We realized that a consistent graphic language was necessary, and we turned to user perception for the answer. When asked, “What comes to mind when you think of Toss?,” most users gave similar answers. They described Toss as simple, practical and convenient. One person said, “Toss feels like an app built in Excel by a genius engineer.” Funny as it sounded, it also revealed our brand’s essence in the most intuitive way.

To bring that abstract image into life, we conducted research on fonts, colors and logos. For fonts, most users said that English text in black felt the most like Toss. This was because that was the look users had grown familiar with from seeing it over and over in the press and marketing. When it came to colors and logos, the image most recalled by users was a blue logo on a white square background. This shows that users associated the brand more with the app icon, which is what they encounter on a daily basis, rather than a graphic symbol.

Toss’ blue logo alongside the English text “toss” in black, often seen in Toss’s press releases.

Toss app icon. The blue logo on a white square background is what most users recall when asked to picture the Toss logo from memory.

The Toss Pay payment icon, updated in the UI based on research findings.

These insights were quickly reflected. We applied the white background, blue logo, and black text across the Toss Pay UI and offline payment touchpoints, to reflect the image most familiar to our users.

Writer Myeonghwa Jung, Toss User Research Team Leader