Simplified user interface, improved search, and streamlined workflows for efficient management of customer issues
Project Summary
Who
John Deere Equipment Manufacturer
What
Customer Service Call Center Application (aka Machine Insights)
How
User Interviews, Personas, Heuristic Evaluation, Experience Brief, Workflow Analysis, Sketching and Prototypes, Usability Testing
Results
Enabled quick and efficient customer service ticket resolution with simplified user interface, easier search, and streamlined process workflows
Project Overview
My challenge was to improve the user experience of an existing customer service application used by the client’s US-based call center agents. The agents are Tier 2 which means they are usually helping customers who were not able to be helped by frontline, Tier 1 support agents.
They needed an easy way to find information on a case quickly and efficiently and resolve the case to the customer’s satisfaction.
The work that the project team had already done on Search functionality was not meeting the customer's needs. I was brought in to help analyze what was not working with the Search functionality and usability and to offer a redesigned solution.
Project Goals
Simplify and streamline the service contracts process
Improve the search functionality across the application
Minimize the time to collect, track, and monitor data
Persona used to encourage empathy for the user and focus the development team
Approach
Conducted user research and usability testing to learn about the users and validate design assumptions.
Provided ongoing product review and design direction to ensure adherence to design standards.
Created concept sketches and wireframes to visually communicate ideas for solutions and speed up development.
Guided the UX strategy through creation of a project brief to align product team on primary goals and objectives.
Project Brief used to align project team on project design goals
Why this Approach?
I needed to get a solid understanding of the problem space, as I was brought on to this project mid-term. The product team wanted me to help them improve what they had already built and to guide them on future design.
I started by analyzing the existing application to find some quick wins while minimizing tech and design debt for the team.
Findings from a Heuristic Evaluation enabled me to identify opportunities for improvement.
Sharing my rough visualizations for the new process with the product team and the client helped to more quickly communicate my ideas. This saved both time and money, since sketches can be changed rapidly for little cost.
Heuristic Evaluation of the current system to uncover some quick wins
Results
Simplified the search process, reducing the time it takes to conduct a search in the system for client records, machine registries, and other information.
Aligned the product team to a common goal with well-defined design direction, thus minimizing the time to deliver value to the customer.
Service Agent Dashboard on Tablet
Lessons Learned
1. Access to users was limited, so I had to make the best of what I had to work with. I learned to ask questions of "super users" during client meetings to get as good an idea of the pain points and the workflow as I could.
2. I was brought in mid-project when much of the application was already deployed and in production to "clean up the UI and make it pretty." Since that is just a small part of what I am skilled at doing, I decided to get a fair amount of background of the current system was to do a heuristic evaluation to identify some quick wins that I could focus on. I was not going to be on the project for very long.
3. Collaborating early with the developers on the project led to my deeper understanding of the technical challenges we faced. Much of my focus was on improving the current search functionality within the system, so understanding how it worked currently and what the developers were thinking in terms of a solution was crucial to my understanding of the challenge. The developers also really enjoyed co-designing on the fly in my working sessions I held with them.
Testimonials
I conducted a post-project engagement survey with the product team to gauge how people felt working with me on this project.
"I think in the past [redacted] has overlooked this type of analysis, but it is valuable and should be included as standard procedure at the beginning of new projects."
- A Developer on the Product Team
"There were a lot of great ideas that the UX team came up with that none of the developers would have thought about on their own. It was also great that they met with users and conducted interviews to get honest feedback, because that's just one more area that developers don't have time for. It was clear that the results of those interviews were incredibly helpful."
- A Developer on the Product Team