The online customer service experience on this website was below average. This is where customers can submit cases about any problems they encounter with their product or personnel services.
Our team was tasked to update the CX and the UI to align with brand and provide a better user experience. Leading design, I conducted a site audit and heuristic analysis of the current state. In the end, we provided a complete redesign that complied with the brand, enhanced the customer's experience, and was feasible for the IT team to develop on time. This project was a Salesforce Experience Cloud project, where we prioritized out-of-the-box assets while factoring in customized elements as needed.
All the designs previewed below were created by myself. The content, thought and strategy behind the process was conducted with a team.
*Due to the confidential nature of this project, some information will not be shared as I walk you through this UX process.
Discovery consisted of a complete site audit and heuristic analysis. Both uncovered branding inconsistencies and content redundancies. Since this is a case submission application, auditing the submission routes were key to improving the UX. The site audit will not be shared but below you can find the grade for each heuristic based on specific findings in the site audit. The outcomes of these grades directed our prioritization matrix for overall improvements to the user experience.
Excellent
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Good
Needs Improvement
Bad
Not Applicable
#1: Visibility of system status
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
#2: Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
#3: User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
#4: Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
#5: Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
#6: Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
#7: Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
#8: Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
#9: Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
#10: Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
During during discovery, we used previous feedback and research to create a current state journey map. You can see an example below. Each each stage, we outlined the experience (on the scale shown), a user's thoughts, a user's emotions, and opportunities with a 'How Might We' exercise.
After creating the current state, we also developed a future state journey map to show where we'd like to be after this project and beyond.
Revamp the current online customer experience for case submission to align with current branding, improve user experience (minimize confusion, provide optimal instruction, modernize the look and feel, and increase case deflection with more available solutions).
We aimed to satisfy the user with either a solution at hand or an easy, simple way to submit a case for their problem.
Unfortunately I cannot share much more about this project since the site map, wireframes, and prototype are all client-branded and protected. However, I wanted to outline some general improvements we made to the experience.
Brought the entire flow out of a modal view and into a page flow view for more flexible, space, and a better UX.
Added relative FAQ articles to the side of the case flow to provide related information to increase case deflection.
Added a progress tracker as the user moved through the steps of their form.
Did a complete overhaul of design to ensure branding requirements were met and the experience had a modern look and feel.
Restructured the entire case type tree (type categories, sub categories, etc.) to reduce redundancies.
Provided a review page as the last step before submitting the case, to help the user find errors prior to submission.
We were able to conduct usability tests with existing users and new users. I cannot share the details and outcome of the test. However, I'll explain the process a bit.
We performed these tests virtually. We provided the user a link to the prototype, and they shared their screen. We created a list of tasks/goals we wanted them to perform. For each task, we would read it aloud, and ask them to do it. Per our request, as they performed the task, they spoke out loud their thoughts and decisions to reach the goal.
After all the tasks were complete, we asked follow up questions to gauge their thoughts on the experience as a whole. We used this feedback to make some final updates to the prototype prior to development handoff.
This site is live and working well! We even implemented the same logic and design for an authenticated portal!
