ABOUT THE PROJECT
Redesigning an internal customer CX platform into a market offering
Over six intense months, together with an agile team of six, including a fellow UX researcher, we embarked on a journey of reengineering and redesigning our Parent Company’s call center platform.
Our efforts not only transformed how existing users interacted with the platform but also inspired the Parent Company to launch this revamped system as a standalone product, now on the market. This project exemplified how adaptive challenges could lead to innovative solutions.
MY ROLE
Senior Product Designer
PROJECT SCOPE:
6th Months, 6 Agile Team
ClLIENT
Vandan Group
THE RESEARCH
The Approach
We began our project by analyzing the current application and the user flows. Followed with detailed market research to understand the current state of the industry.
When you are dealing with legacy systems the reasoning behind some decisions gets lost. Therefore some intense investigation and robust feature debate were needed to get a handle on the project scope.
One of the things we identified was the various personas involved with the application, as on top of the user persona there was a buyer persona, two tiers of users, junior and advanced, independent buyers, and manager personas. We did a workshop around the creation of the personas to get a better understanding of the needs of the users involved.
THE PROCESS
Investigation & Workshops
We ran a series of workshops with the power users to identify their needs for the redesigned system
By sitting with the agents and observing them at work, we gained a lot of perspective. These interviews revealed crucial insights that significantly influenced our design approach. Specifically, we discovered that power users needed as much screen space as possible to accommodate the information-dense third-party applications they frequently interacted with. This key insight drove our wireframing strategy, towards focusing on maximizing screen real estate to enhance user efficiency.
ABOUT THE BUILD
The Flows + Wireframes
It was important that we had a full understanding of this layered software, so we developed a number of specific flows.
These user flows were designed with various personas in mind, to streamline complex processes and enhance the efficiency of the different application users.
By mapping out each step—from receiving calls to resolving customer issues—we could identify potential bottlenecks and optimize the interactions for speed and ease of use. This approach not only improved the agents’ ability to handle inquiries swiftly but also ensured that the software could adapt to the varying scenarios encountered in a dynamic call center.
ABOUT THE DESIGN
Visual Design V.01
To help stakeholders visualise where the engineering efforts were going to we worked on an initial V01 of the visual design
The visual design part of this project was unusual it was being developed by another agency as part of a full brand redesign. But in order to show direction we designed a V0.1 (that most likely would be redone with new brand guidelines) But we found it a very useful tool to bring along sakehiolders to how we where seeing this application as a whole.
Takeaways
You never know where a project will go – this project motivated management to transform the internal toolkit into a comprehensive application that they brought to market.
Designing for power users
Direct insights from user interviews were invaluable. Speaking with agents who were the main users of the platform allowed us to understand their daily challenges and needs.
Embracing Collaboration
This experience reinforced the need for clear communication and frequent check-ins, which allowed us to synchronize our efforts effectively across different teams and disciplines. This was crucial for understanding the intricate processes we needed to enhance through our design.