Improving different agent experiences so that each team can better perform their respective responsibilities.
User Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, Interaction Designs, Usability Tests
Overview
Tomo Credit is a fintech company providing credit cards to their users. At the time of the project, agents were using two different internal management systems called “Supportal” and “Godview”.
Both Supportal and Godview held overlapping and exclusive customer content on one page. This project aimed to create one internal management system that would consider different agents’ responsibilities.
Problem
Due to its divided structure and stacked information, agents frequently scrolled between Supportal and Godview, resulting in time-consuming searches for specific information needed to help a customer affecting the customer experience.
Outcome
The solution involved merging "Supportal" and "Godview" into a single internal customer management system, allowing agents to navigate between different pages in order to find content that they needed to assist customers.
RESEARCH
How did different agents interact
I understood that there were different users for this system, the agents of different teams.TI wanted to understand how each team interacted with Tomo Credit customers and how they used the current system.
Unique goals and frustrations
I interviewed each agents from each team. Since we were a startup, I interviewed 8 participants, all team members that engaged with Tomo Credit customers. My goal was to identify
I asked them to what their main tasks were with Tomo Credit users in order to understand the impact of this project to customers. I asked each agent to walk me through how they would solve their respective customer’s issues. Based on this I developed four quick personas of each agent, listing out their goals and challenges.
Goals
quickly get to information required for incoming calls
insurance they are reviewing the right customer's profile
Painpoints
having to scroll throughout a page and tell customers to “hold a bit”
accidentally looking at the wrong profile due to multiple tabs open
Goals
getting a detailed account of each user’s transactions and IP history
Painpoints
having to scroll to the bottom of Supportal and Godview
Goals
to accurately and consistently review a user’s application
Painpoints
having to go back and forth between Supportal and Godview
Goals
retrieving up a user’s most recent history as quickly as possible before user picks up on a call
Painpoints
having trouble pulling up a user’s personal information in order to verify them
Each agent had different goals and painoints when using the current system.
Common goals and frustrations
Based on my interviews with all team members, I noticed common goals and frustrations that spanned across all agents, regardless of team.
All agents always wanted to feel confident they were on the right customer’s profile due to sensitive information and compliance
Agents did want to continue scrolling through each page to find the content they need
Agents struggle finding unique information due to new additions being added to the bottom of the system’s page
Focusing on one team
After developing 4 personas with unique goals and also common frustrations, I wanted to understand which team’s goals I should prioritize in order to define items to focus on with my design.
I listed all the possible forms of customer communications and the respective teams that handle those. After that, I listed out the potential risk that each form of communication in impacting a customer’s experience.
Based on this, I understood that the customer support team was the only ones that dealt with incoming calls, which required agents to be able to answer customer’s questions quickly and correctly.
Prioritizing the customer support team's frustrations was essential for a better customer experience.
IDEATION
Solving the problem
I engaged in collaborative sketching sessions with agents to develop a solution that directly addressed their frustrations. The aim was to empower them with enhanced capabilities to fulfill their day-to-day responsibilities more effectively.
Prioritizing changes
During discussions with the PM, it became clear that undertaking a complete platform redesign and developing new features to address every team's concerns would require substantial effort.
Considering the timeline and other business priorities, it was decided to focus on reorganizing existing information on the platform and implementing "visual grouping" techniques.
The aim was to avoid relying on new APIs and create an information architecture to navigate easily.
Under one system
It was clear that users did not like going between two different platforms to find certain customer’s information. I decided the best approach was to create one system under the name “Supportal” that would house all information. The next step was to understand how to organize all the information from two platforms into one.
I conducted a hybrid test in order to understand how each team categorized the content on both “Supportal” and “Godview”. The only category I had was “Dashboard” in order to see which content agents wanted to prioritize.
From the results of the exercises, I determined that there would be a total of four secondary pages - “User Dashboard,” “UW & Bank,” “Fraud,” and “Transactions History.”
Several approaches were considered for the "User Dashboard" page's content. The decision was made to prioritize input from customer support agents, ensuring effective and accurate customer responses.
DESIGN PROCESS
Providing agents with the tools to succeed
AFter coming up wihtt the solution, I went into designing how the experience would be with an updated information architecture.
Fixed Header
With an approach incorporating secondary pages, agents would jump from different pages of a customer’s profile. I needed to provide confidence for agents that they were reviewing the correct customer regardless of which page they were on. This is to ensure that agents were able to confidently practice data security when working with so many customers.
I conducted a survey and asked, “Which information about a customer do you need to remind you which customer profile you are reviewing? (Check all the apply)”
All teams felt that it was important for them to be reminded of the customer’s name, email, and any associated tags with them. I decided that these would be included in the fixed header.
I conducted follow up interviews to see why Phone Number and Address were not that important. Agents stated that each customer’s data was uniquely identified through their email. Therefore, I decided to omit those information to provide an easier identification for agents based on how the our databased classified each customers.
A header provides agent comfort in knowing they are on the right customer profile and ensuring data protection.
Navigating Content
With additional pages organizing the different contents, agents needed a way to jump from one page to another. I developed two low-fidelity approaches in addressing this and came up with pros and cons for both approaches.
Updating the left navigation bar to hold the different pages. Agents could click on the side to jump from page to page. Prior, this navigation bar contained pages for a customer’s dashboard.
Incorporating tabs into the header would allow agents to jump from one page to another.
I took my low fidelity frames and conducted a usability test by asking users how this would affect their day to day responsibilities and concluded the following pros and cons.
Modifying the left navigation bar impacts customer support by offering access to customer dashboards and facilitating step-by-step issue resolution guidance. Given the importance of user interviews, prioritizing the customer support team becomes crucial as they exclusively handle incoming customer calls.
The redesign of the side menu necessitates the involvement of engineers, who would be responsible for crafting a menu that effectively presents information from either a customer's or an agent's perspective. This may impact day to day operations.
As a result, I decided to go with a “tabs” approach not to create friction in the user flow for the agents in the customer support team when they support TomoCredit customers.
Combining the information architecture, fixed header, and navigation feature, I prototyped a solution that would address agent’s needs to efficiently and safely assist customers.
Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, this project was terminated due to resources being allocated to other projects. However, I wanted to share the next steps that I would have taken and also the learnings from this project.
Next Steps
I intended to conduct usability tests to evaluate the mockup's effectiveness and the information architecture. During these tests, agents would work with simulated tickets to perform their routine tasks within the system. The main goal of these tests was to gauge the time agents needed to find information and identify potential improvements to the information architecture.
Reflection
Working with diverse user groups throughout this project was an enjoyable experience. It was crucial to consider the requirements of various teams utilizing the internal system while taking into account customer impact.
I want to thank Jon Umber, our Product Manager, for providing valuable guidance and support throughout this project.
Thank you for reading.
I appreciate you checking out my work and I hope you liked it! If you want to keep that energy going check out my other projects.