Self Service Portal Uplift
Telecom I Case Study
Background
We had an existing Customer relationship management (CRM) portal based on a pre 2000 app based product called Keenan.
In 2016, Amdocs leveraged this product to build cloud based self service core* product which will enable sales and post sales service.
*Core Product - A white labelled product which can be further customised as per clients demand.
Impact of client customisation
In 2019, as a part of digital transformation journey of 2 APAC based telecom companies, the self service portal was sold to the customer.
On top of existing concept, in a span of 10 months, we had to rapidly churn out additional customer committed custom functionalities. This lead to creation of a significant debt in terms of USABILITY, VISUAL and EXPERIENCE issues in the existing product.
This was already hypothesised early by the UX team as well as being observed by the product team.
Project Objective
For the improvement of the product, we at XDC, Amdocs proposed the redesign of the existing self service product to fix usability and visual design issues along with enhancing the overall user experience while having the specific telecom consumer segment in mind.
The back-end will remain the same.
MY ROLE
Project Lead I Product Expert I Interaction Designer I Researcher
TEAM SIZE
4 UX + 2 UI Designers + 2 Product Manager
Design Process
RESEARCH
Gather data on target segment
Study the Business KPIs
Evaluate the product
IDEATE
+
PROTOTYPE
Get new solution directions
Compare with competition
Create and iterate designs
FEEDBACK
Validate solutions by available means
CONSTRAINTS
- No access to end users for target segment.
- No separate budget for product evaluation activities.
1 . RESEARCH
Usability Assessment I Personas & KPIs I Insights
Usability Assessment
In order to identify the improvement areas and also pitch a need for research to our stakeholders, we conducted an expert driven Usability evaluation based on the below parametres.
User empathy artifacts - Personas
Based on secondary research about customer habits and segments
Key Business KPIs
Based on inputs from the product management
Critical Usability Gaps
Skin - Visual Design
Skeleton - Interaction Design
Structure - Taskflows, Navigation and IA
Scope - Functional requirements
Structure - Biz. Req. - User Need
* J.J Garrets 5 S model
Flow Analysis
Deconstruction of each flow and page to identify experience gaps and occurrence frequency.
Persona + Self Service KPI's
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Insights from Assessment
Findability and Discoverability issues
Product menu and filters
Reduced Task Efficiency
Buy Flow + Dashboards
Interaction + Information Design Flaws
Widgets + Dashboards + Mobile Optimisation
No "Design Systems" Approach
Both WF's and Visual assets
"Dated" UI + Whitelabelling issues
Pre-2017 resolutions + Visual standards.
Issue Classification
Critical
Likely to cause the user to fail the task/ irreparably affect the business KPIs. High chance of occurrence in the flow.
Severe
Likely to cause substantial delay in user's task completion rate/ major error/ high impact on business KPIs. Moderate to high chance of occurrence.
Moderate
Noticeable and highly annoying, but user can overcome these. Aggregation of such moderate issues on single screen is a severe issue itself.
Design Strategy based on Assessment
Phase 1 Delivery - Sales Enablement
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Product Menu
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Product Browsing & Filters
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Product Configuration
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Checkout & Payments.
Throughout
Ongoing Activity - Design System
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Importing new common components based on XDC library.
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Updating/ Creating new business widgets
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Updating/ consolidating pages patterns
Phase 2 Delivery - Post Sales
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Dashboards (Account/ Subscription/ Billing)
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Data Drill down tables
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Profile/ Account Management
2 . IDEATE & PROTOTYPE
Search solutions I Quick Prototypes I Design Direction
Based on the above plan, we started with attacking the priority items and pages in agile manner.
Stakeholders like Product Managers, Product Owners and development focal were involved in below sessions
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Scoping and working sessions
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Interaction Design Review and hand-off.
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Competitive reviews (for key flows) with remote users using online testing platform.
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Visual Design Review and hand-off.
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Usability testing of the new design.
Listed down below are some of the notable improvements we made among many others...(Click to zoom)
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3 . VALIDATION & FEEDBACK
Usability tests I Business Feedback
Usability & Desirability Testing
Using an online testing platform, we ran a few un-moderated tests to gauge the feedback of our work.
Along the way, we also monitored the design to dev conformance, as that was a key KPI for our design system.
Our initial observations are encouraging...
Increases Task efficiency (~75%)
*Derived from time on task test for device first flow.
Design is "Modern, Appealing & attractive (echoed by 97% of use)
*First impression desirability test done on landing pages.
Design to dev conformance has increased to 92%
*Observed values based on no. of demo defects.
Stakeholder Feedback
A sandbox environment with few small flows was made available to business partners and CBE's (customer business Executives.)
"This looks very modern and trendy..."
Product Manager for Optima commerce.
"...This cuts down my steps to buy a device...when can I show it to my customer...?"
Business Partner handling a major south east Asian telecom account.
"...This is something which will add business value..."
Solution architect for major south east Asian telecom project.
Learning & Current Status.
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Dive deep into the domain & your product; only then can you add value as a designer.
Remember to document & share – this helps other designers down the line
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Collaboration and peer reviews can identify most gaps very early. Don’t skip this step.
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The old adage “Any research is better than no research” cannot be more true.
In absence of users, Improvise – Adapt – overcome.
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In terms of pitching improvements, learn to be patient - projects have constraints.
The work you have done will never be wasted and will be used in next pitches.
As of Apr 2021, based on the success of the self service uplift, the management is also keen to redesign the CRM product. Initial groundwork for the same has already been kicked off.