Tales of Adventure

Check out Debbie Levitt’s new book, Delta CX just released on Amazon I am delighted to have contributed a little to Debbie’s endeavor. While we were discussing UX as a business strategy, I shared with her some related stories from my long career in UX and she said, “I'd like to include those stories in my book”. This is one of them.

There are multiple ways UX can play a highly strategic role. This story is about UX as an imperative. That is, when a quality of experience threshold has been identified that must be satisfied in order for the project to become successful.

Improving Telephony in a Call Center

We were designing a telephony app in a major call center. The goal of the new app was to enable the transfer of customer info of the CRM system along with the call in both warm and cold transfers. The value in this was for the rep receiving the transferred calls to instantly have all the information to serve the customer. To achieve this required the rep transferring the call to check some boxes, add basic information about the call, and then use the onscreen app rather than their desk phone, which they were used to using and wouldn't be going away.

Getting the Gain

This meant a behavioral change on the part of the sending rep that amounted to more time and effort for them with no clear direct benefit to them personally. Regardless of the organization’s goals, the reality was that this change would be voluntary, and risked failure if user adoption were weak. In an environment where reps are being constantly judged by time on call, getting them to take on any extra tasks was a challenge. These factors all became exceedingly apparent as we conducted contextual research into the call center environment. Risk of the project failing was high unless we could find a way to create a clear incentive for the sending reps to use the new tool.

Exploring the Pain

As we explored the pain points of their work, we found that one primary motivating factor for them was the speed dials on their phone, which had been programmed by the organization with the frequently-dialed numbers. There was no equivalent to this in the design as planned for the current scope of the onscreen telephone app. Looking further, we found there was a much longer list of slightly less frequently-dialed numbers that had to be looked up manually.

Discovering the UX Imperative

Our determination was that to ensure the company would gain the value from the project, we would need to, at a minimum, include in the scope an on-screen equivalent to their speed dial, and preferably also include the full directory of phone numbers. We proposed a design incorporating all of these numbers in a very quick lookup with a click to dial. The impact was a simpler and easier task flow leading to time savings.

Must be Easier than the Phone

Our research had also found that the phone itself posed difficulties in learning and was prone to errors in operation. The process of receiving a call, placing a caller on hold, acquiring the new rep, making a personal introduction, and completing the transfer was sometimes mangled, which has probably happened (as a customer) to everybody reading this. Our studies revealed this was an awkward task to perform using the traditional phone, took months to learn, and even seasoned professional phone reps frequently lost calls. To improve this, we created a flow of on-screen buttons that resembled their preferred task flow. The new app now handled what had been the awkward and error-prone combination of steps on the physical phone.

Conclusion

The imperative was satisfied and then some. Adoption was strong and the project was a genuine success. However, it could have easily gone the other way. Without having identified the UX imperative, all of the known requirements might have been fully met and yet the project never quite delivered what was intended. Such outcomes are not unusual in the business world. This could have been just another one of those.

Discover More…

Delta CX is rich in such stories with thoughtful analysis by Debbie and her team of notable contributors. Discover Delta CX