User Research

We identified and carried out user research with two type of users: callers and NCC agents.

User Research - Callers

The team spent two sessions speaking directly to NCC callers who wished to take part in our survey. In total we spoke to 15 callers, the majority of whom were made up of older, retired people and this provided specific insights into this segment. However, given the self-selecting nature of the survey, additional insights were gained by speaking with the team leader in Income Services to gain some insight into other segments that were missing as they declined to take part in our telephone survey.

We wanted to understand the caller’s journey when interacting with the NCC, the ways they considered contacting the Council and if they used the internet. We asked five short questions:

1. What is your age group? From set ranges.
2. Tell me what led to you calling the today? We wanted to ascertain whether the call was triggered by contact the Council had made eg a letter which prompted their call.
3. Was your query resolved and what are you expecting to happen next?
4. What else do you contact the Council about and how do you do this?
5. Tell me the last time you visited Hackney.gov.uk and if you use the internet generally.

This information was used in numerous ways including in the creation of our personas. Thse were made up of a combination of research surveys that we carried out with callers to the NCC; hypothetical traits that we gleaned from speaking with agents and the Income Services team; and observations we made whilst shadowing calls at the NCC and Corporate Contact Centre.

User Research - Agents

The whole team of user researchers, designers, delivery managers and developers took part in shadowing sessions with the Neighbourhood Contact Centre (NCC) agents to experience first hand the way that they work and the frustrations that they experience. This exercise was invaluable in demonstrating how agents carry out their jobs, the software they use and the workarounds they have devised. There were also opportunities between calls to quiz why they do things the way they do. We shadowed five different agents and listened to 36 phone calls.

We found that agents each receive their own personalised version of an Excel spreadsheet. On this spreadsheet, the agents enter details of each call they answer: eg reason for the call, identity of the caller, actions the agent took are recorded as manual comments. However, data can be patchy. Also, agents experience a number of frustrations during the process: for example, having to switch into Universal Housing to take a rent payment. The Team Leader aggregates data from these spreadsheets manually each week or month to generate various reports. This is a time-consuming exercise that's susceptible to human error and limits further interrogation. Also, without spending even more time creating visuals, it can be difficult to interpret the data.

We also obtained key data from six interviews with NCC agents during Discovery. These insights were gathered from 20 minute interview sessions. The 15 questions that we asked in our sessions were developed as a result of our shadowing exercise and were designed to help us probe and understand how the agents worked, which computer systems they used, what the agents perceived as the most frequent calls, what they described as a perfect call and the frustrations they experienced.

The 15 questions asked were:

1. What is the first thing you do when you start work and why?
2. What is the last thing you do when you finish work and why?
3. Thinking about the types of calls you get, can you tell me what you think the top three calls are about/categories?
4. What is the perfect call to you, why?
5. Tell me about a time that you felt frustrated while on a call.
6. Tell me about a time that you felt frustrated while not on a call.
7. Tell me about a time when you learned how to do something better.
8. Tell me about a time when you felt you had done a great job.
9. What system do you like the most and why?
10. What system do you dislike the most and why?
11. When you have a problem, what or who is your ‘go-to’ when trying to resolve it?
12. Show me any tools you (or a colleague) have made that help you, such as FAQs, cheat sheets, etc. Please explain why.
13. Explain the formal and informal training you have had to do your job. How long did it take to train for you?
14. Tell me about a time when you have felt a process wasn’t necessary?
15. If there was one thing that you could change to improve the service you provide what would it be?

Corporate Contact Centre

In addition to shadowing the NCC, the project team also shadowed three Corporate Contact Centre agents to experience how they work, with a keen interest in their use of a CRM solution embedded in their service. We found that CCC agents do not record all of their calls in the CRM by any means. This particularly applies where a call is resolved through other software: for example, parking fines are taken in Liberator and agents do not spend additional time identifying the caller in the CRM and writing notes that they have taken a parking fine. And probably rightly so. We wanted to avoid this for the NCC and were keen to produce a piece of software that more fully met its needs.

Emails

At the start of Discovery, we were looking at the broader area of contact with the NCC. For this reason, we also interviewed the administrator responsible for handling emails to the service. This is certainly an area that could be improved and made less time-consuming in the future but, for the purpose of this project, was ruled out of scope.

Key Findings

The key things that we learned from the research was:

• There are too many systems and repetition of data entry slowing and frustrating the agents.
• The taking payment process is long and temperamental.
• Following up on customer call back requests consumes valuable time.
• Printing statements and other forms takes too long.
• The agents have no record if a customer rings in and speaks to another agent.