Self Service Portal for Agents

Built on Salesforce Communities platform that offers a one stop shop for knowledge, case tracking, discussion forums and chat

Role

Experience Architect

Duration

1 Year

Tools

Sketch/Invision, Freehand, PowerPoint

Problem Statement

Agents have multiple platforms and systems they can reference to seek additional help; however; the process is difficult and tedious. ECC wants to build a self-service portal for agents to be able to reduce call volume by deflecting calls as much as possible thus reducing the cost of the calls

Journey Map

To understand the problem better I decided to look at the current help and support systems that Agents and their staff members use and what does their journey look like. We got help from one of the business experts. We got better empathetic inputs as she had been an agent in the past herself. Mapping out this journey got us buy-in from the product team to officially drive a research study to take a deep dive into the problem and design a more holistic solution rather than just thinking about Enterprise level cost issue.

Current State Agent's Journey

Broken by the method of support they use to resolve their questions

MVP and Aspirational Journey of an Agent

We broke it down by MVP features supported by Salesforce Community Platform vs what ideal experience could be. We had a few questions about the MVP which instigated us to propose a detailed research study done

Survey

Initially, we planned to drive a survey. Here are some of the questions we thought of. But we were lucky to get our proposal approved for a research study and get a dedicated Experience Researcher onboard to plan and conduct the interviews. Below are some of the collaborative thoughts on the study, and the outcomes.

Why do we need to solve this problem?

ASR(Contact center to support agency users) will continue to build the portal using Salesforce Community platform without knowing users’ pain points. These include any challenges agents face with the current knowledge system, as well the needs present for calling contact centers. The current process might not be the best user experience and cause additional pain with another new system on another platform which is new to agents:

How to reduce call volume
How to streamline users’ operations to reduce the likelihood of calling contact centers
How to provide a tool to alleviate challenges without forcing users to add on to their current knowledge system

Research Questions

Overall goal of this research was to assist business partners in gathering requirements regarding agents’ workflow with their current knowledge system, as well as the relationship between agents and contact centers. Additional details that will help guide this effort:

What is included within an agent's current knowledge system?
What platforms already exist for agents? What platforms are mostly used? Which are favored the most?
What specific challenges, anxieties or pain points do agents have with their current experience?
What prompts an agent to contact a call center for additional help?
How might providing a self-service portal for agents reduce call volume and improve their overall experience

Measure of success

Reduced call volume and cost of the calls to contact centers
Additional feedback from users on their current operations and processes to indicate if users report it will reduce their likelihood to call

To understand the agent's current experience with support we interviewed 12 agents and agent staff members and 3 contact center.
The goal of the study was to uncover their opinion on the concept of a self-service portal and identify common pain-points

"I don't want to give out improper information to the customers. I call because I need help to confirm information."

"I've tried to search for answers while on the phone with a customer but usually have to call them back because I have to dig for answers"

"I don't know why we have to bounce around"

"I would use it if the portal is user-friendly. I don't have to call to get answers"

Key Takeaways

Difficulty finding information:

Participants contact call centers because they are unable to find information, require guidance of how to perform a task, or want to confirm information with a representative

Call Delays, Long holds, Call disconnects, Call Transfers

Many participants are frustrated with the recent delays in communication when seeking additional help (e.g. long hold times, disconnected chat windows, being transferred to other support lines)

Want to share valid information with the customers

Some participants prefer to speak with a representative on the phone because it avoids miscommunication. However, other preferred to utilize online chat because it is convenient and allows for multitasking

Usability is a priority for any new knowledge tool

Overall, participants are open to the idea of using a self-service platform but want information be consolidated and at a central location

Agents create their own workarounds
Support Associates often have to understand the “Question behind the question” when helping agents and their staff

How might self-service portal drive individuals to the most effective channel for their inquiry, while balancing customer experience, efficiency, and contact center capacity?

Affinity Mapping

We did affinity mapping of our interview notes., categorized them as pain-points of current help and support tools, likes, user needs for a self-service portal, feedback on current tools

Trend Scraping

In parallel to the interviews, I also trend scraped parallel worlds to learn what self-service capabilities are currently being provided by top in the industry like Apple, Google, Amazon, Adobe, XFinity etc and which capabilities we can and want to provide to our users.

Competitive Analysis

We also evaluated service offerings of other top insurance companies like Geico, Progressive, USAA, AllState, Liberty Mutual, and Farmers Insurance etc to their customers as we could not get access to their agency side webpages. The helped us defining some of the good features to consider for our portal and things to do better. None of the insurance companies, at the moment, provide a true self-service portal for customers.

At this point, we had a fair idea what features we want to offer for MVP and Post MVP given the Salesforce Community Platform Out-of-the-box constraints.

Self-service Technology

By providing a singular location for users to search for knowledge or training, community support will simplify and improve the self-service experience thus reducing the need to call the support center

Chat, Forms, Case Tracking

Users will be able to create service tickets via forms or chat before they find the need to call. They can track the tickets for resolution. These features gives user a sense of control.

Discussion Forums

The portal will also provide a platform for users to seek help from fellow agents in the community for a specific topic and find answers validated by community administrators. Just another avenue to find help to common issues and get rewarded for helping others

I looked at the interview notes again to map out the emotions/fears and how might we overcome them by providing hope

Information Architecture

While ideal experience mapping was in progress, we never stopped feeding the MVP plan of the product team and continued to brainstorm on the information architecture of the portal.

Storyboards: Visual stories of ideal experience for Agents and Contact Center Associates

I created storyboards to demonstrate the ideas. Storyboards are a powerful tool to understand and articulate scenarios for these ideas/features. They feed the future scope ideas and capabilities needed for the product. The feedback from the agents, their staff members, and contact center users was incorporated before each storyboard to demonstrate which pain-points, needs were addressed. Journey map assets library expedited my efforts in creating storyboards. I used my basic Illustrator skills to create the remaining assets

Each of the story board was based on at least one of the customer experience principles set at enterprise level.

Adapt to me
Communicate clearly with me
Minimize my efforts
Anticipate my needs

Pain Point: Chat gets Disconnected

Clearly communicate that the chat was disconnected and what to do next

Storyline

Solution

Pain Point: Long holds during chat sessions

Be transparent with the agents and let them know how long the chat hold could be and provide them other ways to reach out

Inform

Alternate method

Alternate Solution

Call scheduling was proposed as an alternate solution for long chat holds

Email communication about the call schedule

Portal Notification about call schedule status

Pain Point: Call centers in a different timezone are not available

Provide intelligent call routing to a call center in the same time zone

Need: Community Expectation

When asked, agents expressed their need of trusted source of information from the community portal

Solution

Appoint Community moderators and admins to verify and validate answers

Page layout options

Home Page, Discussion Page

Home Page Wireframes

Search, Browse Knowledge topics

My Contribution

Initially, I was tasked to solve the call deflection problem. But when I watched the demo created by our Salesforce architect, I knew this problem is more than just deflecting calls. I, as an Apple Support or Amazon support user, have been delighted and frustrated many times with the services they offer. If as a consumer people are not motivated enough to use the self-service platform, then as Agents, their staff members and even on the service side our call center reps would definitely have their own frustrations and needs which we had never understood. I also looked at different Help & Training documentation and knew the shortcomings of searching through it.

With this investigation of the existing support, I decided to carry out a thorough research and proposed the idea to the business and the product teams. Before that, I had to show them potential pain points by doing a journey map of the existing system. The interviews were carried out by researcher. But I took the lead in creating Affinity Mapping, Trend Scraping, POV, Storyboards and initial wireframes. Being the design expert for Lightning platform, I had to move to another priority project while the team was busy building the MVP features and I handed-off my UX responsibilities to the other UX Designer on the team, making sure she is comfortable enough to understand the problem premise and the platform. I thoroughly enjoyed working as a Research Analyst along side the researcher on the team.

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