Support request streamlining
Reducing friction and ambiguity in support request creation
Project date: February 2022
Duration: 2 months
My Role: Lead UX Design & Research
Kickoff: February 9, 2022
The timeline
Up to 5.3% of support tickets submitted for help with the web portal, were actually tickets for product support.
One of the primary reasons these cases were misrouted is because users did not know whether they had permission to create product support tickets or not.
Instead of following prompts to request permission from the customer admin, user without product support contact permission attempted to request support via the website help channel.
The problem
Support landing page with contact permission
Landing page without contact permission
Where users without permission were trying to request product support
Reduce mis-routed support requests to zero
Ensure visibility of system status regarding support contact permissions
Ensure users can recognize, diagnose, and recover from the error of trying to create a product support ticket without permission
The goal
Ideate and design solutions
Review and compare workflows and designs for engineering feasibility
Test and compare potential solutions with users
Implement and listen
The approach
Discovery
Stakeholder interviews
Competitive analysis
Exploration
Workflow modeling
Wire-framing
Engineering feasibility review
Design & Prototype
Testing
Usability testing (validation & comparison)
Listening
Telemetry review
How I contributed
Terminology: Product X
Support: Pertains specifically to path toward creating a support request
Help: Pertains to FAQs and Docs, relevant community forums and service incident reports
Help + Support: Pertains to both help and support.
Feedback: Pertains exclusively to user CSAT feedback mechanism.
Submit an idea: Pertains exclusively to suggestions.
Competitive analysis
DISCOVERY
Terminology: Product Y
Help (Interchangeable): Pertains to FAQs and Docs, relevant community forums and service AND pathway to create a support request.
Feedback: Pertains exclusively to user CSAT feedback mechanism and suggestions.
Competitive analysis
DISCOVERY
Workflow modeling
EXPLORATION
Wireframing
EXPLORATION
Wireframing
EXPLORATION
TESTING
Research objectives
Compare 2 designs to determine which is clearer to understand:
The difference between where to submit a product support request vs. a platform support request
When a user has support contact permission or not
When a workspace is degraded
How to recognize, diagnose, and recover from the error of trying to create a product support ticket without permission
Usability testing
Participants
Five general IT professionals per design (10 participants total)
Method
2 Unmoderated usability tests with UserTesting.com
TESTING
Usability testing
Eight of ten users were successfully able to navigate to the Open a product support request page and learn that they did not have permission
Insights
No participants discovered the “Recommended steps” self-help section on the “Contact us” page.
Most participants noticed the conditional messaging in alert bards more than the same conditional messaging paragraph format.
Make the button to create a product support request visible, even when users don’t have permission.
Recommendations
Use main content area of the Open a product support request page to display applicable self-help for the condition, “Unable to open a support request”.
Only disclose one permission limiting condition at a time, even when two or more apply.
Usability testing
TESTING
Design B: Messaging for only one restrictive condition at a time, even when there are two.
Design A: Messaging for two restrictive conditions at once.
Final design
LISTENING
Project impact
LISTENING
Collaborate with engineering early and often
Be mindful of business constraints
Conduct qualitative testing with target audience