Tracking Number Creation
The business decided to merge three products in one adding 18 more small features in the same screen.And we ended up reducing 70% workload of our Technical Support staff by just Integrating. small UI changes Along the way..
Background
This is a small section of large project.
In Telephone marketing and analytics, creating tracking number is one of the important features and of this project completely revolves around creating tracking numbers and creating different reports through the analysis that we have while routing the calls
This also includes adding IVR Systems, analysing voice calls, transcripting voice calls, Analysing trasnscripts, analysing transcripts to generate data for telemarketing and customer support staff training.
There were 12 different ways for routing number through the systems and almost 18 different reports were generated through tracking these numbers .This gives the seller or marketer a rich data which can not just help him market is products/service better but also manage and train their sales and support staff accordingly.
The business had acquired 2 businesses that provided different ways to track number and analyze calls. Now the Business need to merge the 2 applications with the original one without making major difference in the current User experience
Discovery : With a twist
As usual, we decided to interview few of the users in order to get idea about their experience while using the three applications.We wanted to find the pain points that the user had so we can decide the best way to merge the new features into the current. We reached out to the Customer support staff to qualify the users and scheule appointment with with them.
We then relized, that the actual users were the majorly the Customer support staff and the business development team, who were creating tracking numbers and routing the phones for the users as user found it confusing and difficult to do it themselves.
So for stage 1, Customer support and Business development team were the Primary Users. The interviews and UT suggested the issue lie mostly around Hueristics and complex terminologies
Heuristics and Sanitary checks
We performed Hueristics study (using internal as well as external examiners) and basics Sanitary checks and found the current application was already performing poorly on basic checks.
Iteration 1 : Quick UI fix
So after finding so many issues we decided to fix the UI issues that were very apparent while we are adding the new features. We gave the UI a clear hierarchy and segregation.This helps the user to find the right places to add inputs. Few improvements that we did
Proper alignment
The miss aligned fields, extra long input boxes and multiple alignment points made the original design messy, we transformed it to creal 2-4 column layout
Field segregation
The original tracking number creation page was already looking cluttered. So with new options to route the nukmber, We also added additional internal accordion. This will hide the additional features and input fields .that will expand only if they are needed.
Adding some minor colour differentiations and additional background color segregated sections better .This makes the user feel that it is not one big form, but there are different small sections with fewwer fields to enter data.
Better Terminologies
We made the terminologies simple and consistant throughout the application as well as added the information where ever needed
Validation
As we had considered the Customer support staff and Business development team as Users for primary, we got few members of the team for UT. It seemed small changes did make large effect.
Execution
The UT with internal users and the discussion with business, resulted in business deciding to impliment the changes without considering testing with actual users. The development, merging and user migration went on for almost a year
Conclusion
The Changes in the tracking number creation page.Were taken well by the users.This resulted in reduction in the workload of the customer support by almost 70%.It also reduced the overall training time for the user by about 40%.And the business development team is now able to focus more on creating new businesses.Rather than.Helping the existing businesses, existing clients.With their tracking number creation.