Service Design | Design Strategy | CX
Helpdesk experience optimization
Challenge: How might we create a consistent, seamless experience for customers when in contact with the helpdesk? (at the stage of “I need help”)
Year: 2022
Client: B2B platform to process payments in an accessible and secure way, operations in Mexico, Peru, and Colombia
Role: In-house Service Designer (Part of the CX team)
Teamwork: 2 people
Stakeholders: Customer service provider, Operations, Service Management, KAM
Challenge:
Identify the current pains and opportunity areas in the experience the merchant has with the helpdesk.
My role was to:
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Identify the main pains the merchant has with the service/experience provided when they contact support. (Development of Service Blueprint identifying opportunity areas in each channel: call, chat, email)
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Share the conclusions with the management team to create empathy and generate a prioritization to solve the pains.
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Lead the Ideation workshop with all the stakeholders.
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Design the experience TO-BE
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Analysis of ideas to prioritize both quick wins and strategic, long-term solutions.
I worked in collaboration with:
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Customer Service leaders and Managers from each country (MX, PE, CO, ARG)
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Operations leader
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Service Management team
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Key Account Managers
Discovery - How this project started:
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Based on the “Support” survey from customers, the lack of a solution is the main pain. As follows:
-Omnichannel communication failure
-Lack of ticket follow-up
-A lot of time to resolution
Confusion when closing tickets -
According to the 2022 relational survey, attention and support are the main pain that customers in all geographies present.
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We identified there is no formalized and documented customer service model.
The objective is to design an ideal customer service model that addresses current pain points, reduces churn, and elevates the overall service experience.
From friction to clarity, mapping the current-state:
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We started analyzing real customer tickets to identify gaps and areas of opportunity in the experience with the service provided.
Diagram of the insights gathered in the discovery phase, the different ticket types AS-IS:
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Based on the most common cases, I started mapping the service blueprint AS-IS to identify the areas of opportunity and gaps in detail.
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We cross-reference information from the voice of the customer and internal process barriers.
Service Blueprint AS-IS for each channel of communication:
Service Blueprint TO-BE:
Insights / Based on Service blueprint and Sessions with Customer service team:
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Confusion in the ticket closure: Because the Customer Service area has a variety of names for each ticket type, the customer gets confused when "Interaction" (IMS) and "Case" (CS) notifications need to escalate to be Requirement (REQ) or Incident (INC), as the customer does not understand the relationship between all these ticket types, they just want to solve their doubts or problems.
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Different folios/ticket numbers: When the customer calls or writes to request status, another interaction folio (IMS) is generated, even without a solution to the first one. The customer does not know which folio to follow, as he/she receives several folios throughout the process for the same issue.
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Lack of consistency: The Customer Service area redirects the customer to another support channel and the customer perceives it to be repetitive and inconsistent as it is more time and effort invested.
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Lack of solution: The customer's expectation is not met, as he expects a solution or clarification from the agent who is attending to him/her at the moment.
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Constant follow-up from customer: It is perceived that a lot of time passes to provide a solution to their need.
Co-creating solutions: Ideation in action:
I co-led the ideation workshop, we worked on HMW questions divided into 3 teams; the Operations team, Customer Service, KAM executives, and Service Management.
Planning and execution:
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Identification of quick wins: Based on all the ideas gathered in the ideation workshop, we analyzed and identified the quick wins and we planned the other ideas for long-term execution.
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Management: I created a roadmap/Gantt for the organization and follow-up of the activities needed to be done for the success of this initial phase of changes.
Results and impact:
6 months after we implemented the quick wins, we analyzed the CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) measurement and found that it had increased by 7 points. This improvement suggests that customers are more satisfied with the company's offerings, which can be a positive indicator of customer loyalty, retention, and overall business success.
Learnings:
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In this project, I learned about how to manage a big group of stakeholders.
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And the importance of the prioritization of ideas/solutions to execute to narrow the scope of focus and plan the next steps.