TicketMaster Brainstorming
1
User Experience Architect
Verizon
The Project: Native Android App
TIMELINE: 2, 2 week sprints
SERVICES: UX Project Planning/Strategy, Sitemap, Wireframes, UI Design
The Challenge
So, how long does it take for you to have your question answered or buy a ticket to a concert or other event through a Call Center? Several minutes waiting on the phone and then realizing that the dates and times of available tickets don’t suit you at all? That’s exactly the problem I want to solve with a streamlined native Android app. We want the client to pick the right date on his own without traversing through an IVR jungle that we are all too familiar.
As part of the discovery phase, when asked if the customer would prefer to bypass a contact center's IVR system, this application is all about saving customers from long hold times. And, as a creative problem-solver, having had experience with these systems, examined an approach to help customers by presenting an IVR-free solution.
As the above images illustrate, my process often times begins with 'ol school pencil to paper to hash out initial thoughts during discovery in order to quickly jot down ideas and to kick around with stakeholders or peers. I quickly move on to low-fidelity wireframes containing detailed annotations, delivered as either static or interactive depending on complexity, for the purpose of pitching the concept to the UX team, product owners or directly to customers. This process ensures that the project meets requirements and features are on the right track with user expectations.
The Solution
UX Project Discovery, Planning, & Strategy
includes surveys, user interviews & observation,
requirements gathering, ideation, prioritization & brainstorming workshops,
exploratory research & cognitive walkthroughs
- Customers call the contact center after they have exhausted other channels to fix a problem.
- The initial concept of the Visual Interactive Call platform is a service that can benefit both Call Centers (our business customer) and mobile callers (the Call Center user). Companies need to adapt the contact center to mobile, not the other way around.
- For soon, mobile customer care will just be Customer Care Your customers and employees are making the mobile mind shift.
- Now they expect that any information or service they desire be available to them on any device, in context, at their moment of need.
- Contact center employees spend 25% of their time just verifying customers.
- Companies focusing on end-to-end customer journeys across multiple touchpoints and channels can build significant competitive advantage, reduce customer churn and differentiate their brand from competitors.
UX Project Definition & Low-Fidelity Design
Includes creating use cases, personas, task flow models,
card sorting, affinity diagramming, storyboarding, usability testing,
site maps, wireframes & annotations that define features and functionality
- Using a method too high in fidelity wastes resources and risks a mediocre path being selected because better options were never given a chance. Working at too low a fidelity, on the other hand, means that details may never be addressed, yielding a half-baked result and would force additional channels to fix a problem in later releases.
- For this project, I determined that low-fidlity wireframes were necessary in order to provide a clear picture so that iterations could be made quickly and easily that will result in time saved during the design and delivery phases.
Use Cases
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Download/Opt-in User Flow
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Android App Task Model
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Wireframe-App Options
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Wireframe-Event Details
5
Wireframe-Seatmap Selection
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UX Design & Delivery
Includes mockups, interactive prototypes,
usability testing, style guide, copy, html, css & js
- After presentation to stakeholders, the next task at hand goes beyond wireframes, spread understanding of the UX design through high-fidelity wireframes and continue the iterative user-centerd testing processes. At this point, it needs to be determined that screen mockups did not need to be interactive.
- I also created paper-based usability test scripts so that we could put the mockups in front of focus group testers.
- A style guide provides developers with a supplement to the mockups to provide a clear understanding of the UI features and functionality.
Conclusions
SUMMARY: The application is not designed to replace existing Call Center infrastructure but is an overlay to reduce cost and improve customer experience.
TAKEAWAYS: A large marketing campaign effort is required from both the enterprise and Verizon businesses in order to ensure the successful download and usage of the application. The downside is that a well-coordinated, multi-channel marketing effort is required for both the enterprise side and the Verizon side containing best practice call-to-action techniques such as QR codes, links, etc. on:
- Company web site
- Email blasts
- Mobile notifications
- Direct mail literature/ticket items
- Other contact points
- It is a less intrusive user experience than having a user’s call into a contact center intercepted by a marketing message to download an app first.
- The user is informed of the contact center’s queue time in advance to proceeding with a call.
- The VIC app, if forgotten in the app tray, will appear on demand to multiple if not all contact center numbers or apps in the network.
- DThe application is downloaded from the store in the traditional manner, once installed application icon appears in the applications tray (familiarity already exists).