an HX human-centric project to identify opportunities for improving the customer experience of at&t's Technical Care Experience
Timeline: 8 weeks (4 sprints)
Team: Sr. Client Partner, Sr. Project Manager, Principle User Experience Designer, User Experience Designer (4)
Role: User Experience Designer
OUR PROCESS
Phase 1 of the project, completed previously, included general immersion research. The team reviewed various client-provided and Wongdoody provided documents relating to the existing channel workflows and customer data. They also prioritized the list of issues to focus on going forward.
I joined on the project mid Phase 2, in which we are focusing on Research. We conduct interviews with various channel Subject Matter Experts (SME) to understand the user journey for each issue, noting pain points and opportunities for enhancements. For each customer issue, we completed the following on a comprehensive journey map:
1. Define the situation
2. Create customer journey map omnichannel experience
3. Define pain points
4. Identify opportunities for improvement
We work closely with the SME's to cross-check and validate feedback and conduct discussions on current user journeys daily.
Immersion
Research
Journey Mapping (current)
Solution Sketching (future)
Workflow
Why does the Technical Care Experience matter?
RATIONALE
AT&T serves over 100 million consumers across the United States for mobile and broadband services. AT&T must support its customers through troubleshooting and support possibilities to ensure a quality experience with the company and its products. This strengthens the customer-company relationship and prevents AT&T customers from leaving or switching providers.
As a team, we conducted multichannel analysis on the Technical Care experience to fully understand its current capabilities, impact on customers, and provide insight into areas for improvement.
How do customers get help from AT&T?
CARE CHANNELS
AT&T customers can reach support through 6 modes of care: Care Agent Phone call, ANDI (Virtual Assistant chatbox), att.com, IVR (Interactive Voice Recording), SHM (Smart Home Manager mobile application), and myATT (mobile application).
During our meetings with SME's, we walked through each issue step by step and noted the typical user journey. We asked about pain points, possible enhancements, and specific questions about the issues and troubleshooting features.
Unfortunately, we were not able to talk to users directly about specific issues and their experience of the process; however, we were able to listen to a few recordings of care agent calls regarding Broadband internet issues. We noted that the troubleshooting process could be quite different from customer to customer; thus, we tried our best to document all possibilities in our journey mapping format.
What is the multi-channel customer experience and where do we begin to improve it?
JOURNEY MAPPING
NOVEL JOURNEY MAP
Journey mapping is a crucial part of analyzing the multi-channel experience and helps streamline the thought process of this multimodal support experience. The classic journey map, however, can be daunting and oftentimes confusing to follow for the client so we devised a simpler format to map out user journeys.
For each issue, we utilized the same journey map template. It contained experience triggers, customer types, support channels, and pain points/opportunities for enhancements on the top. Below that section are the 5-6 journeys for each channel the issue could be troubleshooted with and the step-by-step user journey. Then we had an area to list multi-channel touchpoints as well as customer emotions. And lastly, a section of screengrabs of the issue troubleshooting journey, as per the client's request.
This typical journey map from Nielson Norman groups shows the typical layout and sections of a journey map for a customer experience. Our journey maps showcased the customer experience and care channel experience (agent, att.com, etc.).
How might we create an efficient and effective technical customer service experience at AT&T?
*for the upcoming phase
KEY TAKEAWAYS +
NEXT STEPS
After conducting cross-channel and multi-channel analysis of the customer experience dealing with various issues, we will understand the pain points and areas for improvement. We plan on diving into more solution sketching and design workshops in the future phases. The question above will guide how we approach our upcoming project phases.
One problem I ran into while documenting user journeys is that we document the user journey based on the client's point of view. While we were able to listen in on a few Care Agent screen-recorded calls, we did not have access to the customer's true feelings going through the issue troubleshooting call.
Overall, this has been an incredible learning opportunity to work directly with a client and with a team at Wongdoody/Infosys. After 1 week on the project, I presented the main takeaways and understandings for the issues completed that week and discussed any questions and concerns brought up by the client. I participated in the journey mapping process documenting over 100 user journeys for over 50 issues each with over 5 different channels of service. I also successfully supported the onboarding of 3 new team members, guiding them through the workflow of the team.
