Role
Product Design & UX Research
Duration
2 months
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Dovetail
Team
Product Trio
Role
Design & UX Research
Duration
4 months
Tools
Figma, Dovetail
Team
Product Trio
OVERVIEW
Coach the right calls, in Real-Time
Balto listens to 100% of calls and automatically alerts Managers when coaching opportunities arise for their agents within the Real-Time Coaching (RTC) tool. Managers are able to configure alerts for any of their Agents, and if a trigger item is hit during a call, Managers instantly get notified in Balto Cloud, and are able to assist the Agent via chat.
The team Piloted the initial version of Real-Time Coaching in 2021 where they received feedback from Enterprise-level customers that the RTC tool was not scalable for their organizations. This initial response led to the creation of lo-fidelity wireframes that had been based on limited, preliminary research. In early 2022, I fully transitioned to this project to assist with expanding and optimizing Enterprise-level alerts. Due to some gaps and questions my team and I had, we decided to continue discovery for Enterprise-level alerts by running a new research project. With limited time as a constraint, we primarily focused on attaining feedback from a more refined target customer group that this feature would benefit the most.
CHALLENGE
From the top-down
Enterprise customers currently utilizing RTC to coach their Agents unfortunately spend most of their time creating, managing and aligning on their teams’ alerts rather than coaching and analyzing metrics. This is a result of the current alert management process being solely based on an individual-user level, which is not optimal for scaling; thus increasing the workload of many Managers-level users.
Enterprise-level organizations can range from having multiple management-level users, teams and playbooks that are interconnected and/or share common themes. This means it is critical that Balto's alert process allows for fast alert standardization across organizations through simple streamlining workflows.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
Empathize
Understand users' needs
Define
State users' needs
Ideate
Brainstorm ideas & develop
Prototype
Test & implement
EMPATHIZE & DEFINE
Understanding our users
To get caught up to speed with RTC, I reviewed and tagged all of the customer interviews that occurred during the Pilot in our research repository; Dovetail. Once I explored all RTC opportunities and got a better understanding of user needs and wants, my team and I dove into interviewing specifically for Enterprise-level alerts.
Utilizing the previous teams' version 1 prototypes of Enterprise-level alerts, we conducted research sessions in pursuit of a desired outcome: to gain a deeper understanding of our larger, Enterprise customers - how their organizations are structured and who the key users of RTC are within these organizations. These ongoing interviews allowed for us to consider multiple solutions for our target opportunity, while comparing and contrasting each potential solution.
We continued these discovery sessions throughout our developmental process to ensure that we were building something that our customers not only wanted, but would enjoy.
Research Objective:
To understand how organizations are structured and how different roles and responsibilities play into the creation and management of RTC alerts.
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What are the key pain points currently the organization as a whole has when using RTC?
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What are the different levels/roles within their organizations?
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How does each level/role currently interact with other levels/roles when using RTC?
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How much access would each level/role want to be given with Enterprise-level alerts?
We conducted:
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Exploratory, group-interview sessions with internal partners from Customer Support reviewing Version 1 prototypes
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Exploratory interview sessions with RTC customers reviewing Version 1 prototypes
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Ongoing exploratory interview sessions with RTC customers comparing/contrasting Version 1 & Version 2 prototypes
Affinity Mapping
Creating an affinity map helped me visually see our users' pain points and areas that needed attention for the redesign, along with allowing me to properly update the previous teams' personas and flowcharts.
Once I started grouping similarities together, I began jotting down key insights paired with recommendations for design improvements to address each pain point we aimed to solve for.
Below are the key research findings:
Next, we were ready to update the previous team’s target personas and user flow charts to further simplify the alert creation and management processes and to make sure we didn’t miss an important step before investing a lot of time designing again.
1. Production: Not scalable
RTC is the only area within Balto currently that is not organization-wide. Instead, users are only able to view alerts they have created for themselves. This results in a majority of Manager-level users being tasked with:
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training multiple new hires on how to create alerts
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manually creating the same alert for every user with Balto Cloud access
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viewing inaccurate reports due to human-errors
RECOMMENDATION:
Allow for users to select from the top-down who (management-level) they would like to pass (assign) an alert to within the organization. This will help eliminate the need for multiple trainings; increasing agent-coaching engagement and simplifying the workflow of all users.
2. Version 1: Poor naming conventions
When it comes to roles and responsibilities, Enterprise customers are not all structured the same way.
RECOMMENDATION:
Remove the naming confusion of "Managers" and "Supervisors" when describing the two workflows (assigning alerts vs receiving assigned alerts). Use more broad and general naming schemes that can easily be understood regardless of the organization's structure (ex. "Admin" and "Standard").
3. Version 1: Confusing views
Participants, regardless of their role, prefer to see all of their alerts in a single condensed view.
RECOMMENDATION:
Combine all tabs into one view, which will allow for users to quickly see all of their alerts at once. If users need to see alerts separated by “assigned” and “individual”, they will be able to search via filters; improving the user experience overall.
4. Version 1: Too overwhelming
Filtering capabilities are critical to Enterprise customers that have multiple teams and agents within their organization.
RECOMMENDATION:
Cluttered and lengthy pages lead to cognitive overload. So, add filters to the alert page which will allow for users to quickly view alerts that were assigned to specific users and/or teams on certain days. This will help simplify user workflows, along with eliminating the feeling of being overwhelmed when shown all alerts by default.
Personas
We identified two main user personas:
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Admins | These leaders are focused on assessing, implementing and measuring performance management initiatives for Contact Center teams. They will create organization-wide alerts and "assign" them to other Admins and/or Standard users.
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Standards | These leaders are focused on coaching their team of agents. They will be the main receivers of "assigned alerts" and will act on them accordingly.
User Flows
I mapped out how both of our target users (those with Admin and/or Standard access) would utilize Enterprise-level alerts from start to finish.
IDEATE & PROTOTYPE
Mid-fidelity wireframes
Now that we had a new set of target opportunities along with possible solutions, I set out to create a new set of mid-fidelity wireframes that we could run A/B tests with. This allowed for us to cancel out any assumptions we might still have before over-committing to another less-than-optimal solution.
High - Fidelity Mockups
Design Update 1 & 2:
Update Balto's user management to allow for organizations to have Admin and Standard users. Within RTC, those tagged with "Admin" will have the ability to select from the top-down (other Admins or Standards) who they would like to pass an alert to during the alert-creation process.
The following user stories were identified to achieve Admin-related goals when creating and assigning out alerts:
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Ability to assign only myself to an alert for coaching purposes
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Ability to select all Admin and Standard users within an organization to assign an alert to
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Ability to select specific teams to assign an alert. This will be valuable when hiring and training new groups of Supervisors.
Design Update 3 & 4:
Restructure the alert home page into one condensed view by removing the three tabs from the Version 1 designs. This view will give users the freedom to view all alerts within the organization with the ability to quickly filter alerts by other users and agents.
The following user stories were identified to achieve Admin-related goals when viewing all alerts within their organization:
Filters
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Ability to view all alerts within the organization (View: All)
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Ability to view alerts I created and assigned out (Created by: Me)
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Ability to view alerts assigned to me (Created by: Me | Assigned to: Me)
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Ability to view alerts created and assigned out by other Admin (Created by: [Name] | Assigned to: [Name])
Receiving an assigned alert (additional flows to account for)
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Ability to select which agents I want to alert on (Status = pending)
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Ability to view and acknowledge any changes an Admin makes to an assigned alert (badge indicator)
In parallel with optimizing Admin flows, we have to optimize the Standard user flows (who will be the primary target of who is receiving "assigned" alerts).
The following user stories were identified to achieve Standard-related goals when viewing their individually-created and assigned alerts:
Filters
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Ability to view all alerts I have created for my team(s) (Created by: Me)
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Ability to view all alerts Admins have assigned to me (Created by: [Name])
Receiving an assigned alert (additional flows to account for)
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Ability to select which agents I want to alert on (Status = pending)
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Ability to view and acknowledge any changes an Admin makes to an assigned alert (badge indicator)
UP NEXT...
With a continuous mindset, our team aims to deliver customer value by addressing underlining needs, resolving pain points, and satisfying desires.
We are currently in the research and iteration phase; trying to gather as much customer feedback as possible before handing off designs to the Engineering team.