Digital customer portal
COMPANY
ROLE
What I did
YEAR
The goal was to revolutionize the user search process for AF Group's service center employees to reduce response time, enhance accuracy, and empower them to efficiently handle high-volume requests seeking critical information.
Team
UX Lead, Product Manager, Developers, CX Team
About AF Group
AF Group is a holding company that provides specialty insurance solutions through seven affiliated brands. AF Group's insurance companies are offered through independent agents nationwide. AF Group's brands include Accident Fund, which specializes in workers' compensation insurance for small- to mid-sized businesses.
Background
Digital customer portal (DCP) is the main portal that allows multiple users like Agents, Policyholders, Injured workers, Vendors, Internal employees to perform tasks pertaining to claims filed by injured workers/ businesses.
Problem?
The service center employees at AF Group received approximately 2000 requests/ month in the form of calls/emails from users seeking critical information.
The existing search functionality of the 'user lookup function' posed significant issues to perform search efficiently.
What I did?
Improvised the search functionality of the enterprise portal for the internal users by enhancing usability through the addition of new search attributes.
I followed a 5 step process to complete this project:
Design Critique
I began by understanding the portal end-to-end by conducting a design critique along with accessibility check.
Research
To gain deeper understanding of the problem I had weekly stand-up meeting with product owners, CX team. Additionally held design thinking workshops with the users.
Design
Drawing insights from above two I started establish visual language and user flows, followed by design iterations and high-fidelity mockups.
Design Handoff
I handed off the high-fidelity mockups using Zeplin to the developers. Developers created a staging environment.
Usability Testing
To evaluate these designs, I conducted usability tests with actual users
Existing State of User lookup
Only one search field which gives out too many results
No option to filter the search results. No flexibility to choose between agents/ policyholders/ injured worker and vendors
Search Results table shows limited information
01. Discussions with product owners
This revealed that this item had been on the backlog for long, and needed a quick refresh!
02. Discussion with CX team
Not having a quick turn around time to quickly resolve queries led to a low overall customer satisfaction score 60% to 80% for various user types.
03. Design thinking workshop
Workshop with service centre employees revealed their pain points and current user flows. Internal user had to navigate much further to reach the most requested information that is - Security admin information and Reset password
After gathering insights from research, I created existing and suggested user flows to understand the pain points deeply.
UI Design
Through design critique, I identified UX problems with the existing interface and proposed solutions to be incorporated in the revised version.
Throughout the process, I crafted various prototypes through an iterative approach, drawing insights from both user feedback and discussions with product owners.
Figma Links
The final prototype seamlessly transitioned into the staging environment of the DCP portal, where rigorous usability testing was conducted.
Figma Links
Research statement and goal(s) : Identify if the User Lookup feature meets the needs of the users as well as capture any strengths and weaknesses of the user experience.
What I did:
Screener development
Protocol development
Participant recruitment and interviews
Data analysis
Protocol Script
Interviews
07 Interviews total (all internal service center employees).
Time
Recruitment: 4 weeks – 09.18.2023 to 10.13.2023
Research/ Sessions: 7 participants – 2.5 weeks - 10.16.2023 to 10.31.2023
Analysis: 1 week – 11.06.2023 to 11.10.2023
Platform
Microsoft Teams
Analysis and synthesis process:
Debriefing session:
After each session, once the participant left the team's call, the note taker debriefed the observations and important points to the facilitator and observers.
The note taker also asked everyone present in the call to mention if there were any other observations.
This led to identification of common issues around usability for the ‘user lookup’ function.
SUS survey:
After completion of usability sessions, a SUS survey was sent out to assess usability of the new feature.
80
70%
~40%
To have training sessions for the employees before launching the new ‘user lookup’ feature
Identify the most important user pain-points and incorporate them into ‘user lookup’ function as per feasibility and discussion with stakeholders.