Telstra
Smart Care


UX Research and Design
2020


Telstra Smart Care allows the customers to raise a fault  after the go through a troubleshooting flow.


Problem

The problem arises when the customers drop the Smart Care flow and contact an agent seeking support. This happens mostly when the customers are required to go through several steps in the smart care flow. This occupies the agents on issues that the customer can solve in self-service and also creates longer queue at the call-centre for other customers.


Goals

  • Decrease the number of customers that don't complete the smart care flow by levering automation diagnostics tools to reduce the number of action the users need to complete.
  • Re-engage with customers that have to drop a smart care flow will reduce the number of customers that contact an agent to troubleshoot their fix service issue.



Overview


It has been essential to building a better understanding of Telstra NBN customers to deliver them a product that serves their specific needs.

Gathering intel, data and intelligence internally from customer data centres and experts allowed for a better understanding of customer use cases, a holistic view of customers' NBN journey and the features and services they use.

This allowed prioritising designs and solutions that were customer-centric and solved customer, rather than business problems.

Coupling customer data with consistent rounds of user testing allowed me to iteratively test hypotheses formulated through customer data and optimise our designs to cater for our specific customer needs.

Ultimately, pairing the power of customer data with the richness of user testing allowed me to take solutions to senior stakeholders with confidence and empower decision-makers to progress with a meaningful solution.


MyTelstra Agile squads

MyTelstra consists of numerous Agile squads focused on launching features and functionality into the app.

The squads were required to release features quickly. Collaboration and information sharing was fundamental to ensure consistency and avoid loss and duplication of work across squads.

I have been instrumental in championing design operations across design teams with the systematic and persistent gathering of past research, backend functionality and solutions.





60%

of the users exit the page when landing on the "Service Selection” 


50%

exit rate is recorded during automatic diagnostic steps in particular the "Remote Modem Reset" and "Line Plan check" screens

Customer journey analysis


Metrics from Adobe Analytics has been used to identify the most visited flows in the Smart Care experience.



It has been observed that users drop the Smart Care experience in specific stages of the flow:

  • During the first two steps, when they are asked to select the service impacted by the issue and the symptoms experienced.
  • An at any stage in the journey, when they are asked to perform actions on their end.
  • Granular data analysis has been conducted to ensure this user behaviour was not due to technical issues.


User interviews 

Following the first stage of data analysis. Six users have been invited to navigate the specific flow of the Smart Care experience.

From the interviews has been discovered that customers are confused by the labelling of the symptoms.



Some of the participants also mentioned that they were surprised that the troubleshooting tools was asking them to select the symptoms and they aren’t sure which option to pick from the list.

Most of the participants expect the provider to have a basic understanding of the issue they are experiencing

It has also been recorded that many users are comfortable following a step process but they don’t want to go through more the five or seven steps.



Proto-personas

Insights collected via data analysis, interviews and other existing researches have been used as a mould to create persona profiles and scenarios.

Four proto-persona profile have been created around goal and expectation affinity. A profiling spectrum has been created to easily highlight the features of each group.



It has been determined that two of the proto-personas, maned Top and High, are extremely likely to own a Smart Modem.

The Smart Modem connects via the 4G network in case of an NBN connection issue and runs some diagnosis in the background.

This customers are likely to choose a provider for long term looking trust and high-end service.


The Basics and Practical proto-personas instead are less likely to have a Smart Modem.

They might experience more outages due to their location and they are more likely to change providers looking for a cheaper option.




Each personas have a different experience based on their behaviours, expectations and affinity with the product. So scenarios have been created to workshop potential opportunities, ideas and questions to explore.






Improved experience


A new customer journey has been designed and tested based on the insight collected.

The users don’t need to pick the service from a list in the "Get Help" portal or app but instead, they are able to start a service diagnosis from the service screen in the app.

This new entry point aligns better with some user mental models that would navigate to the NBN service screen in the app to find diagnostic tools.

Once the users flag an issue with a service, an automatic diagnostic tool runs several tests in the background and notifies the user when the result is available. 

Depending on the result of the diagnosis the user may be required to take some further actions which are specific to the problem and reduced to the essential.


Better customer communication

The automatic network diagnosis can be a stressful and irritating time for the customers waiting to get their connection back to work.

To alleviate the negative impact of the waiting, personalised messages has been added.

Customers that how a Smart Modem are advice of the 4G backup network and guide on how to check if the device is installed correctly in two simple steps.

Customers that also have a mobile plan with Telstra are invited to use their mobile device as a network backup and advised they will receive extra data.

A new section in the app has been dedicated to schedule and inspecting outages. Users can opt-in to receive notifications related to outages in their area.





Feasibility

On the development side, it was crucial to understand the backend systems to have understood what we can currently deliver and what we can push to deliver in future releases.

Understanding the backend constraints and maintaining consistent and open communication with developers and solution engineers ensured the team were able to deliver customer-centric solutions in tight timeframes.

Let’s start something that matters.