Research
Concepting
Prototyping
Usability testing
Design
Dovetail
Adobe Analytics
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Fullstory
5 months
Beta testing
VMware provides self-service support resources via several microsites:
In an attempt to simplify the self-service journey, VMware leadership folded these microsites into a single customer portal, Customer Connect. Theoretically, customers could now access all support resources from a single place.
Unification was implemented by shoehorning the resource sites under a shared navigation and global search. The search tool was lacking: it had difficulty properly indexing the thousands of VMware content and had a tendency to show repetitive results.
The resource sites essentially still operated as separate entities, leading to a clunky and fragmented experience.
The customer portal unification did not have a positive impact on any support metrics.
Self-service engagement remained low
Support tickets continues to increase
Seeking a new direction, the Director of Strategy and Operations and Senior Director of Global Support approached our team for assistance.
Today, customers can freely file a support ticket for technical issues. Tickets are resolved by technical support engineers, making them more expensive than self-service support content. Leadership wanted to reduce costs by decreasing support tickets, asking for following:
Introduce friction in the support ticket journey to deflect support tickets
The ask, while beneficial to the business, was hostile to our customers. It also ignored the root problem:
Findings self-service support is a complex and disjointed experience, hindering our customer's ability and will to resolve technical issues on their own.
This results in customers filing support tickets, leading to longer time to resolution, further frustration, and increased business costs.
As a designer, I wanted to empower our customers to solve their issues – not obstruct and frustrate them. How might we make self-service better, instead of making ticket filing worse?
With a less-than-desirable outcome already in the books, leadership wanted an accelerated turnaround for experience concepts. We chose to go with a lean approach, planning a 4 week process from concepting and MVP to shareout with leadership.
For this concept, I proposed an experience that harnessed the power our internal AI tools.
The VMware AI team had built an ML-trained text box which analyses customer issue descriptions and returns technical documentation, live agent chat channels, and AI guided troubleshooting flows.
Despite these capabilities, the ML text box was only being utilized on the support ticket page, far too late into the customer's support journey.
Reading resources, AI services, and live support engineer options
ML optimized search returns resources meeting a threshold of 80%+ relevancy
Ability to directly file a support request for critical scenarios
Easily switch between support resource types without leaving the page
This concept combined discovering self-service and filling out a support ticket into a single journey.
Customers are offered self-service resources after providing some technical details and an issue description. They can choose to engage with these resources, or continue completing the rest of the form after a short waiting period has elapsed.
Customers have seen the support ticket form before and are comfortable using it
Providing issue details for support resources simultaneously builds out a new support ticket
Customers are given the chance to review support resources before filing their ticket for any severity level issue
Customers can select a specific product from their entitled products list to ensure accurate support resources and ticket routing
While designing our prototypes, I reached out to VMware beta users to find research participants. We scheduled an intense week-long period to interview 15 users, synthesize research, and collect key findings.
Half of our participants tested Concept A followed by Concept B, with the other half testing Concept B followed by Concept A. We presented them with a broad task:
You are unable to access an ESXi host on vCenter. Using this prototype, how would you resolve this issue?
Users strongly preferred concept A as an overall support tool. They liked that it accommodated both high and low criticality situations, and appreciated its streamlined approach to support resources. They found the click-through interaction of concept A and loading button in concept B frustrating, preferring to see resources all at once with no deterrence towards opening a ticket.
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