Customer Portal App @ NVR

2017-2019

- ROLE

Product Designer


- FOR

NVR, Inc.


- TYPE

Case Study


At NVR, customers only have two channels for submitting tickets. I proposed a mobile app that would make it more convenient for the customer to submit a problem ticket, as well as save call center employees time on the phone. This was an opportunity I saw for the company to not only show my ambition and drive, but also as an advocate for the user experience.


This case study shows my ambition to conceptualize and solve problems, as well as how UX evangelism helped both the user and the business.

TLDR


Problem: Call center associates aren't able to process as many tickets because of how much time they spend on the phone


Solution: An app designed to process tickets in a more efficient way


Result: Presented the prototype app to the Director of Enterprise Technology showcasing the potential to reduce phone time by 20%

The Story


The call center had 15-20 employees that would receive customer complaints/work orders through calls, field tickets, and web tickets. Our biggest driver was phone calls because that was the easiest way for a customer to get through. The obvious caveat to that is the amount of calls coming into the call center, especially on busy days, would create a long que(and more angry customers). 


To try and alleviate that, the company had a web based ticketing portal. Submitting an online ticket is better than waiting on hold, right?


WRONG. The web service was so poorly designed that it created more calls for the call center because it had terrible UX.


So how could we limit the amount of tickets coming in?




The Research


Working in the call center allowed me to essentially conduct live interviews with each call. I wasn’t obvious about it, but I would take mental notes of the calls that pertained to problems with the website. Over time, as I got to know our customers, I was able to create different personas for our them and map out their user flow. I also worked with the Call Center Analyst to crunch some numbers: 


- If we took 1000 calls/day

- 100 of them would involve the poor ticketing system

- 100 would involve us walking customers through ticketing 


So we could have been saving 20% of our time if the ticketing system had better UX and eliminated those 200 calls.

The different types of homeowners that deal with our portal. Each one with a different opinion.

Solution


My pie in the sky idea was to build an app. I firmly believed that an app could alleviate the pain points of the portal, and also fix different problems we came across on our calls with the vendors. This would limit the amount of tickets that came in.


The culmination of my idea became a working prototype that I made in Adobe XD (RIP). I was able to present my case to the director of enterprise technology what fixing the UX of the portal could do for the call center, backed it up with the data that could measure its success, and then let him play with the prototype on my phone.


It was a successful pitch, and he wanted to create a true UX/UI position for me with the company, and divulged more information in what they wanted to do moving forward. 



Snapshots of page showing the simplicity of the app, but with all the information the homeowner would need.

The layers of the ticket submission feature.

Looking Back


It's a little dated, but this is still one of my favorite projects to present. I was extremely passionate about it, and it highlights my personal drive for the UX process. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t want to change up what I did. 


One of the things I would do differently would be having a more structured interview phase and deconstruct my idea. An app might not be the best approach right away, and that structured research may show what we can use for an MVP, and how we can continue to reiterate and launch in a phased approach or a roadmap leading to the app. 


I guess that just shows how much I've grown since then.