- ROLE
UX/UI Designer
- FOR
NVR, Inc.
- TYPE
Mobile App
At NVR, customers only have two channels for submitting tickets. I proactively proposed a mobile app that would make it more convenient for the customer to submit a problem ticket. 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.
The Story
Here’s a little background of the call center. We 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 quickest and simplest 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. The thought process being that if we have a website where customers can put in their tickets, then they’d call the call center less. 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 come up with different personas for our them. As well as map out their user flow. I also worked with the Call Center Analyst to crunch the real version of these numbers:
- 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 blue sky idea to combat the shortcomings of the portal was to build an app. I firmly believed that an app could navigate 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 by solving the problem before it is submitted.
The culmination of my idea became a working prototype i made in Adobe XD. I was able to get an audience with the director of enterprise tech and present my case. I showed him the data i referenced earlier and what fixing the UX of the portal could do for the call center, and he understood it all. I then presented my idea with my phone and let him play with the app.
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 been a while since i’ve made this project, but it’s one of my favorite things to present even if it is a little dated. 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. 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 with my UX process.