2019

E2E Journey | UX Design | Usertesting

Broadband buy journey - E2E Redesign

Background

When I joined the Broadband team, Spark's focus was to improve broadband sales through our digital channel. Spark changed product propositions and the plan name recently. Spark wants to prioritise wireless broadband as the first choice to generate more revenue. Therefore, our overarching goal is to revolutionise online broadband journeys, enhance broadband sales, and streamline the online house-moving process. Our ultimate goal is to reduce call centre volumes and prioritise a self-service approach.

My role

I have teamed up with a service designer to support multiple squads working on various initiatives for Spark’s Broadband tribe, such as the Wireless, fibre, copper, and billing squads. Our primary focus was to redesign the broadband online retail experience while supporting these squads, and we have been analysing and redesigning the broadband online retail experience.

Problem Statement

Many users are abandoning online journeys due to complexity, length, and registration issues. It's crucial to address these issues to enhance customer experience.

Spark recently implemented changes to their plan names, and billing structure (now pay-as-you-go), and is emphasizing wireless over fiber optic connections, leading to market confusion.

Understand the painpoints

My Service designer was helping me to research the pain points

We've interviewed customers and non customers

We wanted to understand how people use our product, so we tested the current pages and had friendly conversations with our customers to uncover the challenges they faced. We spoke with ten individuals to gain insights into their needs, experiences, and challenges with the broadband purchase process.

We've defined our research goals

  • Understand why people are not completing the online buy journey.

  • Identify the main blockers and barriers in our online buy journey.

  • Identify pain points in our existing moving house journey.

  • Understand the customer’s perception of our new product names.

Analytics and call centre data

We closely examined the analytics of the broadband purchase journey, drop outs and customer calls about buying or joining broadband services. Many callers attempted to order online before reaching out to the call centre, suggesting that the online process was too complex or too lengthy.

Defined Personas

Following these conversations, we created four detailed profiles representing different types of users, each crafted to encompass all users interacting with our product or service. Simultaneously, we documented each user type's specific problems, providing a clear plan for solving their issues.

Journey framework

Spark has developed an exceptional customer experience framework called the JUCCI framework to understand the customer life cycle. JUCCI breaks down the customer journey into five stages: Join, Use, Change, Care, and Involve. It employs three detailed 'zoom levels' - JUCCI view, a sub-journey view, and journeys (flows).

This structured approach allows us to understand where customers are on their journey and tailor our solutions to meet their evolving needs. We use JUCCI to identify opportunities and solutions, creating a unified and customer-centric system. By strategically mapping the customer journey using JUCCI, we better understand specific pain points, and this allows us to provide precise solutions and enhance the overall customer experience.

Mapping insights to the framework

After researching and analysing our findings, we organised everything into the JUCCI framework. We grouped information to see common themes - sorting pieces of a puzzle to understand the bigger picture. This process helps us identify patterns and create solutions to address common themes in the customer journey.

Identified Pain Points

In the last two months, 73,834 new customers started only 619 made it to the end.

Ordering a new connection and moving house was in the same journey, making the overall experience complicated.

Too many steps to understand the price and plans.

Trying to integrate existing customers' self-service steps into the new buying journey increased the complexity for new customers

Irrelevant and poor grouping of information and choices made the pages too long and complex

Displaying plans before verifying the address caused issues as plans do change after verification.

  • Customers were looking for "unlimited" broadband or "high-speed fibre broadband" - a mismatch between customer expectations and the names of the plans on offer.

  • Business wants to push Wireless as the first choice and customers are unfamiliar with the technology details we were trying to communicate.

  • Not displaying price and technology details until sign-up or sign-in results in many drop-outs.

  • Business has changed the plan name to “Unplan”. which confused customers, affecting their comprehension and decision-making.

Other problems

My Plan of action

Once the pain points were identified, I communicated them to the stakeholders. We conducted multiple sessions with them to discuss the problems that needed to be addressed.

Simplifying the journey

Started drafting user flows and simplified the customer path, used the flows to have conversations with Architechs and BA. I separated the ‘Move house’ journey from the ‘new broadband connection’ journey.

User flows - New buy process and move house

Decisions made…

  • Show prices and plans immediately after the customer provides the minimum details.

  • Put the registration flow after the cart (where the customer decides on the plan, price and technology).

  • Instead of pushing technology decisions to the customer, we gave options based on usage, benefits and convenience.

Prototype and user testing

I built high-fidelity prototypes using Adobe XD, carefully addressing each phase of the user journey. We tested the prototypes rigorously with a diverse pool of users, yielding a System Usability Scale (US) score of 90 - a substantial improvement from the existing score. Drawing insights from user feedback, I tweaked the design to integrate the enhancements needed. The final screens were aligned with Spark's pattern library for consistency.

Prioritisation of pain points can be address immediately

Some of the pain points, such as plan changes and wireless strategy, are not within our control to solve. Therefore, we have communicated our recommendations to the leadership team. I have started focusing on improving the elements of the online journey by delving into the details, simplifying processes as much as possible, gathering only necessary information for decision-making, and presenting important details to customers early to assist in their decision-making process.

Feasibility discussions

With the help of user flows and low-fidelity sketches, I am constantly communicating with solution architects, product owners, and BAs to simplify the user’s path and change how we collect the data.

What we learned from testing

  • Customers find the overall journey easy and well-communicated.

  • Our System Usability Scale (SUS) score was 86.

  • Plan selection was not as intuitive as we thought.

  • Clear and plain language is essential for a smoother journey.

  • Add-ons and other accessories sold in the middle of the journey were not welcomed by customers.

  • The registration process is still not favoured by some customers, but we can’t proceed with creating orders without commitment.

  • Order tracking was very welcomed by customers.

Outcome

Our findings influenced the product roadmap to create a better online broadband purchase experience. I’ve shared the process and outcome of this project tribe-wide to make impactful decisions. The product team is actively exploring solutions to address the issues identified in the study.

  • Advised against pushing wireless in areas or households already equipped with fibre, and communicated our concerns.

  • Suggested revamping the order of information collected, emphasising the separation of the "move house" journey from new connection orders.

  • Recommended changing product names and marketing strategy to align with customer preferences, focusing on keywords like "unlimited" and "high-speed internet

Glimpses of backlog prioritisation