Kathryn Sadler

SiteMinder Customer Journeys – UX & Service Design

Overview
With ambitions to grow and scale significantly, it was critical that our products, systems and processes evolved with us. In mid-2018 I was teamed with the Customer Experience (CX) Executive to examine our customer onboarding processes, identify how we could streamline new customer setup, reduce complexity for both customers and our customer-facing teams, and ultimately increase the amount of customers successfully completing a trial of our product(s).

We were initially given 6-8 weeks working in a lean cross-functional team with peers from key areas of the business to produce a viable future state solution, validated with customers. This included only 1-2 weeks for research, with no time allocated for preparation and recruitment. However, as we gradually uncovered layer after layer of complexity, it became clear that this would turn into something bigger–requiring not just UX & UI updates, but process and back-end tech changes across the company.

I ended up working on the project (as the sole representative from the design team) for 14 months, up until my departure from SiteMinder in October 2019. For the majority of that time the core work was completed by the CX Executive and I. (We were joined by a Product Manager and Program Manager after 8-9 months.)

Key components:

• User research

• Competitor analysis

• Collaboration with internal customer-facing teams

• Design sprints

• Journey mapping

• Sketching, prototyping & design

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RESEARCH & DISCOVERY

User research
Before the project kick-off workshop, I initiated internal and user research, aiming to get feedback about the onboarding process from both our onboarding teams and customers.

Our potential customers had to navigate a time-consuming and inflexible process which took several weeks (on average), with multiple interactions across multiple touchpoints. This was in order to just start their trial and see any demonstrated value from our product(s). During that time our onboarding staff played a critical role in helping customers set up their properties, spending several hours of customer time on phone and email during setup.

I drew up a research plan and discussion guide for user interviews, and sent out an internal survey across our global onboarding teams to gather their pain points and ideas. Recruitment of customers was difficult–as it often is–especially given our tight timeframes. I painstakingly reviewed lists of recently onboarded & dropped customers from our CRM (Salesforce) who we tried to contact, with minimal success. We ended up interviewing only a handful of customers, with some of those completed by staff in non-English-speaking regions (with my guidance).

Design Sprints
SiteMinder had only recently defined an Agile product delivery process for the product team, working with an external consultancy. One of the key features of their approach had been the Google Design Sprint, and as such we were heavily encouraged to utilise this format from the outset of the project.

We worked through two design sprints, analysing the current state, gathering ideas and sketching potential solutions. Two of the core outputs from these Design Sprints were an ‘As-is’ customer journey map and a ‘To be’ customer journey map, which were both referenced throughout the project.

At the end of our first Design Sprint I created a wireframe of a customer-facing Setup Page, which would help guide customers to set up our products at their own pace through an easy to navigate digital experience, seeing value as soon as possible. This concept was parked temporarily while we worked on other potential solutions in the following weeks/months, but we returned to a very similar format later in the project.

IDEATION

We concluded that the Design Sprint format didn’t work for such a large-scale problem across so many areas of the business and with several contributing factors, so we changed our approach and started to run Agile/Scrum sprints.

The project stakeholders–all C-level executives–also gave us a revised scope for the project. The principal stakeholder wanted us to focus on improving the signup flow process for customers, to gather necessary property information from them prior to handover to the onboarding teams. We refocussed our efforts, gathering core data requirements and I created user flows and wireframes for the initial signup screens.

Due to time constraints (and previous issues recruiting customers), I ran user test sessions of the signup screens internally with members of the sales and onboarding teams. I then worked through many iterations of the Signup Flow screen designs based on feedback from our internal testing and stakeholders.

DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT

Once we were comfortable that we were on the right track with the Signup Flow, I refined the designs and copy, liaising with internal content writers for feedback and recommendations for consistency and tone.

We also needed the signup screens to be available in eight languages, so I collaborated with our translation specialists to initiate the localisation process.

With the dev work underway for the signup screens, I revisited our initial Setup Page concept, carried out further competitor research and sketched ideas for different layouts and components of the page.

QA

As we were such a lean team, responsibility for QA fell to the CX Executive and I, and this took up a significant amount of our time over several weeks. I created dummy test data in Salesforce and test cases for us to work through.

I also continued working on the designs of both the Signup Flow and Setup Page, with more localisation coordination and continued collaboration with global onboarding leads.

DESIGN UPDATES & USER RESEARCH

Once QA was complete, the first iteration of the Signup Flow screens was launched. As previously mentioned, we hadn’t yet been able to get customer feedback on the flow, but once launched we were able to gain insights by reviewing recordings of user interactions from Hotjar, and speaking with Sales and Onboarding team members about the new process.

With progress seen to be made with the launch of the Signup Flow, I obtained buy-in to carry out user research of the Setup Page designs and interactions. I further refined the wireframes for the Setup page and created an Axure prototype to refer to during user test sessions. Recruitment of customers was more successful this time as we restricted our demographic to properties in Sydney who we could visit (rather than globally).

User reactions to our Setup Page MVP were positive. Customers felt that it was a definite improvement on the previous process and would be helpful during setup. (We spoke with existing customers who had already been through the original setup process.)

CONCLUSION

After reporting on my research findings, I only remained on the project for a few more weeks as I left SiteMinder shortly afterwards to take a new role working in voice user interface design.

As far as I’m aware, at the time of writing this case study (over two years on), this project continues. My time on the project was enjoyable but challenging, with many deviations and scope changes, together with management of demanding stakeholders (often in contentious situations). I feel that we made good progress into reforming our customer onboarding processes and introduced some small but significant improvements, with many of our suggestions yet to be implemented.

I learnt a great deal about stakeholder management and also uncovered that service design is a logical match for my analytical approach to design thinking. I definitely grew as a designer over the course of the project.