Quick Actions

WorkWave / Communication Center

Empowering our users

WorkWave's major issue was that despite having an integrated omni-channel tool, users still had to switch between multiple applications for basic customer service tasks. They had to toggle between WorkWave CRMs like PestPac, which were not designed for customer service, and Communication Center. This lead to confusing work flows, longer calls, and multiple call-backs.

The main goal of our "Quick Actions" feature was to boost the First Call Resolution rate, allowing agents to resolve issues in the first interaction by providing tools for common tasks like scheduling and billing. This aimed to improve service speed and quality.

A priority was to design the feature for future scalability, as Communication Center is WorkWave’s key common services integration across its applications.

 

Research

The main personas to consider were administrators (managers/owners), customer service agents (1st party agents), and call center agents. Each had specific tasks: Admins needed an audit trail of actions and a way to manage permissions. Customer service agents and call center agents had similar roles with key differences; 1st party agents are specialists employed directly by clients, while call center agents are not. Call center agents typically handle overflow or after-hours calls and are seen as extensions of a team managed by a third-party service.

 

Our goal was to make Communication Center the go-to place for solving basic customer issues for both 1st party agents and contact center agents. We aimed to reduce the number of tools an agent would need to do their job. For contact center agents, who might not be specialists, we wanted to make it unnecessary to know how to use WorkWave host products. This would also reduce the time and knowledge needed to perform their job functions, while ensuring these actions could be extended to automated interactions.

Information at a glance

Within Communication Center, the homepage has four main panels. The first three are for communication setup, message queue, and conversation thread. The fourth, the Customer Information Panel (CIP), shows customer details like overview, scheduling, and billing. It's the main source for product data and quick actions, allowing agents to manage services and payments easily. Whether it be from a section action button or an overflow menu, agents are enabled to quickly tackle common tasks, and leave a record of their actions right in Communication Center.

Considering the available space for users was critical when planning out flows and forms for quick actions. The CIP displays a large amount of customer data at a glance, and needs to have a seamless experience when thinking of scaling to other products in the future.

Of equal importance at a glance, was displaying the “quick actions” taken during a given conversation. Agents actions are recorded in the conversation thread, as conversation history views, and back in the host product, all while utilizing newly designed “action record cards”. These components were designed with scaling in mind, being able to use them for more than just the given actions context for future features.

Iteration

Quick actions in the Communication Center involved building common service patterns for key flows and creating components for our growing design system. I was able to produce medium fidelity wireframes at a fast pace by leveraging our system’s components.

I presented numerous flows and prototypes to stakeholders at various stages, from focus group feedback sessions to influential product council presentations. I was able to synthesize needs from our clients’ company manager level, down to customer service agents.

The original CIP service order cards were designed for read-only data, displaying as much as possible in a given screen. However, space was a considerable issue given the amount of information.

To solve this, I designed a collapsible card block for our design system, showing only key details like order number, timestamp, and services. Additional information is hidden in a collapsible section, making the format scalable and reusable. We received considerable amount of feedback post launch that this change in format, which resulted in freed up space was beneficial to our users, allowing them to see more orders for larger clients within the small area of the customer information panel.

I collaborated cross-functionally with the PestPac product and engineering teams to understand user scheduling and payment collection in PestPac's CRM. This allowed me to create an optimal user experience for agents in Communication Center. Instead of replicating the host product, I provided a snapshot of basic requirements and developed an agnostic framework for future integrations.

The initial versions of the scheduling flow featured various form states where the order form and the scheduling form were either combined or displayed live returns of available time slots for scheduling services. We quickly realized this approach was not ideal. Due to how the API endpoints were architected from the host products, the wait times for returning results could vary significantly.

As a result, we segmented the flow across a few screens: an order form, time slot selection, and confirmation. This allowed us to standardize the form patterns and optimize user experience while considering engineering constraints.

Launch and reception

Due to timing and resource constraints in both the Communication Center and PestPac teams, destructive actions like canceling or unscheduling orders were postponed for a later release. This also applied to any sales flows, which will be integrated later.

Quick Actions were extremely well received by our customers and contact center agents. This feature is a significant win and has been crucial for retaining our communication services. Users can now stay in one application, achieve their goals faster, and be more productive.

What I learned

  • I learned the importance of early and frequent stakeholder feedback. This was critical as I juggled the needs of both PestPac and Slingshot (Contact Center) stakeholders.

  • Collaborating with two product and engineering teams helped me grow as a designer and better manage team expectations.

  • A considerable win from working on this feature was demonstrating the value of creating reusable patterns. Now, these patterns are standardized, allowing easy integration with any product and ultimately reducing both design and development time.