Reducing customer support pressure by through content design and presentation
I reduced the customer support tickets by 17%, helping our customers spend less time writing emails and getting to the fun stuff faster--surfing freely!
Macbook Air
My Role
Product Designer
The Team
2 Marketing specialists
1 Operations manager
3 Stakeholders
Skills + Tools Used
UX, User research, Figma, Shopify, Google Forms
Process
Research → Audit → Data → Web Ads + Content → Education + Guidance
Timeline
1 year
Problem
Customer service team received significant volume of support tickets for topics already addressed by FAQ and support pages.
Goal
Identify why customers were not utilizing the existing FAQ and support pages in order to relieve the customer support team’s ticket volume.
So. Why All the Tickets?
The support team encountered an issue where, in one week, they’d received surprising amount of messages concerning issues with products that were already answered in the FAQ. After speaking with the team, I discovered that this issue was common and had been largest use of their bandwidth.
It’s too long.
Initial Thoughts - “The Great Wall of Text”
The informational content was text-based and quite massive. While there were illustrations sparsely placed, the first thing that occurred to me is that it made sense why customers didn't want to read.
But I needed data to validate up my hypothesis so I ventured to our customer contact list once more to begin the data gathering process.
I Conducted User Interviews with 3 Primary Customer Types to Reduce Competency Bias
The customer types were defined by their experience creating surf boards and their ability to digest the information.
Beginner
Is the newbie overwhelmed by the information?
Intermediate
Can the intermediate user lean something new?
Expert
Does the expert user have a unique perspective or streamline phrasing?
With the defined users, I asked each a question concerning the website information
“Please read the following web page and provide us with description of your experience.”
“The amount of reading was overwhelming, I had to skim to find the info.”
“Lots of great stuff on there! Little long though.”
Reduce information overload by creating shorter form content, summing up the knowledge from each section, and provide the option to view/engage with long form content.
Conclusion
Let’s teach’em to paddle
With the probable solution found, I worked hand in hand with content writers on the marketing team to ensure that the shortened versions of every subject were were addressed properly.
Each was broken down into a formula
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Discover highlights of each FAQ and reduce to an MVP
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Create icons and illustrations for visual communication
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Provide links to in-depth content for interested readers
But how do we do that?
Reduction and reformat results
Reduce Info Overload
Discover highlights of each FAQ and reduce to an MVP
Utilize Visual Indicators
Create icons and illustrations for visual communication
Provide Long Form Options
Provide links to in-depth content for interested readers
Redesign results
17%
reduction in client help tickets.
How Were the Waves?
Transferable understanding of the culture led to a quicker, more effective dynamic with others.
With only a background in skateboarding, it was easier than I’d anticipated to immerse myself in the culture of surfing and water sports through the team. I found this immeasurably helpful as it allowed me to:
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Learn the lingo to understand the etiquette (such as “don’t drop in on someone else’s run, it’s bad manners!”)
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Participate in the rituals of community to connect with others that want to build a solid board and have a great ride.
How Would I Surf Differently?
If I paddled back out, I’d explore video content.
In keeping up with the modern era, video content (in this instance, short form) would have been the area I’d have liked to explore with the team. With revenue trending up, it would’ve been a blast to examine what had been done before with the Master Class product and make updated changes.
Want to Surf Together?
Fire away an email to: harrisonklostreich@gmail.com