Enhancing Service Visibility and Subscription Options to Improve Ticket Submission for the School District customers
Background
NERIC, a cooperative educational technology services and support provider, collaborates with over 100 entities to deliver a range of essential services. These entities regularly submit tickets to request and manage these services. However, the current ticket submission process is plagued by inefficiencies and confusion. Users lack visibility into which services their district has subscribed to, and the portal does not facilitate the discovery or subscription of new services. Additionally, the inability to submit tickets for non-subscribed services is not communicated effectively, leading to frustration and workflow disruptions.
The Project Challenge
NERIC's ticket submission portal must be redesigned to address several critical issues. The main challenges are:
Visibility and Transparency: Users need a clear view of which services are subscribed to and available within their district.
Service Discovery and Subscription: The portal should enable users to learn about and request subscriptions to new services easily.
Effective Communication: The system must clearly inform users about the restrictions on submitting tickets for non-subscribed services to prevent confusion and streamline the workflow.
The goal is to create a more intuitive, user-friendly portal that enhances the overall user experience, reduces frustration, and improves operational efficiency for NERIC and its entities.
My Role
As a lead designer on this project, I took on these key activities:
Stakeholder Engagement: Conducted comprehensive interviews with stakeholders to gather insights and understand their needs and expectations.
Solution Development: Collaborated on solution brainstorming sessions to generate effective design strategies.
Usability Testing: Conducted usability testing to validate concepts and ensure the solutions met user needs.
Design Execution: Created high-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes to present final solutions to the client.
Implementation Collaboration: Worked closely with the development team to ensure seamless implementation of the product design solutions.
Identified business needs through Stakeholder interviews
The client’s organization has 100 entities who regularly submit tickets for various services. However, they face significant challenges due to a lack of information about which services their district has subscribed to. Additionally, they cannot learn about or request subscriptions to new services. Moreover, entities cannot submit tickets for services they are not subscribed to, but the portal currently does not communicate this restriction effectively.
Service Discovery Challenges: School district administrators struggle to find the services they need.
Support Request Difficulties: Administrators are unable to request support for specific services.
The current portal doesn't have a way to effectively communicate service subscriptions and available services to each school district.
“We constantly receive complaints from different districts that school administrators can't find the services they need and are unable to request support for specific services. This problem has persisted for years.”
- Program Manager
Research
I've started with analyzing how customers navigate the current portal, tracking their journey from page to page before requesting service support. I've observed numerous loops in user journeys, leading to tickets frequently being rerouted to the wrong service support team.
User research synthesizing
We conducted user interviews and surveys with our client's customers to pinpoint key user needs and pain points. Utilizing the affinity mapping technique, we synthesized these findings and identified recurring patterns.
Key findings
80% of users are unaware of the full list of services their district has subscribed to.
70% of users expressed interest in learning about additional services.
60% of users have attempted to submit tickets for non-subscribed services, leading to frustration.
50% of users were unaware that they could not submit tickets for non-subscribed services until after attempting to do so.
Problem Statement
A lack of visibility of subscribed services, hindering customers' ability to learn or request new services. The portal fails to communicate the restriction against ticket submissions for non-subscribed services, leading to inefficiencies and confusion within the workflow.
Solution Exploration
Establishing the data structure and creating user flows
I crafted the user flow diagram to present to the dev team and brainstormed how we would store and link data, also to understand and plan what pages and UI components I needed to design.
Service Categories
Based on stakeholder interviews and customer research, I identified the need to clearly display categories and include service offerings.
One of the key aspects of the new feature on the main categories page is to visually differentiate between subscribed and available services, with a particular emphasis on highlighting the services to which the districts (customers) are subscribed.
Subscription types filter
By including filters for "All," "Subscribed," and "Available," we enable users to view their subscribed services and available-for-purchase offerings across each and all categories.
Result/Solution
Final Solution
Setting up the KPI to measure the product success
I collaborated with stakeholders to establish KPIs for the new Service Subscription and Ticket Submission Process Improvement product, ensuring it measures success, validates the solution, achieves business goals, and addresses customer pain points.
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