Design an engaging employee and customer self-service experience - PowerPoint Presentation

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Design an engaging employee and customer self-service experience

Design an engaging self-service employee and customer experience

Insight: Designing an engaging self-service experience

Build a shared understanding of

your vision for the improvement of the employee and customer experience. Design and monitor the experience based on:A deep understanding of employee and customer needsClear design standards and a methodology that focuses on end users’ needsMetrics that highlight design issues and gapsAs you mature your approach, tailor the experience according to the specific needs of employee and customer personas and look for opportunities to reduce end users’ effort through increased self-service.

The Now Platform® offers multiple channels for employees and customers to self-serve or request services online, such as knowledge base articles, service catalogs, and chatbots. But if the user experience isn’t effortless and engaging, employees and customers are more likely to defect to alternative, more costly channels. Improving the self-service experience is not simply nice to have—when done right, it can improve productivity by reducing an employee’s or customer’s dependence on your service desk. Experience is the key to adoption. If you can get adoption right, you’re increasing the value you get from ServiceNow®.

Key implementation stepsStartImproveOptimize

4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps

5. Proactively enhance the experience

1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience

2. Engage with end users to identify needs

3. Create experience design standards

Step 1a: Create a vision for the ideal experience

I

mproving the end-user experience should be a key priority for ServiceNow implementations. You must have a

clearly defined vision that ensures a shared understanding of your desired end state. It’s also important to document the value you wish to achieve through improved experience. Draft a vision of what the improved employee and customer experience will look like. Highlight how ServiceNow contributes to business outcomes.

Document and socialize a vision for an ideal ServiceNow end-user experience for employees and customersResearch the drivers of what a good employee and customer experience looks like.Read external articles and research material to identify the key factors that define a good experience.Consider having your design team attend UX/UI design conferences to learn advanced approaches from your peers and industry leaders.

Document the vision for your ServiceNow experience design by including:Effortless self-service – Minimize the amount of outside effort customers need to put in to resolve their issues.Personalized – Focus on the needs of the individual.Proactive – React to and resolve needs before customers raise them.Map how the improved self-service experience impacts the ServiceNow adoption that CXOs in your organization will care about. Consider using historical data on ServiceNow to see what end users care about as well.Socialize the vision with your executive sponsor, senior leadership team, and ServiceNow development team by highlighting:

How the improved self-service experience impacts the business outcomes that CXOs in your organization care about. How teams will benefit from the improved experience and self-service, for example, by having fewer support calls.Steps

1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience2. Engage with end-users to identify needs3. Create experience design standards4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps

5. Proactively enhance the experience

Step 1b: Build championship for improved design

Improving the employee and customer experience is not simply nice to have for ServiceNow implementations.

To effectively prioritize the improved end-user experience design, please make sure that you have the necessary approved funding, it’s placed on

your ServiceNow roadmap, and your teams understand the impact of the improved experience. 

Build championship for improved employee and customer experience design Conduct an initial gap analysis between the current and desired state (the vision)—this will give you the data required to make the case for improving experience design.Design surveys to gather end users’ feedback on the ServiceNow applications and modules that are already live. Consider using the ServiceNow Survey Management application for the survey. Focus on:Customer effort – How much effort do they have to put in to resolve their need?Customer satisfaction – How satisfied are they with the services offered?Consider conducting the gap analysis with workshops or sprints to target specific end-user segments or parts of the user experience at a time.Collaborate with your executive sponsor to review the gap analysis findings, build urgency to invest in improved design, and discuss potential next steps.Secure executive sponsor buy-in to prioritize experience design in the form of approved funding.Make sure “improving employee and customer experience” is included in your ServiceNow

roadmap (usually maintained by the strategic governance team).Conduct yearly training sessions for ServiceNow developers and administrators about designing an engaging employee and customer experience.Steps

1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience2. Engage with end-users to identify needs3. Create experience design standards

4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps5. Proactively enhance the experience

Step 1c: Allocate resources toward experience design

Designing an engaging experience requires expertise beyond IT requirement gathering. Involve user research and UX design experts from other parts of your organization to help guide—and design—the employee and customer experience with ServiceNow.

Steps

1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience2. Engage with end-users to identify needs3. Create experience design standards

4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps5. Proactively enhance the experience

*Build a group of advisors for the employee and customer experience design portion of the Now PlatformIdentify the resources across your organization* with the following expertise:UX/UI designUser researchKnowledge of ServiceNow capabilities – Consider process users and ServiceNow developers.

Knowledge of ServiceNow end users – Consider service and application owners.Out of the resources identified, secure three to five individuals (formally assign them) to own the design and maintenance piece of the employee and customer experience on the Now Platform (this need not be their full-time role).Practitioner insight: Don’t just ask your system administrator to design the experience. Build a cross-functional design team with individuals who can look beyond the user interface to identify pain points from the employee and customer perspective.

Define the advisory group's roles and responsibilities 

Clarify the roles and responsibilities of the advisory group. Focus on the following responsibilities:Supervise user experience research studies.Define self-service experience design standards.Track metrics of success against the desired experience.Guide application owners, developers, and process users on understanding end users’ needs and designing engaging experiences.*If you don’t have design experts within your organization, consider working with ServiceNow professional services or design partners.

Step 2: Engage with end users to identify needs

To create an engaging experience, it’s important to understand who your end users are, what they need, and what their expectations are.

Identify service end users

Identify the categories of self-service interactions employees and customers have with ServiceNow.

These may include:Requests for new products or servicesThe ability to report on incidents or resolve issuesAccess to knowledge articlesIdentify a sample set of key end users for each of the above categories.Look across business units or functions (employees) and demographic profiles (customers).

Engage and observe end users to map out the state of the current experienceRandomly select at least three end users from each business unit or function (for employees) or demographic profile (for customers).Observe the day-to-day activities of the selected end users and interview them. Assume you know nothing about them in order to understand their service needs. Use the questions below:What do you do when you need to ________ (request a new service, for example)? Where do you look for alternatives?

I saw that you did ________. What you were trying to accomplish?What do you do when you get stuck on a screen or a step in the process?What challenges do you bump into while trying to complete ________? What frustrates you most about your current process?Based on your findings, map out the current state of the experience for each use case including:Steps – What are the key interaction steps in the service use case?Description – What is happening at each step?Channel – Are they using email, phone, or another medium?Pain points – Is anything particularly annoying, missing, or broken?Emotions – How are they feeling?

Practitioner insight: Always conduct user research studies, including interviews and focus group discussions, with the help of UX design and user research experts. Identifying end users’ needs for design considerations requires specific expertise that doesn’t always reside with internal-facing groups like IT.Steps1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience

2. Engage with end-users to identify needs3. Create experience design standards4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps

5. Proactively enhance the experience

Step 3: Create experience design standards

Create design standards that aim for an experience targeted toward your end users’

needs and that are

consistent across applications and services. To make design requirements relevant and realistic, create design mock-ups in collaboration with the development team and end users.

Define consistent design standards for the Now PlatformIdentify the design attributes, based on your findings from Step 2 (such as speed, availability on mobile devices, etc.), at each interaction step that could improve the experienceCreate design principles or guidelines, along with the design advisory group, that act as standards for all end user–facing applications and modules on the Now Platform by accounting for these elements:Optimized for mobile – All solutions must be optimized for a mobile experience.Less is more – Declutter screens to focus only on the solution.Corporate brand adherence – Use colors and fonts from corporate branding.Prompts to indicate next steps – Anticipate next steps and guide end users toward them.Simple navigation between pages – Optimize the positioning and number of clicks to minimize effort.Interactive filter navigation – Avoid making the end users go through a complex taxonomy, relying instead on search-based filters.Train all ServiceNow application owners and developers on the design guidelines.

Create a standard design requirements review process

Create design mock-ups that clearly indicate the desired end state of the service or application experience by focusing on:A description of what is happening at each stage The exact action steps required from an end userThe channel for interaction with the end user—mobile, tablet, desktop, chat, etc.Expected end-user emotions at each stepReview the design mock-up with the development team to ensure the technical feasibility, and review with the design advisory group to ensure consistency. Validate the design with end users.Seek feedback from three to five end users who actively use ServiceNow based on the design mock-ups (of applications such as the Service Portal) while considering:One-on-one usability tests to collect candid feedback

Focus group workshops to brainstorm design gaps and ideasSteps1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience

2. Engage with end-users to identify needs3. Create experience design standards4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps

5. Proactively enhance the experience Practitioner insight: Before asking for feedback, give end users the complete context—design goals, target audience, and underlying assumptions.

Step 4: Track metrics that indicate experience gaps

Design is an iterative process. The design must evolve, as end users’ needs change with the changing business context and as new technical capabilities become available.

Create and track metrics

that indicate potential design issues and highlight trends on the changing of end users’ needs. Create measures of success for experience designDefine measures of success for experience design (like lagging indicators that look at past data to indicate performance). Use these metrics on a five-point scale:

Customer effort score (CES) – Measured by asking, “How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?”Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT ) – Measured by asking, “How satisfied are you with the service today?”Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Measured by asking, “How likely are you to recommend this service to others?”Report (quarterly, if possible) on the measures of success to the executive sponsor and other senior leaders invested in ServiceNow. If the measures of success are low, conduct in-depth user research to diagnose the issues.

Create a dashboard of leading indicators* that highlight the trends on the day-to-day activities that influence the measures of successIdentify the leading indicators of success for each self-service interaction category identified in Step 2 while considering these indicators:Indicators for experience with incident managementIncident deflection due to self-service % of change in support calls per year (must decrease)Indicators for experience with knowledge base

% of repeated users% of positive responses% of outdated informationSearch term accuracyIndicators for experience with request management (through the service catalog)% of stagnant catalog items% of requests through “other” itemsCreate a dashboard to track the above metrics and consider using the ServiceNow Performance Analytics module.Ensure all teams concerned have access to the dashboard to obtain real-time insights.

Steps1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience2. Engage with end-users to identify needs

3. Create experience design standards4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps5. Proactively enhance the experience * Note: Low performance on any of these metrics need not be because of design flaws.

Step 5a: Tailor the experience based on user personas

To enhance and mature the experience design, tailor it to different end-user personas—representative user profiles that capture information on the user’s motives, personal preferences, work profiles, and psychographics. Building personas is time consuming, so before investing heavily in creating precise personas, evaluate the associated return on investment. 

Build personas

Engage with end users (follow Step 2) to document at least four to five personas that encompass a majority of your end users. Include:

Description – Details that help connect with this end userTheir 9 to 5 – The ins and ours of the persona’s day to help highlight how a solution might fit their needsPain points – Key hurdles that prevent getting their job done Perfect world – Their ideal future state to help with design requirementsInsights – Interesting details about this persona Quotes – Actual quotes from individuals who use this persona to inform design

Tailor the experience design based on an end-user personasFor each persona, map the current state experience (use guidance from Step 2).

Review the current state experience with the design team and identify the design attributes that are the most important for individual personas.Create new design standards tailored to the individual needs of each end-user persona.Socialize the end-user personas, their individual design needs, and new design standards with developers and service/application owners.Validate end-user personas once per year, every year, to tailor them based on ever-changing needs.Steps

1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience2. Engage with end-users to identify needs3. Create experience design standards4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps

5. Proactively enhance the experience

Evaluate the need to tailor the experience based on end-user personasAnalyze data on the measures of success (from Step 4) in order to identify the group of end users who either consistently:Indicate the experience as high effort, or Are not satisfied with the experience designEvaluate the impact of tailoring the group’s experience based on the business outcomes that your senior leadership team cares about.

Step 5b: Create incentives to improve the experience

Configuring the Now Platform for an enhanced end-user experience isn’t sufficient. To make the experience engaging and “sticky,” internal teams across the organization must understand their roles and proactively contribute while identifying end users’ pain points, soliciting feedback, and providing design improvement suggestions.

Create incentives to improve the end-user experience

Clarify individual responsibilities and accountability for improving the end-user experience. This will help internal team members understand how they can help and why. Here’s how different team members (within our customer organizations) contribute to improving the end-user experience:

Service owners – Must make sure the right service use cases are available for self-serviceSupport reps – Drive self-service adoption and solicit feedback to improve the experience on a real-time basisKnowledge management team – Makes sure employees and customers can access knowledge in a consumable and effortless mannerApplication owners (e.g., catalog managers) – Make sure their application UI/UX is developed according to proper design standards If applicable, make sure the metrics identified in Step 4 are formally included as goals for individuals and teams. For internal team members, prioritize improving the end users’ experience, performance, and goals. These must be tracked based on end users’ experience instead of just firefighting on known issues.To nudge internal team members to go above and beyond to improve end users’ experience, build incentives for individuals to drive the metrics tracked in Step 5a by considering these steps:Link individual bonuses (of those working in teams that directly influence experience) with employee and customer experience measures of success (defined in Step 5a).Highlight individuals who made a significant difference during town hall meetings or similar forums.Practitioner insight: ServiceNow teams may understand their role in creating an engaging experience for end users, but they’re unable to prioritize the experience because their performance isn’t measured by it. Instead of measuring performance based solely on operational metrics (like the number of calls answered), include metrics that reflect a better user experience, such as the number of cases deflected by self-service.

Steps1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience

2. Engage with end-users to identify needs3. Create experience design standards4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps5. Proactively enhance the experience

Step 5c: Track opportunities to increase self-service

Not all service use cases are suitable to deliver a good self-service experience. Proactively look for frequently requested use cases that can be offered as self-service in order to reduce the support call volume and include them in the ServiceNow project plan for implementation.

Identify service use cases that are suitable for self-service

Identify service use cases that can be automated to offer as self-service.

Analyze help desk data (at least quarterly) to indicate frequent requests.Interview support representatives to identify requests that can be resolved with a simple knowledge article, new policy, or automation (such as password resets).Evaluate the new functionality made available after every release to identify new opportunities for self-service. Evaluate the suitability of automating those service use cases and offering them through self-service:Evaluate the business value by considering:Expected cost savings per request (after redesign)Frequency of request and the number of end users impactedResolution time improvement (after redesign)Reduction in effort by the end user to fulfill the request Evaluate the complexity (associated with automating the processes to offer it as self-service) by considering:Risk (including security, data integration, regulation, compliance, and information privacy)Interdependencies with other applicationsEnd-user input requirementsNumber of approvals neededPrioritize high business value/low-complexity services that can become use cases for automation in the ServiceNow project plan.

Steps1. Set up to prioritize designing an improved end-user experience2. Engage with end-users to identify needs

3. Create experience design standards4. Track metrics that indicate experience gaps5. Proactively enhance the experience

Key performance indicators

Essential KPIs

Improvement in employee/customer experience, as measured by CSAT, NPS, CES (

customer effort score) or other measures% of frequent users against the total population% of staff who rate ServiceNow as easy to use and as meeting their needsNice-to-have KPIs% of budget allocated to enhance user experience# of user personas documentedStakeholder mapResponsible/accountableUX groupNow Platform owner Service and application ownersExecutive sponsorAdoption championsConsulted/informedAll the IT organizationBusiness leadersServiceNow users

Help desk and change management teamsKPIs and stakeholders

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