Chordiant Process Viewer Interface

1
Chordiant Process / Viewer Interface

• Case study in redesigning the user experience of
  Chordiants call center CRM product.

2
Company Overview

• Enterprise CRM application company
• Focus on large call center environment.
• Based out of CA with dev. group in NH
• Most front end application development in NH,
  back end server CA.
• Started as a services company
• Strong services mentality, struggling with
  becoming a true application developer.

3
Customer Service Advisor (CSA)

• CSA was the primary front end application shipped
  with Chordiants Foundation Server product at the
  time I joined the company.
• Out of the box CSA was never used for anything
  more than demos.
• Very little value attributed to the shipped UI.
  Little more than a POC.
• Existing UI did not map to real business use
  cases.
• Development had very little knowledge of customer
  usage.
• Product Management team was quite weak and had
  little expertise / high turnover at all levels.
• All knowledge was with field teams, who had no
  time to communicate that information back to
  application engineering because they were swamped
  building custom implementations.
• CSA performance was extremely slow.
• Totally unacceptable page load times for call
  center market, on the order of tens of seconds.
• Each deployment essentially a one off built by
  professional services.
• This was a major bottleneck to delivering on time
  to customers and resulted in many support,
  training, documentation, and upgrade nightmares.
• This model was a carry over from Chordiants
  service provider roots, so some did not see it as
  a major problem.

4
Need for Design

• The application development organization (total
  of 15 people when I started) recognized they
  needed to build a more valuable offering if they
  wanted to survive.
• There was an existing commitment to development
  process and product design, but Chordiant had
  very limited design resources in-house.
• (one former engineer and one former marketing
  manager in design roles, with the latter focused
  on Chordiants Europe based database marketing
  product)
• Strong desire for contextual analysis,
  prototyping (paper interactive), usability
  testing and the like, but no prior experience in
  those areas on the design team.
• Given the size of the team, remote location of
  the application development group, and lack of
  interest in the existing offering they were
  working essentially off the radar.
• Failure of the next CSA release likely meant
  shutdown of that development group, thus they
  were highly motivated to build something of value.

5
Existing CSA UI Design

• MDI structure in a browser.
• Each window had very low data density (only a
  handful of fields).
• Each window had links to other views or actions
  that in turn opened in a new window.
• Navigation system had little logical structure to
  it.
• One customer could quickly have many windows open
  related to a single contact (phone, email)
• Customer management links added as a quick fix to
  window management problem.
• Had to manually refresh windows to see updates
  made elsewhere.
• Very slow!!!

6
Research Phase

• Objective
• Build an out of the box Call Center application
  that addresses the core needs of most customers.
• To that end we
• Identified some customer success stories.
• Visited sites to see what was built for each
  customer and how it was being used. (what worked
  what didnt?)
• Observed and interviewed many end users of the
  product. (call center reps, supervisors,
  managers, IT)
• Evaluated information for common themes goals .

7
Developed User Profiles (persona)

• Identified essential user types and wrote one
  page named descriptions for each one, such as
• Henry Expert Customer Service Representative
• Age 32 AA in Business Administration.
• Comfortable with the Internet and computer
  technology.
• Been a CSR for 4 years.
• Received 4 weeks classroom and 2 weeks on the job
  training.
• Works with approximately 100 other CSRs, most
  with over 2 years experience.
• Noisy environment everyone talking on headsets
  all the time.
• Calls automatically routed when available.
• Handles escalation as well as front line calls.
• Promotions and bonuses based on productivity
  metrics.
• Etc

8
Identified Requirements Key Characteristics

• Productivity is key!!!
• Need phone system integration.
• Need keyboard navigation.
• Fast page loads essential.
• Performance, performance, performance 1
  priority to compete in the call center market.
• Design for experts
• CSRs use this application all day everyday. They
  are all extensively trained.
• High data density needed on all pages.
• Show essential information when its of value /
  anticipate needs.
• Interaction needs to be customer centric.
• All data must remain current and in synch.
• Support servicing multiple customers across
  several channels.
• Support several tasks active at once for a single
  customer.
• Need to start, work on, pause, restart and
  complete multiple tasks in any order.
• Allow navigation between customer data and
  transactions at all times.
• Support customer transfers from one CSR to
  another maintaining all active processes.

9
The Solution

• The Process / Viewer Interface (PVI) is a
  comprehensive customer view that allows for
  execution of multiple tasks in any order. A user
  can switch between different tasks and
  information views at any point, copy and paste
  information, and queue up new tasks as needed.
• The main components of the PVI are,
• Customer window
• Customer thumbnail
• Process panel
• Available process list
• Current process list
• Process work area
• Processes
• Data view tabs
• Phone integration
• Interaction wins,
• Single customer view.
• State of last customer interaction is always
  maintained.
• Processes are modeless (not locked out of the
  rest of the UI).
• Processes can be queued up and addressed later.
• Auto customer identification.
• Easy transfer of cases to other agents.

10
Testing, Refinement Development

• Overall what became the Call Center Advisor (CCA)
  project took just over a year to complete. In
  that time we executed several iterations of
  designs that were extensively evaluated with
  customers, target users and internal stake
  holders using paper prototypes, design reviews,
  html mockups, and other means. Findings were used
  to further refine the final design.
• In the end CCA was a phased release. The initial
  release incorporated phone integration and a
  revamp of the application navigation system into
  CSA. Phase two incorporated all the changes
  related to the customer view or PVI design.
• Acceptance by customers and the field
  implementation teams of CCA was immediate and
  phenomenally positive. It offered an out of the
  box UI that had all the major components most
  clients needed. This allowed teams to focus on
  customizing the available activities to meet each
  customers specific needs.
• Post CCA release focus shifted to building out
  activities for specific vertical markets such as
  credit card transaction disputes, collections and
  leads management areas that are now the primary
  focus of Chordiants business.

11
Design Patent

• As the PVI design came together the team realized
  it could be generalized to work with other
  conceptual entities, not just customers.
• It was also apparent that this UI addresses a
  variety of common issues in a novel manner.
• Near the end of the design phase, as the design
  lead on the project I personally drafted a 16
  page invention disclosure form for the PVI.
• That document was handed off to Mc Lane, Graf,
  Raulerson Middleton, PA a firm contracted by
  Chordiant to handle the patent application.
• The patent was applied for on August 12th, 2003,
  made it through the initial review phase with
  minor revisions and received final approval on
  February 17, 2005.

US Patent Application Serial Number
10/639735 Filed August 12, 2003 Process /
Viewer Interface Abstract A user interface for
viewing reference data associated with a
conceptual entity and for execution of one or
more complex processes for manipulating the data
includes a process panel having one or more
on-screen objects for the execution of the
complex processes and a process work area for
displaying a state of selected complex processes.
A data viewer includes a content pane for the
display of the reference data and one or more
on-screen objects for selectively displaying at
least a portion of the reference data and the
process panel and data viewer are framed within a
common window. The process panel and data viewer
are selectably viewable and occupy overlapping
positions within the common window. Inventors Da
rren M. Hewson Cleveland, GB J. Michael
Myles Manchester, NH Michael J. Ruggieri
JR. New Boston, NH James D. St.
Jean Francestown, NH