OVERVIEW : As a Product Designer at LodgeLink, I've had the opportunity to work on various projects, but I'm particularly excited to share a significant journey - the complete redesign of customer on-boarding Journey in the web application. In this case study, I will provide an in-depth exploration of the design process, unraveling the 'why' and 'how' behind the transformation of LodgeLink Customer On-boarding Journey works.
ROLE : PRODUCT DESIGNER
TIMELINE : 5 MONTHS
TEAM : Rob Normandeau (Product Manager & Engineering Head) , Team of Three engineers & myself as a Product Designer.
PROCESS: UX Research, Information Architecture, User journey Diagrams, Prototyping, User Testing, Product Strategy, Visual Design
ABOUT THE PRODUCT : LodgeLink is a platform where customers come and make a booking reservation for their crew workforce travel ahead of time. In order to make booking reservations the customers need to register with LodgeLink and create their own account and set-up their Organization. The get two levels of access when they finish on-boarding their organization with us. The org Admin level (Full Access) - First User / Booking Admin level (Restricted access) - Second user. The Org Admin can decide who within their Organization can have which access when joining LodgeLink. Not just booking reservation but we also provide Air/Ground Transportation bookings within our platform.
WHO ARE THE USERS : The customers who is wanting to come and book their accommodations for their workforce travel employees who work in the “Oil and Mining Industry” are the actual customers of this Product. Our customer are all around North America & Australia. The customer who register with us will be either using a Public domain name (Company ID) or a Private domain name (gmail, yahoo etc). Based on this domain name - they will go through a vetting process to see if their Org is legit and then approved.
PROBLEM STATEMENT : There is a lot of traffic that is generated due to org duplications and fake profiles as proper vetting process of the users are not in place. This is causing trouble internally to maintain customer accounts and eradicate fake/duplication of multiple user profiles.
GOAL : To build a simple and self-serving user experience for the user to on-board themselves and also eliminate the duplication of orgs/ profiles by introducing good vetting process to reduce the traffic in the database.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE :
I started with drawing the Information Architecture diagram to understand the product and user flow. From there I started drawing user flows to have a clear picture of the Customer on-boarding journey at different levels.
USER PAIN POINTS /CHALLENGES :
RESEARCH INSIGHTS (OLD PRODUCT DESIGN) :
#1
a) User profiles and their respective email ID was verified but not vetted based on their domain name.
b) Immediately there were let to create a new organization as the next step without checking if they were here to join an existing org or create a new org.
#2
a) Customers as part of the new Account creation can directly create a new organization without any check-points.
b) This lead to Duplication of orgs because there wasn’t any vetting process as new org’s were created by customers, competitors , sub-contractors etc.
#3
a)After org creation - Customers directly landed on org dashboards to book reservations instead of completing on-boarding steps as all features are enabled on the dashboard.
b) No proper cues and missing feedback loop for the customers on the dashboard in how to complete the org settings-up process.
EXPECTED USER FLOWS :
This made me clear that this wouldn’t end up having one user flow but 10 different flow possibility based on the user’s profiles as first/second user and approvals internally.
Public Domain org - means a company org’s ID eg: “renin.contigo.com”
Private Domain org - means any private domain id such gmail, yahoo etc. eg: “renin@gmail.com”
Public Domain Org - First user - Creating an new Org - LL Admin Approved
Public Domain Org - First user - Creating an new Org - LL Admin Declined
Public Domain Org - Second user - Joining an existing Org - Org Admin approved
Public Domain Org - Second user -Joining an existing org - Org Admin Declined
Private Domain Org - First user - Creating an new Org - LL Admin Approved
Private Domain Org - First user - Creating an new Org - LL Admin Declined
Private Domain Org - Second user - Joining an existing Org - Org Admin approved
Private Domain Org - Second user -Joining an existing org - Org Admin Declined
Auto approve on/off can be decided by Org Admin which can other flows too.
Org Admins - Sharing PI - With a (Private / Public Domain ID User ) With / without LL Account.
New User Flow
If domain names matches - Org Exist
If domain names doesn’t match - Org does not Exist
REDESIGN ACTION PLAN:
“NEED TO BE SIMPLE, YET SIGNIFICANT”
Must be intutive and easy to use with required feedback for the user to navigate effortlessly.
The new way must build trust between the user and platform*
Discoverability: Adding the vetting process to the user flow was ice on the cake moment which made it easy and Straight-foward for the user to on-board with ease and this eventually reduced the duplication of accounts and also helped them as they landed the org dashboard it was easy to accomplish the task of setting up the org first before starting to book.
Scalability : This opened up avenues to advocate few other design changes in the admin portal to foster self-awareness of Vetting. So we had to work on the timeline before development in understanding that the whole design change cannot go live without admin portal being fixed. So the challenge was to buy extra time from the stakeholders and internal customers to fix the customer on-boarding flow from end to end so there is no further issues when developed and released.
Planning & Demo’s : I had breakdown the tasks into smaller chunks as I was the only individual contributor of the design team, documentation, taking ownership of the design change from end to end , and giving demo to the customers to clarify for other pain points and requirements were crucial before starting to design. Then as I got the whole pic of the design change I started with low fidelity designs and slowly updated them into high fidelity designs once I confirmed the user flow is all good to developed.
I got the whole pic of the design change I started with low fidelity designs and slowly updated them into high fidelity designs once I confirmed the user flow is all good to developed. This definitely had a lot chaos, lot of meetings with the product manager, developers and the testing team. So all screens are ready with clickable prototypes so its easy for them to test and also develop with all UI design elements.
FINAL SHIPPED DESIGN
TO CREATE A NEW ORGANIZATION
#1 Create Organization
Click on Create a new org if you are the first user
#2
Enter the details of your organization to be created by signing the Master Service Agreement.
#3
Now the customer need to wait until the vetting of the Organization is complete and this eventually reduced the duplication of org creation in the database.
VETTING PROCESS BY ADMINS
#1
- Pending organization vetting request is created here and approved my admins by creating a note on the details of the Org and declined when unable to authorize details.
- New user requests are also vetted by admins and approved when done.
#2
When org requests are approved status of the respective Org changes from “Pending Approval” to “Active Status”.
#3
Upon approval of Orgs email notification is sent to Customers
JOIN AN EXISTING ORGANIZATION
#1 Join an Existing Org
Click on join organization if you are a second user of already created organization.
#2
Enter your Org Name, City and company so it’s easy to identify to which branch you belong to if there are two companies in the same name.
#3
If the platform identifies your org through your email ID then choose your org from the list. Making it easier for the second time user.
Completion of Organization Settings unlocks other product Features
#1
When user lands on the Org dashboard disabling other tabs what need to be actioned need (Org settings) to be available . Once the user sets-up the Org then booking facility is available for them.
Before - No proper direction is given to the user on the dashboard to complete the company settings first before they begin to start booking rooms.
After - Except Organization Settings all other features are disabled as completing the Company credentials are required to unlock the booking features.
Before - The customer is clueless to find what other steps are required to unlock the other features of the Product to start booking apart from completing the company details.
After - Here the progress tracker makes it a easier cue for the customer to finish the required steps in-order to unlock other product features and start booking.
LET’S TALK NUMBERS - IMPACT
Finally the solution performed well, we were able to measure success through our google analytics and data analyst team that the duplication of accounts were able to be completely sorted and deleted in the database. We are able to control the traffic by eliminating competitors or fake profiles by implementing a well vetted system within the Admin portal. The no of calls answered by the customer experience team went down drastically by 65%. And that was a huge win for the company in reducing cost. On-boarding of customers was at much ease and our internal customer experience team was able to get some positive testimonials from our top customers in having their feedbacks documented.
CHALLENGES & LEARNINGS
Biggest learning from the project is to have a good feedback system in place for the users to navigate on their own when they get stuck and help them with design solutions which would have good interaction Design in place.