TL;DR

Optimizing an IT Help Desk

Our team was tasked with finding how customers interact with government IT desk and how their experience could be improved as their ticket moves through the system. We conducted pre-discovery desk research, quantitative data analysis, and discovery research to uncover key insights.

Over 4 months, our work optimized the value of IT service offerings for nearly 100,000 users across the agency by conducting 45+ hours of interviews, generating a customer journey map, an ideal state prototype, customer archetypes, and actionable insights delivered to the department’s Assistant CIO and CIO.

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CHALLENGE

Understanding a Customer’s Experience Across Tiered IT Support

Our team collaborated with a government IT service desk (for employees) to determine the root causes for lower engagement and customer satisfaction scores. The agency had undergone structural changes which necessitated an evaluation of service delivery and leadership was keen to understand how to improve the experience of those submitting service tickets.

Leadership wanted to:

▶︎ Know how customers interact with the IT desk and how these interactions could be improved;
▶︎ Better understand and improve customer experiences across transitions of tiered help desk support (as tickets move through the system).

The Team

Lean Team of 4

The team was made of 4 members who were not dedicated, full time resources. I was a UX Strategist and Researcher as well as co-lead along with another design strategist, a part time designer, and a part time data analyst.

Approach

Comprehensive But Strategic

The team conducted comprehensive and multilateral research in 3 targeted phases by leveraging existing research:

  • Pre-discovery Research – Desk research into people, processes, and tools to understand how IT desk compared to other industry leaders.
  • Quantitative Data Analysis – Research analysis of  existing data to understand the current customer experience based off utilized metrics.
  • Discovery Research – Over 45 hours of in-depth research and interviews with 22 customers, 20 staff members, and 18 subject matter experts to identify bright spots, pain points, and opportunities. Resulted in 928 customer qualitative data points (quotes) and insights.
DELIVERABLES AND IMPACT

Optimizing Value

Our team optimized the value of IT service offerings for nearly 100,000 users by conducting 45+ hours of interviews, generating a customer journey map, an ideal state prototype, customer archetypes, and actionable insights delivered to the department’s Assistant CIO and CIO.

Customer Journey Map

We synthesized with data to form a comprehensive understanding of the full IT ticketing system. The final customer journey map details the customer journey from problem awareness to resolution. The journey was created based on real customer data from 22 qualitative interviews.

Ideal State Prototype Screens

Produced in Sketch and InVision outlining the ideal and state of the IT intranet site landing page, an open tickets page, and a series of screens that detail the progress of a ticket and actions a customer can take on the re-imagined platform.

Customer Archetype Report

Report detailing 10 customer types in depth. It includes an overview page that details the synthesized attitudes activities anxieties aspirations from the point of view of that type of customer along with a selection of direct customer quotes.

Actionable Insights

After completing research synthesis we identified:

Key Discovery Research Insights – Through primary research, we uncovered 6 overarching themes on topics such as workarounds, ticket status, onboarding, and ticket escalation and about 20 key insights to inform decision making.
Opportunity Areas – Our customer journey map identified 14 opportunity areas for service improvement in each phase of the IT ticketing process.
Customer Experience Recommendations – We delivered 51 tailored customer experience recommendations for service delivery improvement, highlighting “quick wins” that could be implemented in the near-term to address pain points.
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