OVERVIEW
A large, multi-national software solutions company wanted to assess the technology used operationally for a particular internal business unit containing two user groups: the Digital Sales team & the Digital Presales team. The goal of the research was to identify: pain points in these people's workflow; unmet needs; and opportunities for improvement. Ultimately, the company wanted to understand these teams (which were fairly new in the organization) and their workflow better in order to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.
Deliverables: Personas, journey maps, service blueprint, report outlining findings & recommendations
APPROACH
Stakeholder Interviews: In order to truly understand what questions we should be asking, we conducted interviews with team mangers and directors. I interviewed one person from Spain and another from ??, asking about their candid opinons of the setup, what they thought their teams were using, where they sensed pain points might exist, and what feedback they'd already heard from the two user groups.
User Interviews: Two people on my team traveled to Texas and to Prague in order to conduct 24 one-on-one interviews with members of each user group and view their workstations and technology set-up in context. The client was responsible for recruiting participants for the study, and each session was recorded for note-taking purposes. Participants were informed that their data would not be shared with anyone in their own company.
Interview Guide One:
The first interview guide was developed for the first 12 interviews (6 of each user group) and is focused more on capturing a broad view of the teams' process, and what type of technology (hardware and software) they used during each stage. We also wanted to get an idea of where the teams overlapped in order to frame both the journey of an individual on each team. We asked about qualifications and motivators too, to help shape the personas. These notes were taken in a spreadsheet grid that outlined steps of the sales process (which had been identified in the stakeholder interviews).
Interview Guide Two:
The second interview guide takes a deeper dive into the why and the how - preferences about the technology - rather than what is being used when (we already had a good idea about this from the first set of interviews). In these second interviews, we started by asking about qualifications & motivations (for the personas) but then asked people to rate, using a scale of faces, the types of technology they had available to them. We formulated this list from what we had learned in the first set of interviews.
Next, we showed participants what we had filled in from previous interviews to validate that we did indeed have the what and the when figured out.
ANALYSIS
Journey Maps: With a complete picture of what technology is used when, where teams overlap, and what needs aren't being met, we created journey maps to show team members' interaction with tech and IT support teams at each stage of the sales process. I began this process by converting the notes from the first set of sessions (using interview guide 1) and pasting each individual's data points into the appropriate category using MURAL. Each participant's data is seen in a unique color. The initial map was modified as the second round of interviews was conducted. Because this was a diagnostic study, anytime people encountered problems with technology they were, of course, frustrated. I recommended removing the "emotional" component of the journey map and instead we added a 'swim lane' for opportunities. Although I would not have preferred it, time and ability constraints forced the final iteration of my journey map to be completed in powerpoint by another team member. Iterations below.
Personas: The process of creating personas for these two groups was a little bit messy. While we initially tried to define them based on their roles, we were finding a lot of overlap. We began them in MURAL, which proved too cumbersome, so we shifted to an excel spreadsheet that might help us visually parse out or find differences between the groups. It was clear that though the client had asked for 4-6 personas, we found that the data showed more similarities than differences between roles within the two groups. Ultimately, we created three personas.
Report:Using the assets above and additional analysis of the notes, we put together an extensive report that outlined key findings as well as recommendations for designing a better service for both teams. The issues that we found were supported by anonymous quotes from the interviews. After much discussion and re-working, we distilled all of the issues mentioned in all 24 interviews along with corresponding recommendations into the following categories: GIS Support; Hard to Find Information; Data Problems; Poor Integration; Slow Performance; Phone Issues; Conference Room Issues; Missing Technology; Location Differences; Localization Issues; Mobility; Training; Proposal Issues
Analysis of emoji ratings by participant (method used in second set of interviews)
OUTCOME
Despite not delivering the scoped number of personas, and our own feeling that we had not uncovered much that the client did not know about, the report was received extremely well. It turns out that though many of these issues had been suspected, or known about by some people, the client was relying on our research to bring proof to these claims in order to make fundamental changes and apply for increased budget for the two teams. We presented to Vice Presidents, Directors, and Managers in all different locations and all lauded the thoroughness of our research and reporting, talking amongst themselves on the call about how to immediately implement our recommendations. The UXC signed on with this client for another project shortly after.