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Global Contact Center Changes Business Model – Carves a Niche in Enterprise Conversational AI 

Overview

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BACKGROUND

  • Disjointed products in silos, limiting from reaching true potential​

  • Missing opportunities in an emerging AI market 

  • Underutilized resources and capabilities

  • No direct access to customers, internal resistance to change

     

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GOAL

  • Unified customer service product suite - one-stop, self-serve, AI-enabled powerhouse

  • Potential: +60% Automation Rates, +25% NPS, +20% Agent Productivity, +215% Return on investment

  • Become a market leader in Conversational AI

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MY ROLE

  • Lead UX Designer

  • Research the 12+ products and customers

  • Collaborate with 15+ PMs and SMEs

  • Guide the product roadmap 

  • Design platform and pave product design strategy for the platform and individual products

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OUTCOMES

  • Company wins Multiple Awards won 2022-24

  • Gartner Magic Quadrant Niche Player in Enterprise Conversational AI (2022, 2023)

  • Client success stories

  • Promoted from Sr Designer to Design Lead

  • Company awards from 2019-2021

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[24]7 AI: Call for a change

[24]7 AI is a leading AI-powered customer service provider to Fortune 500 clients. Starting as a BPO, it rapidly grew into digital technology, with 12-14 powerful products using AI/ML technology for conversational AI, natural language IVR, and predictive insights. 
 

Despite being ahead in AI technology and an award-winning contact center, it was losing out to competitors due to disconnected client experiences.

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It called for a shift from enterprise-focused managed services to a flexible self-service platform for every business, regardless of size or technical expertise.​

  • A unified platform with all it's products, serving as a one-stop, self-serve, AI-enabled customer service powerhouse

  • Potential of increased automation rates, enhanced productivity, improved client NPS, and significant ROI gain.

My Role: Interaction Design Skills and Project Leadership 

I was a senior interaction designer hired to lead this effort. I faced several significant challenges. Real-life projects in start-up environments and low design maturity hardly allow for a single traditional design process.

My knowledge of Double Diamond, Design Sprint, and Service Design methodologies helped me cherry-pick the right techniques to build a unified AI-powered customer engagement platform and pave the way for the company to achieve its long-term objectives.

Challenge 1: Limited Access to Clients and Diverse User Personas

A significant hurdle was the lack of direct access to current clients due to leadership concerns about setting unrealistic expectations. In order to conduct external user testing, we needed a pretty diverse demographic with really specific technical skills which was beyond our budget. 

​

To overcome this:

  • I collaborated with key internal team members who had direct client contact, such as customer success, solutions delivery, and account managers, to gather insights on current client behavior.

  • Identified KPIs, top user needs, and what can be done to address them.  

  • ​Created a product roadmap for the next 2 years in order to achieve company goals and address all user needs.
     

This approach allowed me to gain valuable user insights despite the limitations, ensuring the final product met real user needs. 

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Stakeholder Mapping

Identifying critical players in the company eases  critical collaborative tasks required to tackle complex projects.  

Business Needs

  • Reduce high churn rates and revenue loss

  • Concerns about risking contact center reputation - the more revenue generating branch of the company

  • Reduce attrition rates and concerns from senior staff resistant to the change in autonomy and service model 

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Customer Needs

Key issues and themes identified to address in order to build a unified Engagement Cloud Product Suite
 

High Level Product Roadmap

Focused on a step-up approach - laying the foundation and building up a scaleable solution,considering technical feasibility, business needs and client priorities. ​

Year 1
Internal Users
Minimal self-serve
  • Common portal, minimal inter-connectivity
  • SSO and navigation
  • Consistent terminology, Product documentation
Year 2
Operational Leads
Self-serve for main apps
  • Simplified client and user management
  • Onboarding wizard
  • Increased interconnectivity in each channel
Year 3+
Open for all
Full self-serve
  • Guided onboarding bots
  • Day-0 CX solutions
  • Free trials, upgrade/downgrade online 

Challenge 2: Connecting Siloed Products and Technologies

One of the primary obstacles was integrating multiple products built on different technologies into a cohesive platform. For that I needed to first understand the ecosystem and technology - the world of AI and ML in Customer Service.

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To address this:

  • I met with 20+ product SMEs, managers, developers and engineers to understand how each of the 12 apps worked, the complex AI/ML technology behind them and how our clients used them.

  • Collaborated with the product manager to develop a feature mapping exercise, reducing redundancies and identifying gaps across applications.

  • Created system blueprints for key customer service journeys, which helped identify integration points and API requirements.

  • Established an understanding of the company eco system and various products that are needed for an end-to-end customer service journey.​ 

  • I created an early design concept and a narrative that helped drive Marketing and Sales pitches, and presented this at an open company showcase to gather diverse internal feedback.
     

These efforts resulted in a more streamlined product suite and a clear architecture for the new platform, enabling better inter-app connectivity and a more unified user experience.

Information Architecture

Using Card Sorting and Affinity Mapping, features across all existing products sorted into logical groups, removing redundancies, identifying gaps, leading to a more structured organization.

Information Architecture Card Sort and Mapping
Voice Conversational AI Flow System Blueprint

System Blueprint: Voice Bot with Human Agent

One of the many customer journeys mapping end-to-end job to be done. This helped the product leadership understand which tools should be banded together for enterprise product packages.
 

Read Case Study

247 AI Ecosystem

Outside-in: Identifying the tasks in an end-to-end customer service journey, which technologies can fulfill these tasks, and which tools house those technologies.

Product Ecosystem
Early Design Concept Showcase

Initial Design Concept

Connected all products into a cohesive ecosystem. 
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While the story is great for a website pitch, a functional enterprise portal home page​ needs to be task-focused.

Challenge 3: Consistency in Brand and User Experience for an Enterprise Product Suite

With multiple disconnected systems, creating a consistent design language was crucial to establish brand identity. The platform needed to serve clients of various sizes and technical abilities to promote self-service.

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I addressed these key issues: 

  • Access: Established a consistent authentication system for the portal as well as all products, including notifications and rules for sign-out, time-out and multiple sessions, by working directly with IT on the Okta developer site.

  • Branding: Collaborated with design+dev teams across the company to establish a common visual branding and UI system, including layout typography, icons, colors and components, and navigation.

  • Content: Established a consistent technical terminology working with conversation designers, UX designers, data scientists, and developers. Also created consistent app deployment stages, contextual help messages, product documentation, and system error messages.
     

These actions led to a more cohesive brand identity and improved user experience across the entire platform.

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Terminology

Understanding various processes across the platform, both technical and process. 

Conducted extensive meetings to standardize terms, communication across the teams to update in front-end and back-end systems
 

Wireframes

With inputs from Showcase and from competitive analysis, drafted wireframes for the home page for dev team to start their analysis and framework building.

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Navigation

A/B Testing Navigation candidates with internal users, finalizing one which works for all main apps. 

Vertical secondary navigation and Horizontal Tertiary Navigation
 

SSO

  • User flows for various authentication scenarios

  • Worked on Okta Developer App to standardize branding, notifications, alerts

  • Establishing rules across app

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Designs

Version 0 Release for Showcase

Version 0 Release for Showcase

- Hero area occupying prime real estate - Too much description

Version 1

Version 1

- Removed hero image - Updated icon branding, indicating locked/not purchased - Need non-technical views for agent leads

Iteration 2

Iteration 2

Dropdown on top right to switch views

Iteration 1

Iteration 1

- Inspired by Adobe CC - Various user profiles for filtering views

Iteration 4

Iteration 4

- Simplified Dashboard views after updating to DOMO

Iteration 3

Iteration 3

- Add View at the top to include custom views for any operational lead - Ability to include custom reports from Tableau

Current Production Version

Current Production Version

Simplified apps + Dashboard to add a customized dashboard

Current Production Dashboard

Current Production Dashboard

Insights displayed from DOMO, custom reports with configurable metrics

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Outcomes

1

For 247 AI

2

For Me

  • Won the Hackathon 2019: One-Click Bot, leading to the onboarding wizard 

  • Won company awards in 2020 and 2021

  • Earned promotion from Senior Designer to Design Lead

3

What's Next?

The next goals are to add on newer capabilities, building towards full self-service

  • Free Trials

  • Day-0 Bots

  • Bot-guided Onboarding

  • User Management

  • Customer Onboarding

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