radhikabelkhede

Generative research strategy for designing “to-be” Fulfilment journey. 

PROJECT SCOPE

• Client– Co-nnect Telecom 

• Timeframe– It was a long term project with parallel work going on in different stages of order life cycle journey. The project went over a period of 6 months.  

• My role-UX Researcher 

• Team– We were a team of three, I was the sole researcher working along with a Service Designer and UX designer.

• Method– In-depth qualitative colleague interviews, Personas, Experience Maps,Desk Research, Affinity Mapping, Survey Analysis, Empathy Mapping

• Tools– Mural,Adobe XD, Figma, Teams, Word Speech to text tool  

CLIENT KICKOFF

Co-nnect Telecom is a telecommunications company that provides global security, cloud and networking services to multinational companies worldwide, with operations in 180 countries. Co-nnect telecoms Management highlights their broadly digital and IT services as DigiCo.  DigiCo is designing the future business and operating model of Co-nnect Telecom by rethinking the experience of  customers and colleagues, and re-imagining how to work end to end.The whole journey of a Digico order goes under several phases and one of them is Fulfilment, normally termed as GET within the organisation. 

OBJECTIVES

• Envision the end to to end transformation of the FulFilment colleague and customer journey and designing a to-be Fulfilment journey. 
• Understand the pain points and needs of customers and colleagues involved 
• To produce a single Digico GET (Fulfilment) Service Design Blueprint along with supporting UX/CX artefacts that maps out a proposition agnostic journey (initially) of all actors involved and their various touchpoints. 
• Dive into proposition specific journey at a later stage to map out the intricacies of different propositions involved.  

NOTES

With the goal of rethinking entire Digico journey, simultaneous work was going on in different stages of Digico life cycle which in abbreviated form was termed as LBGUPS and for each stage a “To-be” journey was being designed. 
 

The Process

Fulfilment (Get) is the phase of service delivery in which the customer receives the products or services offered by CT physically or virtually. All the steps starting right after the contract has been signed with the customer till actual delivery of the orders comes under Get. Co-nnect telecom’s goal was to rethink and enhance the experience of customers and its colleagues when in Get stage to ensure a smooth and hassle free delivery of the order. 

The project aimed at creating a “To-be” Get  journey depicted through a Service Blueprint artefact which gave me the opportunity to work closely with a service designer. The diagram below majorly focuses on my individual involvement and contributions that I could provide being the sole researcher.

Stakeholder Mapping

In the initial phase we started discussions with the team which included process designers, project managers to understand the actors involved in the Get journey. These were scheduled calls where the team would get together with us to help us understand the different phases of the get journey, what happens in these phases and who all actors get involved. 

We realised that Digital order Professional and Programme manager play crucial role in the journey and they helped us map all the actors customer and colleague side with whom they interact while processing the order. This mapping helped us get a broader view of actors getting involved at different stages of the journey. 

In-depth Colleague Qualitative Interviews 

In the initial phase we started discussions with the team which included process designers, project managers to understand the actors involved in the Get journey. These were scheduled calls where the team would get together with us to help us understand the different phases of the get journey, what happens in these phases and who all actors get involved. 

Methodology

• With respect to taking interview, I was the interviewer, and the service designer was the note taker. We scheduled 1 hour interview sessions which focused on understanding the participants nature of work, their work responsibilities and their role in Get stage, interactions, their needs and the problems they are facing. 
• Screener- We realized that there were few actors involved at the beginning stages of the get journey who had primary roles to play so we started with their interviews first. Digital Order Professional, Project Manager, Program Delivery Lead were few of the roles we started our interview with. 
• Remote Moderation- These were 1-hour interviews conducted online via teams and recorded with participant’s permission.

Interview Findings

• The detailed interview sessions helped us in mapping the individual involvement of these actors in different phases of the get journey. 
• Got to understand the frustrations and pain points these actors are facing and recognize the gap for improvement. 
• Discussions with project manager helped us in understanding the basics of different propositions. 

Customer Research

In order to get customer insights we had to dig down deep and find ways to get some insights so as to understand customers point of view and involvement across the Get journey. 

The Process

• Since there was no customer research done specifically on get journey we started with proposing conducting customer research through a detailed research plan. 
• We conducted surveys across 390 customers to identify answers to some overarching questions with regards to order delivery such as – How are customers finding current engagement experience, are they happy with the overall delivery process and what could better work for them. 
• The surveys were sent to existing large and large spending customers with whom the client has been doing business with. This survey was majorly directed to Project manager and Project Delivery Manager role. 

Data Analysis

• The survey data was analysed through affinity mapping where we could cluster insights into bigger themes which later became the sub themes of research findings. 
• We counted the negative insights under each theme to determine the biggest problem faced by the client. 

Research Findings

We identified customer problems and needs across different categories, and we realized that the biggest single-issue customers were facing in the get journey is slow delivery of their orders. We also analysed that complex company processes, resource competence and unavailability and lack of clear communication are some of the areas where customers are not overtly satisfied with client. 

• Slow order delivery timelines for projects causing unhappy customers. 
• Complex processes creating impact on customer satisfaction 
•  People Issues – (i)Availability, (ii)Competence, (iii)Co-nnect not working as a partner, (iv)Organizational Complexity 
• Lack of clear communication and delays in response leading to misunderstanding for the customers. 

Personas

Once the interviews were conducted, all the data collected from interviews were mapped on mural board and personas were developed after data synthesis. These personas were stored in global colleague persona library where other colleague personas were researched on and created.

Digital Order Professional (DOP) 

DOP manages and monitors customer orders for a specific area of the portfolio.He works with various stakeholders along the order journey to ensure SLAs are met and orders are delivered on time.

Project Manager

Paul, a qualified Project Manager is responsible for delivering complex customer implementations and ensures customers are happy with the services provided to them.

Secondary Research

With respect to different stages of the get journey like validating, decomposing, planning of the commercial order we conducted secondary research so as to get an idea of how order fulfilment works across different industries. 

The Process

• Conducted desk research to gather insights on industry trends across different stages of the get journey. 
• Referred to various credited sources going along different stages of the get journey, to get an idea of what can be the proposed road map ideas and blue sky ideas, that can be implemented in the to-be journey to make experience better. 
• Ideas around orchestration, analytic, data fabrics, robotics and hyper automation were some of the areas which came as key insights through research. (Full deck can be visited here)

• The objective was to paint a clear picture to all the stakeholders  of the journey through storyboard approach. 
• I started with creating the experience map for Teams SKU4 proposition. 
• So as to understand the proposition better and all the detailed steps in it, I had multiple sessions with the proposition lead. 
•  The concept was to start the experience map with a scenario which gives a plot behind what the order scenario (customer info, what products/sevices were ordered) is, followed by brief on the actors involved in the journey. 
• And then starts the visual story of get journey which shows the interaction between the colleague and customer actors involved and shows the steps right after the contract between customer and colleague has been signed till the delivery of the order at customers location i.e covering the entire get journey. It also focuses on the touchpoints through which the actors are interacting, captures their step-by-step actions in logical order across different stages of the Fulfilment cycle and gives the reader/viewer a holistic view of how the entire order fulfilment happens.

Mapping of Customer needs, actions, pain points on Service Blueprint 

Collaboratively worked along with the service designer to map out the insights derived from the research onto the blueprint. 

Collaborated on creating a summary of service blueprint inn easier format to be understood and referred by stakeholders.

Challenges

Convincing the client to pursue customer-oriented research was a significant challenge, as it required extensive effort and strategic persuasion. The client was initially hesitant, perceiving the research as a potential disruption rather than a beneficial investment.

To address this, I meticulously crafted a detailed research plan that outlined the objectives, methodologies, and anticipated benefits in clear, compelling terms. By presenting concrete examples of past successes and demonstrating the tangible value of user insights, I was able to build a strong case for the research. This comprehensive approach, coupled with persistent communication and stakeholder engagement, ultimately won the client’s approval, allowing the project to proceed successfully. 

Reflection

Industry Takeaway

Customer Research conducted opened doors to much broader questions whose answers were yet to be discovered, which I believe will eventually need another phase of research. I prepared a list of questions which needed broader answer in terms of qualitative research to understand and discover the why behind these set of questions which would eventually add more value to the service and handed it to the client’s internal customer-oriented team as a suggestion. 

Service designing was an in-progress project. Once the generic version was created, work for individual proposition to-be journey was expected. 

Personal Takeaway

Being the only researcher working alongside service designer gave me opportunity to understand the intricacies of service designing and the process that goes into it. 

This also gave me opportunity to work as a researcher for Buy and Use stage to understand user experiences. 

Also, since research data was huge and all over the place I created a research repository to manage research related data and links to the supporting documents so as to provide a one stop point for all research related data. 

Enhancing device strategy of Acme corporation to upgrade the work experience of their employees.

PROJECT SCOPE

• Client– Acme Corporation 

• Timeframe– 6 weeks 

• My role-UX Researcher 

• Team– Me along with another researcher, a UX Consultant and UX delivery Consultant

• Method– Generative Research,Surveys,Personas,Secondary research 

• Tools– Mural, Adobe XD, Teams, Microsoft Forms, Excel Word Speech to text tool and QuickTime Player  

CLIENT KICKOFF

The Client was looking for help to understand their future device needs for thier employees who they like to call information workers. Due to a shift towards a ‘Smart Working’ strategy, their plan was to provide thier employees with devices and accessories that not only meet their needs but also become ‘device they love’.  

Previously device management followed a ‘one size fits all’ approach to allocation. However, as thier employee needs and working environment evolves, a more evidence-based perspective was required to them. 

OBJECTIVES

• Conduct in-depth interviews with different information workers to discover their needs and behaviours.  
• Analysing general workplace trends such as approaches to flexible working and collaboration (remote/in the office). 
• Analyse insights gained and create different personas from these.  
• Analyse competitor approaches and best practices.  
• Research technology trends for future device considerations. 

NOTES

Currently, employees tend to receive a standard Lenovo ThinkPad with some receiving the latest models as they have been added to the portfolio. However, this strategy does not consider specific employee needs and it’s not an extremely impressive device compared to others available in the market. Only 1000-2000 people have these premium devices whilst majority of the business are still using older more functional devices

Methodology

• User Interviews 

• Surveys

• Desk Research 

• Affinity Mapping

• Data Analysis

Primary Research

To conduct our primary research we used two research methods: Qualitative and Quantitative data analysis. We used triangulation analysis to derive the final insights from both the research methods.  

In-depth ‘Information Worker’ colleague interviews

Conducting semi-structured interviews allowed us to gather a detailed understanding of the current primary and peripheral device and software usage, daily tasks, needs, preferences and frustrations.

Methodology

• Screener – We selected a diverse group of information workers across different domains and work profile (customer support colleagues to developers to directors).We engaged with a total of  31 colleagues over a 3-week period. 
• Remote Moderation – These interviews were conducted online using Teams call and calls were recorded with participants consent using QuickTime player.

The Process

• We were a team of three, we distributed the interviews amongst us. Each interview was conducted for around 45-60 mins and were recorded with users consent for notes reference. While taking the interview we recorded the interviews with users consent so as to have a reference for notes later. 
• We created an interview script for our reference. The interview questions revolved around employee’s job profile their nature of work and day to day tasks which they handle, current primary and peripheral device employees are using and their feedback on these devices. 
• Interviewees were also asked to share an image of their current work setup to guide the conversation during the interview. 

Qualitative Data Analysis

The Process

• Key data from these interviews including insights and pain points were recorded on a Mural board. 
•  Once sufficient data was collected, the process of grouping participants and finding common themes began. We started to group the interviewees by common needs and roles.  
• Five distinct groups were found among the interviewees: Designers and Developers, Strategy and Business operations, Sales and Marketing, Security and Customer support and engineering
• Based on our findings, we decided that the clearest method to distinguish the themes was to look at where a participant is usually working. 
• A desk centric worker would not be required to travel frequently to complete their tasks whereas a traveler would be required to travel to different sites frequently in order to complete their tasks. 
• Creators (designers and developers) were put in a separate category within desk centric, as it was found that their requirements were unique. 
• However once we had put our findings into these categories, we found that most participants fit into a hybrid section between desk centric and traveller. 
• Ultimately, we realised that the needs of a traveller meets most of the needs of a desk centric worker, and so settled on two categories: traveller and creator.

Surveys

In order to validate some of the insights generated from the in-depth interviews, and produce some quantitative data that can be considered ‘statistically significant’, we ran surveys with the information  workers. 

The Process

• We engaged with a total of 1223 colleagues through survey. This survey was conducted across people from different roles and positions. 
• A Microsoft form was sent to people across different departments which had basic questions related to the current office device they own, device type, like-ability of current device, what features, and peripheral devices are of utmost importance to them. 
• There were also questions related to employees’ work type, kind of software they use in their daily work schedule to better understand what type of device will suffice their requirement. 

Quantitative Data Analysis

The analysed survey data conducted across people from different roles and positions show a similar trend which depicts similar kinds of device requirements among information workers. 

• Users across all the roles would like to have a traditional laptop. 
• Band wise Director and Senior manager would prefer to have a laptop with detachable keyboard that can be used as a tablet. But having said that Senior Manager (14.3%) and Director (2.3%) holds comparatively smaller section than rest of the positions. 
• Users across all the roles and bands  rated  speed/ memory as the most important feature. 
• Apart from speed, screen quality/ resolution, keyboard quality, camera and microphone are rated the most essential features to have in primary device. 
• For Managing directors and directors weight was also considered among the top 3 features. 
• Headphones, mouse and keyboard  are marked as top 3 accessories by employees across all the roles and bands. 
• Digital pen/ stylus was found out to be the least important accessory. 
• Work with information, Video/audio conference and collaboration/mind map are the major tasks done by users across roles and bands. 
• For creators major tasks also include working with development software/tools. 
• Majority of the users prefer to work on Microsoft operating system. 

Secondary Research

Secondary research in this project has focused on understanding trends for information workers in 2020/21. We did desk research for analysing industry trends with the new way of working and how companies are looking into technology adoption for flexible working and collaboration. 

Findings

• Remote Work in 2020/21 – In-depth research reports from Microsoft and Gartner proved particularly useful for highlighting trends in device use and worker attitudes through this period of remote work.   
• Home Work Set-Ups – A range of different surveys and studies served to illuminate the factors impacting working practices and productivity when working from home.   
• Hybrid Work – Studies from PWC, Microsoft, BCG and BarCo (manufacturer of digital imaging and meeting technologies) serve to provide some indications of what employee expectations and needs will be in the move to ‘Hybrid’ work    

Personas

We have categorised our personas into primary and secondary. We realized with the research results that though all information workers have similar device requirements, there are few exceptions which are worth highlighting. Through qualitative data analysis we came across Travellers and Creators who have special requirements and priorities when it comes to choosing devices for them. Though both of them are information workers their requirements made us  put them under secondary persona category. 

Problem Statements

Problem Statement 1

John, a product manager needs a new laptop which can allow him to work on Mural, One Note and Teams more efficiently and since his current laptop is old and slow, it can often take a considerable amount of time to load or just freeze.But he is not able to get an upgrade for his current device.   

Problem Statement 2

Francesca, a Lead sales specialist, needs a lightweight laptop with long lasting battery life, because she wants to make the most out of her time spent travelling to and from the client location by responding to emails, tweaking presentations or writing up notes. But she has been provided with a bulky device which makes it difficult to carry, especially with other accessories.  

Problem Statement 3

Connor, a senior iOS developer, needs a laptop with high processing power and more storage, because his role requires working on multiple demanding applications simultaneously and large files. But with the limited storage on his device, he has issues with installing new software and saving important files, and he often has to personally manage the hardware limitations.  

Recommendations

• Conducting ideation workshop- Ideation workshops to explore and generate some broad set of ideas to improve the gaps discovered in the current onboarding process with a set of stakeholders and get their inputs/thoughts on same.
• Creating concepts- Concept testing to improve the onboarding experience of graduates. 
• User testing 
• Iterating low fidelity prototypes 

Reflection

Industry Takeaway

The need to improve an existing system is the need to change times and the client believed in this theory. Keeping users in the center they focused on how to evolve their experience and make things smoother for them, which is a commendable thought. New graduates entering the company were given prior importance through this project, which showed how much they cared for their employees. 

Personal Takeaway

 It would be interesting to know if the insights helped in improving next year batch’s onboarding process. We were told to also explore about CT academy but later scope of the project was restricted to onboarding process. 

Exploring the onboarding experience of fresh recruits for Co-nnect telecom’s graduate program. 

PROJECT SCOPE

Client- Co-nnect Telecom 

Timeframe- 5 weeks 

My role-UX Researcher 

Team- Me along with  a UX Consultant and Studio lead 

Methods- Generative Research, Journey Maps, Personas (Should I also add interviews over here??) 

Tools- Mural,Adobe XD, Teams, Word Speech to text tool 

CLIENT KICKOFF

CT believes in providing a seamless and hassle-free onboarding experience to the fresh recruits for their Graduate program and with the changing working environments after Covid,and therefore they wanted to enhance the virtual onboarding experience of the new Graduate cohort joining them. Under digital colleague Experience program CT wanted us to help them with understanding the experience of these Graduates while onboarding and discover their expectations of the programme. 

OBJECTIVES

• Finding and exploring about the experience of current graduates onboarding (What worked well, which stage needs any improvement, graduate’s pains, gains and other potential opportunities) 
• Investigating how graduates feel about the program, the curriculum, opportunities and rotation. 

NOTES

CT offers  a huge range of opportunities for school-leavers and graduates in different domains under their graduate programs.  

At the time of this project, client was expecting the arrival off 2021-22 batch in the coming few months and they wanted to understand the overall experience of previous graduates with respect to company’s onboarding process. 2020-21 was the first batch for which virtual onboarding was done due to covid. 
 

Methodology

Competitive Analysis 

Stakeholder interviews

Graduate interviews 

 Affinity Diagram 

Data Analysis 

Competitive Analysis

Competitive Analysis Finding

• Programme length– CT’s length and rotational structure of the programme was found to be similar to most other companies of a duration of approximately 2 years. 
• Development offerings– CT lacks providing opportunities for  financial assistance regarding further  qualifications. 
• Awards -No indication of awards achieved with respect to the graduate programmes covered by CT. 

We looked at programs for graduates run across some of the tech companies to get an understanding of how these competitors arerunning thier respective graduate programmes. EY, Vodafone,Virgin were some of the companies providing  similar programmes. 

Stakeholder and Graduate Interviews

• Stakeholder Mapping- We did this to see major influencers involved in building and delivering Graduate program and at what capacity .
• Screener – For stakeholder interviews we selected a diverse group of individuals who were involved in delivering and running the graduate programme (CFU leads, line manager, admin), and for Graduate interviews we selected participants who were from a mix of graduates from 2019,2020 and international cohort. 
• Remote moderation- Conducted these interviews online using teams.These were 45-60 min conversations with stakeholders and graduate to cover topics/questions of interest. The key benefit of choosing the semi-structured method is that conversation can naturally flow, there is an opportunity to explore in depth topics of interest as well as creating a more comfortable space for the participant to open up. 

The Process

• We covered 9 stakeholder,13 user inteviews and dwelved intro around 855 minutes of exposure in this interaction. 
• Since we were a team of two, we distributed the interviews amongst us. While taking the interview we recorded the interviews with users consent so as to have a reference for notes later. 
• We created an interview script for our reference.  

Affinity Diagram

We started with analyzing the major themes generated from the interviews. We categorised these themes, gave them title and started putting the insights generated under respective categories. This helped us in systematically grouping the insights under bigger themes. 

The Process

• We started with putting up the transcripts from the interviews into mural and arranged the data into different colour codes (quotes, pain points, recommendations). Repeated same excercise for all the interviews taken. 
•  Next we found out major themes generating from the interview data. We categorized these themes, gave them title and started moving the insights generated under respective categories. This helped us in systematically grouping the insights under bigger themes. 
• This exercise was conducted for stakeholder as well as graduate interviews. And after discovering themes across multiple interviews, we worked together to synthesize the data and agree on insights. 

Data Analysis

INSIGHTS ON CT’S GRADUATE PROGRAMME

Reasons for joining CT’s Graduate Programme

• Rotational structure of the programme.
• CT being a big & well-known brand across the globe.

Expectations about the programme

• Discrepancy between what was being portrayed & what was being offered by CT.  
• Expectation management is problematic for stakeholders. 

Dealing with ambiguity 

• Uncertainty concerning the end of the programme, role availability & rotations.   
• Lack of transparency regarding programme structure. 

Communication about the programme 

• Graduates are generally satisfied with communications.   
• Promptness of feedback can be improved. 

Rotations 

• Expectations to choose own rotations 
• Lack of rotation structure
• Short notice of rotation selection

Previous work experience and length of programme 

• Many graduates have previous work experience.  
• Programme might be too slow or too long for these grads.

The importance of networking 

• Graduate value networking & seek out opportunities to connect.  
• Virtual induction lacked networking opportunities.

Programme performance 

• Satisfied about programme’s curriculum, organisation, professionalism, support & learning potentiality.    
• Improvements recommended regarding structure, career guidance, clearer roadmap & navigating the business.  

Getting set up

• Satisfied with kit quality & prompt arrival.  
• Ample time requested to fix technical issues beforehand.  
• Training required for new CT technology & systems. 

Relationships with line manager

• Mixed responses regarding helpfulness of line managers. 
• Line managers crucial influencing grad’s perspective regarding the programme.  

Allocation of Buddies

• No consistency in who gets a buddy allocated to them.
• Ensure that those selected as buddies should be willing to help. 

Programme resources and content

INSIGHTS RELATED TO ONBOARDING

International graduate’s challenges

Personas

We made personas to help us to create an understanding and empathy with the end users. Thanks to personas – It helped us gain a perspective similar to the user. Here we have created 3 different types of personas with respect to an international candidate, a graduate from 2019 batch and a graduate from 2020 batch, who joined through virtual onboarding. 

Bridgette is a 23-year-old and has joined CT as a marketing graduate in 2019.Bridgette always wanted to work in London and is quite excited to work across different brands. She is happy with the progress she has made through the programme but often feels that it would be nice if the programme provides her the flexibility to choose her rotations. 

Natalia is 25 years old and is working as a Business management graduate. She belongs to Switzerland and has joined CT as an international candidate. She is more than excited to be part of CT and believes that CT has provided a strong foundation to her corporate career. But having said that she does sometimes feel isolated and disconnected from the rest of the team. 

Daniel is 27 years old and is working as a software security graduate, he joined CT in 2020 through virtual onboarding. He is thoroughly enjoying the programme and aims to become a specialist in his work area someday. Going back to his onboarding days Daniel wishes that it would have been great if he have had a chance to attend in- person onboarding and could experience the same. 

Journey Map

The user journey map helped us in providing a clear understanding of how users are experiencing the service, what their goals are at each stage and what pain points they are experiencing at these stages.  We clubbed the journeys of graduates who onboarded the program virtually with the graduates who had in-person onboarding in the same map. The purple text refers to the additional considerations from graduates who were onboarded virtually.. 

• We started the journey map by breaking down the whole programme into stages (which are indicated at the top in the purple boxes) which shows the journey a user will go through when joining the programme.  
• On the left we have a pink bar which indicates some important user attributes like graduate activities, their goals, touchpoints, painpoints, emotions etc. The journey map helps in evaluating graduate’s emotions across every attribute while going through different stages of the programme. 
• Also, we can clearly see here the emotion graph going downwards from the induction stage till the end of programme, which suggests that there might be some improvements required over to enhance user’s experience throughout the 3 stages.  

Problem Statements and How Might We

How might we… provide graduates with more transparency regarding the graduate roadmap? 

How might we… help graduates’ voices to be heard regarding their rotation preferences? 

How might we… assist graduates to make informed decisions regarding their career goals? 

Prioritisation Matrix

We chose to conduct prioritisation matrix exercise to understand the urgency and needs of issues to be addressed in their particular order.

Recommendations

• Conducting ideation workshop- Ideation workshops to explore and generate some broad set of ideas to improve the gaps discovered in the current onboarding process with a set of stakeholders and get their inputs/thoughts on same.
• Creating concepts- Concept testing to improve the onboarding experience of graduates. 
• User testing 
• Iterating low fidelity prototypes 

Reflection

Industry Takeaway

The need to improve an existing system is the need to change times and the client believed in this theory. Keeping users in the center they focused on how to evolve their experience and make things smoother for them, which is a commendable thought. New graduates entering the company were given prior importance through this project, which showed how much they cared for their employees. 

Personal Takeaway

 It would be interesting to know if the insights helped in improving next year batch’s onboarding process. We were told to also explore about CT academy but later scope of the project was restricted to onboarding process.