OVERVIEW
Background
During my time at Meta Business Messaging org, I was a part of the Kustomer team, focusing on a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool designed to assist businesses in handling customer information and communication. In this project, I worked on the chat product, which is positioned on business websites to facilitate real-time conversations between consumers and support agents.
PROBLEM
Businesses found their chat inefficient
During our continuous efforts to monitor customer satisfaction reviews, we have observed that while many of our existing users are satisfied with the overall platform, there has been a notable number of complaints specifically related to the live chat feature.
Meanwhile, a survey conducted among existing business users revealed that approximately 58% of them expressed dissatisfaction with our live chat product.
Sales team has also reported deal loss due to dissatisfaction with the chat feature.
Voice of Business Users
Through continuous user interviews, we pinpointed several recurring frustrations that our customers consistently raised:
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Consumers reached out to agents for simple questions that are addressed in FAQ.
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Lots of consumers drop out after they send the first message.
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Almost all the business users requested a technical support member’s step by step guidance when configuring the chat.
Learn from End Users
To understand what's not working well in our chat, we started by doing an internal audit and identified several user experience issues.
We then pulled the tracking data of consumer users and conducted an analysis of those data. This examination revealed that many of the functionalities were not being utilized as initially anticipated:
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Less than 10% of users have accessed FAQ through live chat widget.
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More than 50% of users who eventually landed on the Chat tab had a pause without clicking or scrolling for 5 seconds.
Live Chat - After
Live Chat - Before
GOALS
How might we help consumers get their problem resolved while optimizing business efficiency?
Define User Goals
What are consumers looking for when they use a live chat?
What are businesses looking for when setting up a live chat on their website?
Define Milestones
Given the interconnectedness of the business-side configuration with the consumer-side user experience, I decided to take a bottom-up strategy - starting from improving the consumer widget experience, and then focusing on improving the corresponding configuration experience for businesses.
To align with XFN and other stakeholders, I drafted a design brief for team reference and leadership pitch presentation for better alignment on project goals, expectation, constraints, etc. I also set up weekly sync meetings with stakeholders including the product manager, engineers, content writers, researchers, and the leadership team to ensure effective communications.
Define Success
EXPLORATIONS
Empathize with User Journey
Concept Ideation
Some Iterations
Some Challenges
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There are many different scenarios to consider in this project. With multiple options and even more subsequent screen variations, we need design coverage for all possible screens and alignment with devs on system clarity throughout the process.
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This product has three different SDKs - web, iOS, and Android. While all platforms are relatively consistent in terms of functionalities, user behaviors and certain interactions are different across the three, therefore I ensured the use of platform-agnostic pattern to avoid untranslatable elements, and when I had to, I would also design specific interfaces and flows.
SOLUTION
Impact
This product was in Beta for selected users.
⭐ Adoption: 80% of users who were selected for Beta chose to opt in.
⭐️ Positive Feedback: 90% positive feedback and willingness for fully adoption.
Before
After
End User - Home Page
The homepage follows a straightforward linear structure, featuring a greeting header, self-serve options, and conversational help arranged from top to bottom. Its design aims to offer users swift solutions to basic inquiries while prominently displaying a clear call-to-action button, enabling them to initiate a chat instantly.
Furthermore, we are incorporating enhanced customizability options, allowing businesses to align the live chat interface more seamlessly with their branding and identity.
End User - Conversation Page
Upon initiating a conversation, the conversation panel will smoothly slide into view, welcoming the user with a pre-designed AI chatbot. This implementation has the potential to significantly decrease agent costs, as the chatbot would effectively manage simple tasks such as gathering information, providing prompt answers, suggesting relevant articles, and more.
Through the utilization of more natural language and interactive features, this enhanced experience fosters stronger customer relationships and encourages greater engagement.
NEXT STEPS
Business User - Chat Settings (Milestone 2)
Following the successful completion of the initial milestone, which involved redesigning the chat widget on the consumer end, we progressed to the second milestone—streamlining the setup experience for the business end. In addition to restructuring the setup configuration, we incorporated several new configurations to accommodate the additional features introduced with the new chat widget.
Before
After
More Powerful Features (Milestone 3)
To help different users achieve their goals, we’ve continued developing other features such as building automated object selector for WISMO questions, enabling JWT authentication for unique customer data, adding channel hand over during conversations, etc in the next milestone.
WISMO Object Selector
JWT Authentication