Gary Carr

+ Overview

BT Business had the opportunity to upgrade their Oracle (Rightnow) platform which serviced all aspects of the help and support features and functionality. From FAQ’s and service outages through to reports, this was an opportunity to enhance the service BT was delivering to its customers on a daily basis.

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+ Background

Having met with Oracle to understand the scope of the platform upgrade, we incepted various options and levels of enhancements that would benefit the customer whilst sitting within BT’s budget. One of the main problems BT experienced was having the time and resource to manage extremely large numbers of articles, some of which were for products that had reached the end of their life cycle. Our starting point for the project was to do a full content refresh, alongside a new information architecture that would have better grouping for articles.

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+ Process

Competitor analysis. The stats showed that 70% of customers landed directly onto articles via 3rd party search. This number was similar when engaging other departments within BT. I gathered similar intel by reading case studies of a similar ilk. With direct traffic from 3rd party search being so popular, it was clear that a primary focus would be on the article pages themselves.

The previous layout was overloaded with information making it difficult for users to focus on the main content. Laying out pages with a cleaner, mobile first approach, offered a more efficient design solution, that the stakeholders valued.

Away from the article pages themselves I was tasked with working alongside a transformation project where BT were identifying an overarching product lifecycle plan (all based from a customer perspective). When considering initial IA and userflows, we were able to use the data collected from the wider project to identify what customers would expect to see when navigating through a help and support section.

The structure broke down into 4 areas:

1. Technology type (e.g. Broadband, Landline)
2. Lifecycle of customer (e.g. Getting started, Fix an issue)
3. Product specifics
4. Articles, user guides, downloads

Internal search. When taking stock of competitor analysis use of an internal search engine was one of the key drivers to user engagement. We took the decision to make search the forefront of our help homepage - the search was also enhanced technically to meet modern standards whilst keeping up with patterns that users prefer from sites they are already familiar with.

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+ The end

A full help and support site was delivered built on the latest Oracle platform.

• User centred design
• Bounce rates reduced
• New search technology