In mid-2020, COVID accelerated several Xfinity initiatives with the goal of allowing customers to better self-serve and simultaneously drive down call center interactions.
One of those initiatives was to redesign a key piece of the existing customer journey called Sales Center, and fully deprecate an experience called My Plan.
The new Sales Center 2.0 would be one of the first web experiences to use the still evolving Xfinity Design System, and would support a variety of customer types including agents, bulk customers, and disconnects — with a mix of any core services and Xfinity Mobile.
From initial requirements to final handoff, Sales Center 2.0 was designed by myself in just over a month. Thanks to a solid relationship with product, early involvement with development, and utilizing strategies like object-oriented design, Sales Center 2.0 was delivered and launched on time while beating out existing experiences. Additionally, efficiencies were gained by working proactively to design core elements of the experience to be shared components with other design and development teams.
Object-oriented design
“Object-oriented user experience (OOUX) is the process of planning a system of interacting objects and information within your website, app, or digital tool. OOUX helps us organize a navigation that is circular and contextual by defining associations between things”
- Think Company
Due to the limited timeline and vast number of use cases for Sales Center 2.0, I decided to implement an object-oriented approach. This allowed our development partners to get an early understanding of what types of content and components would be in Sales Center and begin refinement, without having finalized visual designs.
To begin
I analyzed the existing plan management experiences and noted the pros and cons of each experience.
With My Plan, the page was primarily too detailed and too confusing. The original Sales Center experience lacked personalization, was not contextual, and lacked self-service capabilities.
Next
I reviewed the amazing work our analytics team did to uncover what the top actions our customers took on the existing Sales Center page
• View my plan/sign in
• Move to another address
• View all offers
• Help me decide
I also analyzed and highlighted the key learnings from our user research team
• Quick links for add-ons, more in-depth flows for more complex tasks
• Ability to compare with current services
• Clear transparent messaging on financial impacts
In several OOUX working sessions with our design, content, and product partners which I lead using Miro, we arrived at a final mapping for what the new Sales Center 2.0 experience heterarchy should ultimately be.
Finally was to distill this heterarchy into a component structure and work with development to get user stories written and refined. This was intended as an internal design and communication tool and not a final deliverable.
Shared components
A core design principal was to drive consistent experiences across customer touchpoints and applications
The heart of Sales Center 2.0 is reviewing your current plan and making modifications to them. However, customers can view their plan in a variety of contexts throughout their customer journey. The current plan component was shared with the Xfinity app which had a different type hierarchy and minimalist visual design, so I designed it to remove non-critical elements and re-stack while maintaining the same content and layout.
For detailed plan management, each line of business is displayed in Sales Center 2.0. In the account management section of the Xfinity site, a very similar view of a customer’s plan is displayed. I worked with the Account design team and our product & development partners to ensure that the same component would be used in both applications -- one which could change its contents depending on its context and user.
Finally, our campaigns & merchandizing teams would be responsible for maintaining and designing the content in any banner ads in Sales Center 2.0. To simplify the management and deployment of campaigns, I ensured we used the same merchandizing component found elsewhere on the Xfinity site.
Final design & improvements
Analytics and outcomes
After launching to 100% traffic on 6/21
Add-on product sales conversion rate was +50 basis points higher
Main LOB sales conversion rates was slightly down -34 basis points
Average Order Value was $9.21 higher, $81.25 vs. $72.04
Add to cart on GBB was 4.49% higher
Key improvements & features
Setting the stage for what “sales center” is for customers
Previously, Sales Center lacked an explanation for what it was, leading to a high bounce rate. Sales Center 2.0 improved this with a personalized welcome banner that set the stage and prominently included CTAs for most frequent user actions.
More robust merchandising
Sales Center 2.0 expanded on the original’s singular merchandising space and included contextual upsell promos with each line of business.
View of customers current plan with side-by-side to compare to suggested plans
The prior experience was without a view of the customer’s current plan. The new Sales Center 2.0 experience allowed for a detailed view of the user’s current plan along with their monthly bill, and a stack of recommended offers to compare against.
Ability to access all quick checkouts and self service flows
Self-service capabilities in Sales Center were previously limited, but due to COVID and a desire to reduce call center volume, the new Sales Center enabled users access to all plan management capabilities in one place — they could increase their Internet speed, add additional lines or business, manage their equipment, and more.
Sets the stage for the future of plan management
Finally, these improvements were a stepping stone for what the future ideal state of Xfinity plan management could be
Areas of opportunity & next steps
A more robust and personalized Help Me Decide
Customers often desire a Help Me Decide tool to find the right plan for them. A future state of plan management should include a more intelligent and integrated HMD.
Streamlined plan management
Sales Center 2.0 opens the customer to a full suite of self service tools, but are more often than not discrete flows to accomplish tasks one at a time. The future of plan management should be a more streamlined experience where a mix of tasks can be completed easily and intuitively.
Enable more features for less common use cases
While Sales Center 2.0 was designed to cover users such as bulk or multi-dwelling units, customers who have pending orders, agents who are managing a customers plan, etc., ultimately the capabilities of these use cases were limited due to timing and scope. These user types are a huge area of opportunity for the business and for improved user experience.
