Franchise Service Group - Support Site Improvements

The Challenge

The ServiceMaster Franchise Services Group faced the challenge of providing easily accessible and understandable support information, documentation, and forms for its vast network of franchisees and third-party vendors. The existing environment was characterized by significant difficulties in locating appropriate resources, indicative of fragmented information and a lack of clear, interconnected pathways within the ServiceMaster ecosystem. This posed a significant usability barrier for a broad and diverse user base.

The Stewardship Model

As a guide on this expedition, my approach involved interviewing stakeholders and business process experts to comprehend the intricacies of customer service support requests. I then created personas, mapping them to the most frequently requested questions and features. To gain a broader perspective, we researched other enterprise companies' digital products, drawing inspiration from leading support sites like Apple, Google, and StackOverflow for brainstorming and ideation. This demonstrated an early form of exploration and a holistic perspective by studying successful models. Existing website screens were analyzed using Design Thinking activities like SCAMPER and simple user interviews to understand their general use. Our concept aimed to integrate these observed solutions and develop a proof of concept for testing with end-users. The research and process mapping were composed into easy-to-understand user flow diagrams, which were then translated into a medium-fidelity prototype in Axure RP. This prototype facilitated effective collaboration among stakeholders, business analysts, and developers regarding content and UI features.

The Impact

The clear, easy-to-understand user flow diagrams and the interactive prototype served as crucial landmarks, empowering the business to empathize with users during the production phase. This work laid foundational stones for a more interconnected and transparent information system, embodying principles that would later align with fostering shared responsibility in managing organizational knowledge.

Role(s): Designer (approached by stakeholder to design), interviewed stakeholders and experts.
Digital Tools: Axure RP8 for mockups and prototypes.

UX Practices & Methods: Designed a support site , conducted stakeholder and expert interviews, created personas and mapped them to questions/features, researched other enterprise companies' support sites, performed brainstorming and ideation, applied Design Thinking activities (like SCAMPER), conducted simple user interviews, built a proof of concept for business analysis and end-user testing , composed user flow diagrams, utilized process mapping, created medium-fidelity prototypes.

Pre UX screens of support site

Screens of the Client’s current Website for support were taken in, and I applied a few Design Thinking activities Like SCAMPER and simple User interviews to understand the general use of this support site.