8x8 Express - case file

In 2019 each 8x8 telco customer whether 5... 20,000 seats was onboarded by a ever growing team of support staff and telco engineers. 8x8 were struggling to manage high churn rates in competitive market place. 8x8 needed a means to compete with competitors who each offered: - a fully automated onboarding solution - for all solutions - telco management solutions which support users of all levels 8x8 Express - became the corporations first self service solution

​​​​​​​PROJECT
+ Develop a self service configuration management solution for the SMB sector
+ Identify common issues existing small business customers report to our teams
+ Investigate how direct competitors and recent entrants to the market manage these issues
+ Product design and structure to be tested fully prior to hand over with development team with data to inform direction taken (supplied with concepts)


OBJECTIVE / DESIGN BRIEF / USERS
+ Users looking for keenly priced alternative to sector leaders (Ring Central, Vonage, ) and disruptors (Aircall.io, Messagebird, Zendesk) - soon joined by Google's Calljoy offering and Teams Small Business Solution
+ With small installs, customers prone to swapping service based on price / reliability and are able to do so with comparative ease
+ Customers need to be up and ready for action as quickly as possible, with confidence in the stability of the solution
+ Small business users are busy, have mixed exposure to VOIP from little to non
+ Small business users typically have no internal support to answer queries
+ Small business support team - limited resources + over stretched service already

APPROACH
+ Following User Centered Design principles - identify / replace assumptions with data. Informed by lean UX to deliver products to market at speed.
+ Pulling together SME feedback with support portal data, customer service ticket statistics to inform priorities in ideation, prototyping, testing
+ Transparency - fostering creative collaboration by delivering insights alongside data to the project team. 
+ Drive to prioritise - Data analysis / prototyping / testing​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​
WORK / BRIEF / BUSINESS PROBLEM 
+ 8x8 single admin environment is not working for small businesses. Single solution is surface for end users whether they're installation facilitates 1 - 20,000+ users
+ Significant churn within 8x8 small business clients (growing year on year)
+ Support team hours spent on small business sector growing significantly
+ Primary cancellation reason cited presently for small business customers - support lag
+ Number and quality of small business specific products have broken then emerged and are gaining traction in the telecoms space
INVOLVEMENT
UX on 3 Products [SAAS Env]
UX on First "Self Service" Solution for 8x8


PROJECT LEADS
Matthew Dakeyne - UX/UI Director
Dragos Andronic - Snr Product Owner
Hugh Davie - Snr Product Owner
Arvind Sathyamoorthy - Digital Analyst


TECHNOLOGIES
Quantum Metrics
User Testing (Userzoom)
Browserstack
Hotjar
ON BOARDING BLUEPRINT
​​​​​​​Investigate the present on-boarding process for small businesses, qualifying the systems and processes to ensure 8x8 Express offers experience that incorporates each function.
Capture record of areas of query raised by customers with small business support teams.
WORK / DISCOVERY / ANALYSIS - DIRECT COMPETITORS
Timescales for 8x8 Express delivery were tight, there wasn't sufficient time to deliver a responsive solution. We were required to choose between desktop and mobile for phase 1. 
+ Data we had for existing small business users suggested small business owners rarely adjusted setup after initial onboarding (within the Configuration Manager driven 8x8 ecosystem).
+ Review of competitors - solution format
Analysis completed qualified that 2/10 direct competitors offered any meaningful mobile experience, most presented desktop experience on both mobile and desktop. Some interfaces offered a level of responsiveness but most included significant experience jumps between parts which were responsive and those elements which were pure desktop. We prepared surveys to test this assumption, on-boarding team scripts were updated to include and capture feedback from small business users.

WORK / DISCOVERY / ANALYSIS - MOBILE SUPPORT
+ Identify coverage in market for mobile / device / desktop
+ Identify support within on-boarding for mobile / device / desktop

WORK / DISCOVERY / ANALYSIS - TECH DISRUPTORS - ON BOARDING 
+ Identify tempo, structure of comparative on-boarding processes
+ Identify comparative approach to presenting multi stage onboarding process 
​​​​​​​
APPROACH
Direct Competitor Analysis
Indirect Competitor Analysis
Onboarding Competitor Analysis
WORK / IDEATE /
PHASE 2 ONBOARDING WIZARD
WORK / IDEATE / PROTOTYPE
TEST PHASE 3 - MOBILE ON-BOARDING
WORK / IDEATE / PROTOTYPE
TEST - PHASE 3 - DESKTOP
ON-BOARDING


Post full launch it quickly became apparent that a large proportion of users would benefit from guidance to cover the relationship between:
- 8x8 Configuration Manager (now Admin Mgr)
- 8x8 Express (now Mgr Express)
- 8x8 Meetings​​​​​​​
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