Designing a Help Center — UX Case Study

Brief

The main goal of the project was to re-think the user experience of the Help Center feature within the newly designed 7-Eleven app. The main goals included:
- reducing the number of agents involved in solving customer problems
- improving approval ratings by 30%
- integrating a chatbot
- improving the customer experience for refunds

Process

My approach to the project was guided by the Double Diamond design process, a method that involves four phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver.

In the Discover phase, I conducted a comprehensive gap analysis of the current user experience, comparing it with the designs provided by the agency 7-Eleven was previously working with and the experience we aimed to create. This analysis helped us understand what aspects of the current design were effective and which needed to be re-thought. I also collaborated with the Zendesk team to gather existing data from the 7Now app. This data included customer complaint requests, statistics to understand the major issues faced by users, and mixed panel stats to identify pain points in the current help center experience.

In the Define phase, I gathered and analyzed all the information from the research. This phase helped us narrow down the key problem areas and define the direction for our design solutions.

The Develop phase involved creating a high-level information architecture to structure the experience and identify potential loopholes that needed to be addressed. As the help center spanned across all the app’s features, I organized workshops with teams working on each part of the product to understand their goals and the problems their customers could potentially face. This phase allowed us to explore various ideas and concepts to address the identified problems.

Final Solutions (Deliver Phase)

The help center was divided into two parts: ‘Information’ and ‘Toolbox’.

The ‘Information’ section included structured articles. I worked with a UX writer to audit our current FAQs and transform them into Help Articles with various subsections. Each feature in the app had its own article, allowing users to either read through all the available information or search to find exactly what they were looking for. The articles comprised of videos, images and text, catering to different learning preferences of the users. We also used hyperlinks to help users easily get to the information they needed.

The ‘Toolbox’ section was designed for users to get immediate help. It included flows allowing users to report an issue, request a refund, or chat with a customer agent. The chat experience included a bot, integrated with various flows that could help the user, either by issuing an automated refund, directing them to the right information in the articles, or connecting them to an agent to solve more complex issues. This interface also allowed an agent to help multiple customers at a time, aligning with our goals of reducing the number of agents and improving approval ratings.

Additionally, we introduced quick guides in the help center. These tiles acted as shortcuts to guide the user to the most sought information based on our analyzed data, such as a quick guide to mobile checkout, applying promo codes, redeeming points, and more.

Conclusion

The comprehensive and user-centric approach we adopted for this project allowed us to significantly enhance the user experience of the Help Center.

We conducted user tests to evaluate the effectiveness of our designs. The feedback from these tests was highly encouraging, revealing noticeable improvements in the user experience. Users found the new ‘Information’ and ‘Toolbox’ sections in the help center to be intuitive and helpful, and the quick guides were particularly appreciated for their convenience.

However, the user tests also highlighted opportunities for further enhancements. We identified areas, such as the architecture and length of the help articles that could be significantly improved. These insights will be invaluable as we continue to refine and improve the user experience in future iterations.

In conclusion, this project not only achieved its initial goals but also set the stage for ongoing improvements, ensuring that the 7-Eleven mobile app continues to evolve and meet the changing needs of their users.

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