Freshchat is a live chat software that lets businesses converse with customers. Agents can use the agent portal to track conversations with customers, add FAQs to the widget, customise their widget, customise bots to answers frequently asked questions or collect customer information.

Admins use the settings page to edit and modify every detail on the agent portal. This section is extremely information heavy and needed to be redesigned to easily access the setting of their choice.

The primary persona is the admins- ensuring that they can easily modify and set up their freshchat accounts.

The first step of the process was to conduct research to identify user needs, behavior, pain points, validate assumptions and motivations.
A mixture of attitudinal and behavioral methods were chosen for this experiment.
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‍Research Methods Used : Qualitative Surveys, Card Sorting & Perception Testing

Due to lack of time, we reached out to our customer support team to understand what the main feedback from customers were about the current experience.
We had three main goals - Understand current usage, evaluate pain points and get feedback on possible improvements.

Questions:
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Some inputs from the conversation

One big feedback was that the admin section was difficult to navigate. Customers were overwhelmed and unsure of what items to view in which sections. Due to remote working restrictions, we had to use an online survey to conduct our card sorting exercise -

Participants were asked to map setting tiles to groups headers. These headers were chosen from Freshwork product suite admin settings, to ensure that there is familiarity across products.

Though unconventional, it helped determine which item would go under each section.

Some inputs from the conversation

Restuls for Card sorting Exercise

Based on the information we collected we were able to design an information architecture which was revised several times.

To combat the issues faced we made the following changes:


1. Inclusion of a search bar to improve discoverability

2. The 'Bot' tile within the admin section was renamed to 'Lead generation' (name to be confirmed with the Product Marketing Team) to avoid confusion with the bot section in the left nav bar.

3. Improved the grouping from three sections to six sections and renamed certain tiles to the appropriate jargon that is used across other Freshworks CX products. Grouped items based on card sorting exercise and the organisation from Freshdesk.

4. Included a 'Code Installation' section which would hold both the web builder code and the web messenger code to avoid customer confusion.

5. Split 'Integrations' into 'Integrations' and 'Channels', these terms were used interchangeably and did lead to some confusion for the customers.

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The main issues that were identified was that there was not much grouping, making it difficult for users to search and navigate through items. We introduced a search feature (depth=3) that would make it easier for users to find items. We also introduced a banner that would display for the first time, as the feedback we received showed us that users often didn't know where to go to set up instructions.  This banner would have links to setup the widget on the platform of their choice.

The hierarchy for arranging the information was based on the results we received from the survey.

With the change in product direction, we had to align our proposal with the new Omnichannel product. This meant changing the iconography, rearranging and regrouping the items to fit with the Omnichannel admin section.

In order to validate our design solution, we took the new designs to our customers to hear what they had to say!
Unlike traditional usability testing, we didn't ask our users to accomplish tasks- instead we presented the UI to them and tried to get a pulse of how they felt about the UI.

The aim of the perception test was to understand the general consensus of the change and anticipate any challenges that could occur with this shift.

Highlight Quote

“The current freshchat experience is like a mid-range sedan like a Ford Mondeo, something you'd be happy to overtake. With the new changes it's like the car got a paint job, changed the wheels to alloy wheels instead of standard steel rims and we've maybe put a spoiler on the back.”

Customer Feedback

User Ratings when asked to rate the designs on "Appearance" & "Experience"

The general perception was positive, users were happy with the visual changes and also happy that they were able to discover items more easily. The suggestions they provided were made to be pushed to Phase 3 of the launch.

We didn't receive any alarming or worrying concerns from customers. With this information, the designs were sent across to the developers.

Once in production, I will be updating the success here.