Brand is Experience. What if the Webtrends customer experience was the poster child of our brand promise?
Brand exists at the intersection of company and customers. Webtrends’ brand promises current and potential customers business success and innovative experiences. They wanted that word to be kept from the homepage, all the way through to checking the status of a support ticket. Any opportunity to enhance the customer experience, at any touchpoint, forges indelible bonds with customers and builds a lasting brand story.
In 2009, an external communities project uncovered opportunities to deliver upon that promise by launching several web properties. It was learned that there is no silver bullet in technology, communities need nurturing, you need tagging standards to deliver relevant search and large organizations need governance for adding new content.
We had three goals: focus on customers, make Webtrends easier to do business with and improve internal efficiency. To pull this off, we built a cross-discplinary team, developed user personas and over 200 user scenarios. Using those scenarios as their guide, the team developed paper prototypes of the entire web presence, tested them on users and developed five recommendations.
Among other changes, we recommended changes to search and support. By breaking the search up into categories, visitors are given appropriate context to find what they are looking for. Support was previously built around internal language around versions. This new version improves categorization, highlights support content and speaks in plain language.
Establish an IA team to put together business processes and taxonomy around managing content creation. Additionally, we prototyped a gallery of partner solutions and services.
Improved experience means faster time to value for customers. Throughout the website prototypes, suggestions were made to redesign and rewrite from a customer perspective. In the example of product pages that meant organizing the pages around common concepts like features and how to’s instead of branded product names that you only know once you own one. In execution, that also means using case studies and focusing on benefits over detailed specs.
Creating a thriving set of how to’s means customers can do their job easier and reduce the time they spend on the phone or in classes.
A community is not a place you create and then leave. It requires listening, producing content, and authenticity. In the case of the following prototype, it is also about creating clarity around what the community means.
Though I was not around to see these prototypes come alive, for me it was a shining example of what happens when you break down walls and collaborate. I’m a big believer in iteration and paper prototyping concepts. When you pull that off with all the players in the room, you have a team that believes deeply in what they are about to execute on. And some certainty that the end product will be valuable to the consumer.