Client

Telstra

Timeline

Dec 2014 - Jul 2016

Role

UX Lead

Background

Telstra’s 4000+ Field Technicians connect and restore over 20,000 customer services across Australia every day. The project goal was to find ways to save technicians time while improving their interactions with customers.

My role was to:

• Lead 2 designers in a multi-disciplinary delivery team

• Identify and quantify where time could be saved in the field

• Create, validate and prioritise concepts with the field workforce

• Develop artefacts for the development team

• Support the build, pilot and national roll out through testing, change management and socialisation

Discovery

We sent everyone in the team on ride ons to build empathy, understand the tech’s day and observe customer interactions.

I mapped these into service stages using photos, quotes and data in a “field room”. We socialised the behaviours, technologies and processes with lots of stakeholders for awareness and buy in, including the CEO.

Concepts and Validation

Each stage had jobs to be done and common pain points. We made a tech part of the design team and sketched concepts that matched their mental models. Next we iterated these with different types of techs during ride ons.

I made Axure prototypes for the jobs they had been allocated on that day. Every office assumption was field tested with exposure hours. Did they always have a free hand to use their phone? Could they read details in direct sunlight? What about battery life?

We iterated the features and flows rapidly until we had confidence about what user needs mattered most.

Business benefit

Now that we had user validation, we needed to quantify the tangible business benefits concepts could deliver. Did they save time, or reduce call centre dependencies?

The goal was to solve pain points that impacted most of the workforce. Financials, call centre logs, and time and motion studies were all inputs to the business case. I created small, medium and “full monty” versions of each feature – we had to justify any extra complexity in terms of business benefit.

Change management

Getting field hierarchy buy in was just as important as getting the technicians on board. I presented at briefings to ensure all levels of management were informed and could ask questions. 

As we neared national release, the build still had a lot of defects. I helped triage 35 versions of the app in the field every day with a pilot group of techs. We gave them Bunnings vouchers as a thanks for their patience and help.

National roll out

The national release delivered significant time savings and customer experience wins. Techs can now:

• Track timeframes, call customers and assess medical priorities

• Get directions to residences and network infrastructure

• Check cable details and run tests without going back to the van

• Send passwords to customers, saving 30 minutes per job

97%

Work force downloaded

72%

Embedded use

4.4

Sessions per day