Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation Designing for Business and Users: Finding the Perfect Blend Erin Smith Convergys Corporation

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 1 Convergys at a Glance Industry Strengths Include: Financial, Communication, Consumer Package Goods, Technology, Health Care, Retail, Pharmaceutical 73 contact, service and data centers worldwide Over 575 clients in 70+ countries Worldwide capabilities Listed on NYSE, S&P 500, Fortune 1000 A Fortune Most Admired Company for seven consecutive years $2.8 billion in revenues Leading public company Solutions and Service Offerings Customer Care, Human Resources, Billing Services Solutions, Software, Outsourcing, Consulting Enabling organizations to enhance the value of their relationships with customers and employees

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 2 What Companies Think They’re Designing

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 3 What Companies Are Really Providing…..

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 4 Agenda  Your Role as A Designer  Who You Talk To  Data You Collect  Defining Your Users  Questions

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 5 Your Role as a Designer  Don’t just take hand-me-downs  Make sure YOU understand what’s expected from the business  Make sure YOU understand the requirements on both the business and user ends  Make sure YOU ask about what may not make sense to you  Business Requirement Decisions are made because ‘that’s how it’s always been done’.  YOU can use these tools to fight your battles  But pick those battles carefully

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 6 What You Need The VUI Design Tool belt

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 7 Who To Talk To?  VP’s  Who funded the project?  Get expectations first hand  Technical experts  Database experts  Business analysts  Current system experts  Marketing team  They’ve done a lot of work on creating a brand, so why would you try to create your own?  Determine where some marketing lingo came from, and should you use it in your system?

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 8 Who To Talk To?  Call center representatives  They talk to these people every day  They are such a HUGE asset to your project…  The success of the design  The success of the deployment  Who’s using your system  Conduct interviews even before design begins

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 9 What Do You Ask For?  Stats, stats, and more stats  Current system statistics  Current calls to agents  Drop out rates  Current customer satisfaction statistics/survey results  Actual calls  Listen first hand to how tasks are conducted with a representative  Collect enough from a general line, and you can get a picture of task percentages  Marketing data  Commercials  Logos

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 10 What Do You Ask For?  Service channel information  Websites  Will functionality mimic what’s available on the site?  Have someone step you through the site  Ask for a test account to go and test it out on your own  (Find out what you think is intuitive, etc)  Service branches?  Does everyone follow the same procedures when conducting specific tasks?  Retail stores  How are items sold and promoted?

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 11 What Do You Ask For?  Company information  The more you can find out the about the company, the better  Organizational charts  Current financials  Competition  Competitive pricing strategies  Mission and Vision  User information  Marketing usually knows who/how they need to market  So use that data to your advantage  Demographic data  As much details as you can get because we’ll want to build the following…

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 12 Defining Your User  Take out the word ‘user’ when defining who’s calling  Example…

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 13 Defining Your User  Scenario:  Blackberry Product Development Team has decided that they want to put a lot of money into building new features for their next device  They need to determine that based on their primary user(s) building all these enhancements will really pay off and bring more loyal customers

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 14 Defining Your User (cont)  So they define the user based on demographics  Gender: Female  Age: 25 – 40  Geographic Location: Texas  Education: Bachelors of Science  Income: >$40,000

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 15 Defining the User

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 16 Defining Your User Can you build a system based on these specific pieces of data?

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 17 Defining Your User  Let’s ask more questions – Erin  Hobbies: hiking, photography,  Marital status: married, no kids  Magazines: Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Money  Primary uses for the Blackberry: , phone calls, maybe an occasional visit to mapquest.com

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 18 Defining Your User  Let’s ask more questions – Sarah  Hobbies: building computer programs to make her life easier, building web sites  Marital status: married, 2 kids  Magazines: Wired, MacWorld  Primary uses for the Blackberry: transferring data to other Blackberry users, getting info on the web, s and phone calls

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 19 Defining the User  Why this is beneficial  As you see in this example, it helps determine requirements for a specific product (system) by having a deeper understanding of who that user is  It can help in usability studies  You tested 7 ‘Sallys’ and 5 ‘Jims’  These become living and breathing things that take on a life of their own.  Don’t let them die after requirements, continue to use them during development, enhancements, etc  It creates a focus point to bring everyone on the team to once place (What would Sally do?)

Convergys Confidential and Proprietary Copyright © 2007 Convergys Corporation 20 Questions?