Case study • 2020 - 2021
ASAPP Desk Redesign
Over the 2020 pandemic some companies lost 30%-50% of their CX workforce overnight when contact centers shut down because they could not support work-from-home requirements.
For some industries, call volume volatility meant surges – in some cases more than an 800% increase followed by a plunge to 10% of normal.
Other industries saw digital channel support grow from 8% of all interactions to over 30% in a few short weeks.
ASAPP’s Desk product provides agents with AI-driven suggestions of what to say and do to resolve issues fast – even as they handle multiple conversations at once.
The Desk product teams operate across both voice and digital channels. My core responsibility was to enhance agent productivity by minimizing in-app context switching, allowing for seamless management of customer interactions and support resources.
The problem
Agents grapple with the constant juggling act of switching between Desk, browser search tabs, and external work applications. The surge in chat volume has exacerbated this challenge, leading to difficulties in keeping up with incoming queries. While we investigate enhancements to ASAPP's integration with external tools, our primary goal was to devise an efficient solution for navigating Desk issues while preserving conversation context.
Increase agent efficiency and productivity
Key Success Metrics
• Throughput – Number of chats handled per hour
• Concurrency – Number of chats handled at once
• Average Handle Time – Chat duration length
• Average Response Time – Length of time customers are waiting for a response
Interesting fact – According to Forrester Research, global contact centers estimate around $15 billion a year in revenue. So you can see why having success in the above metrics are incredibly important to our client organizations. Save maaaajor $$$.
Approach
Role
Designer owner – Discovery, Research, Design, Prototyping, Testing
Team
Product Owner – Cosima Travis
Technical Product Manager – Eva Ochoa
Eng Lead – Andres Alters
Engineer – Nico Grapas
Engineer – Daniel Lacy
Engineer – Tomás González
Design Technologist – Diego Fernandez
QA – Carolina Muñoz QA – Max Rojás
Phase: Chat Composer
• Log: Moving from alternate side message bubbles to left-aligned Slack style Avatar messages
• Log: Improved live typing state
• Log: Adding unread / new message states
• Log: Improved message actions and states
• Composer: Redesign and UX improvements of text input + new functionality
• Composer: Redesign of suggestions augmentation container
• Composer: New addition of the Activity bar (below composer input) that includes dynamic keyboard tips based on what an agent is doing along with response timer signal.
The original chat log required a significant amount of user experience enhancements as well as visual improvements to enhance its overall functionality and aesthetics.
Phase: Main Navigation
• Combining left rail nav with panel/ customer cards
• Complete restructure and content strategy improvements for card content / supporting customer info
• New signals for automation suggestions, chat modes, states, and new/unread messages
Following the updates to the chat log, it became evident that the original LHP was in need of extensive UX and visual refinements. Furthermore, it required flexibility to support the expanding requirements of the Multi-chat experience.
Phase: Multichat
• Deep exploration for new accent color palette that complies with AA accessibility rules
• Complete overhaul of responsive framework and dynamic panel logic based on number of concurrent chats that are active
• Redesign of chat header to include quick access customer account info and scalable layout for future omni-channel AI augmented conversation context management
• Small improvements to the chat composer states
• New collapsed LHP / Main nav design
