How do you build IT systems for people?

A couple of weeks ago I finally pushed the buy button on a book about information architecture.

I have been meaning to do it for a long time. In one of my previous jobs we worked on a new customer relationship management system (CRM). At that time I strongly believed we would had benefitted from the help of an information architect.

Delving into the book’s first chapters I realized that we actually needed so much more. The book helped me realize we were creating information ecology rather than “just” information architecture.

Let me take a few steps back and say a little bit more about the project and the company.

The company in question was a service-oriented one, with an e-shop, network of shops and a helpline. CRM in our case was an internal system that stored information about our customers. It was also used by frontline staff to complete customer requests. The new CRM, of course, would be much better than the old one. The system our folks in shops and call centre had been working with came awfully close to the one Leisa Reichelt described in her piece Help Joy help you. Put simply it was hell.

Customer information was dispersed among many sites within the CRM. Sales or care operations took forever to complete. Frontline staff had developed special „workarounds“. On the top of that, they were obliged to fill in tens of fields and select from endless dropdowns to categorize interactions with customers. The categories they could pick from included: general info, other or customer profile change, etc.

As a result, we often found ourselves dealing with tons of data that said nothing because the taxonomy (or so I think it’s called) was so bad. Moreover the same operation could hide under multiple categories.

We knew about half of our customers were dissatisfied with „changes“. But digging out what they’d changed came near to impossible. Majority of operations showed up as Other or General info. We were unable to answer fundamental questions: Why do customers call/visit the shops more than x times during a month? Is it in a product, process, technical problems, training….?

Mine is a very front-end take on things. I am aware that there needs to be a solid back-end and many systems talking together before you get to see the screen.

WHAT’S THE POINT OF WRITING THIS?

I would be very grateful for tips & thoughts that would help me understand:

Who are the professional figures you would work with on such a project? How would you approach it? What is the science(s), research, writing you would go to?

How do you design a useful taxonomy system that allows you to analyze what goes on in a meaningful way without burdening your frontline staff?

How do you design a CRM that is not from hell, provides data that a human can decipher and is co crystal clear it could be used directly by customers themselves.