Robert Skrobe
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

Hi gibby,

Thanks for the commentary! Much appreciated.

In my experience with a massive financial services provider and a travel industry B2B business, call centers usually field and categorize the stuff that’s coming in. It can range anywhere from training questions to Severity 1–3 issues with the network, program, resource, etc. in question.

Sev 1’s are usually where everyone drops their stuff and pays attention to it / folks are paged to get on a call, no matter what time of day. If there’s good reporting/alarm systems in place, you can trace the problem fairly quickly.

For anything pertaining to the use of a product (including feature requests, updates and fixes to existing product), it goes through an internal process of categorization and priority. That priority is usually weighed against new features, and where a company wants to put its resource spend per quarter/year.

When a prioritized item is approved and scheduled by either program or project management, it usually has a bit of supplementary data to understand it’s domain. If it’s on the system side, it gets put in a backlog. If it’s an interface component that a client can’t handle (for a white label application for example), then it goes to the design team to figure out.

From there, you go through another process. Is this something covered in our universal design library? Is there an updated pattern from another product that can address this issue? If not, are we customizing our interface for a particular client that we’ll have to replicate across multiple clients? Would personalizing this solution for this particular client put a unforeseen burden on both development and sales?

That’s an example of how a greater conversation about product on the customer service front happens outside of anything related to UX and design. It goes back to Paul Adams presentation and a central message that he himself said he was beholden to:

Most practitioners will believe that the user is at the center of everything a business does. Therefore, as a user experience person, they should also be at the center. Unfortunately, it’s a naive, biased, ignorant and prejudiced view of the UX role in an organization.

To your point, User experience, as a concept, can be seen as an important part of getting the design right. But when there’s such a cognitive dissonance between concept and reality when it comes to representing users, it’s incredibly isolated on its surface. Plus, it’s just one dimension of the greater conversation about the product that the business has with its customers.

Thanks again for the commentary Gibby!

    Robert Skrobe

    Written by

    I run Dallas Design Sprints, The Design Sprint Referral Network and Talent Sprints.