Internship at Accenture
Overview
During the Summer of 2017, I was involved in Accenture’s internship program back in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was put into a project team for one of Malaysia’s leading Communications, Media and Technology (CMT) companies. In the project team, I played a big part in redesigning certain functions and interface of the CRM software used for our client. These redesigns include a Next-Best-Action (NBA) tool, Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Dashboard, agent scripts, and a customer analysis prompt.
*Due to an NDA, I will only be talking about the general process that I went through to achieve the redesigns.
Next-Best-Action (NBA) Tool
Overview
The NBA tool is a tool created to help Sales Agents sell better to customers by offering a multitude of customer analyses to properly offer suitable deals for customers. It was designed to look like a product catalogue that could allow the agents to help the customer enrol into an internet or phone plan instantly. When I first came onto the project, I found out that usage rates for the tool were lower than expected. I then proposed a redesign of the tool, and after several user research sessions, I came up with high fidelity mockups to present to the team and client, where it was then accepted. The new design was launched days after my internship ended.
Analysis
The tool was initially designed in a 3 rows x 1 columns layout, with the descriptions of the product fully listed in each of the product’s boxes. The user could expand upon the descriptions by clicking on the header. As usage rate wasn’t as satisfactory as expected, I decided to conduct research with my colleagues and the users.
User Research
I performed on-site job observation of the users to determine potential reasons behind the low usage rate of the tool. There were several pain points I identified during this observation:-
- Efficiency. Users had to utilize multiple programs to integrate new/existing users’ data into the system. It wasn't a one-size-fits-all circumstance.
- Confusion. The design of the different programs users had to use were inconsistent. This leads to confusion for the users.
- Speed. Users have to conduct the customer service process as fast as possible to ensure a satisfactory customer journey. However, with the barrier being the multitude of programs with a variety of functions to sift through, it’s not entirely possible.
I also asked the users several short questions regarding the current design of the tool, and it fitted the pain points I identified above. One thing was for sure — the design of the current NBA tool effectively pushes users away from using it. After gathering the data I needed to ideate on a change, I proceeded to produce several sketches of potential designs to find a solution.
Ultimately, I decided on a 1 row x 3 column design with text clutter taken out and put into a separate pop-up window which the users can navigate to through an icon. The design was iterated several times with this layout acting as a reference point. My colleague came up with the final design that is currently being used today. The only elements that were changed were placement for visual elements such as decision button placements, button shapes, etc.
The design was built and released a few days after I ended my internship, hence I couldn't gather any feedback regarding the new design.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Dashboard
The NBA tool also had a KPI dashboard for the users to check their progress on achieving daily and monthly targets. However, what I noticed on my on-site observations was that the agents weren't very knowledgeable on their own statistics. They often stuck to the tried-and-trusted method of just simply writing their daily statistics down on a whiteboard or a piece of paper.
Hence, I began to redesign the KPI dashboard to make it look significantly cleaner and include proper visualizations (graphs/charts) for how data would look like.
I stuck to the 3 row x 2 column design that was already present in the tool. I interviewed my colleagues on which data was important or useless to present to the users. The idea behind was to ensure that if the users ever needed to look at their own performance, they can easily have a glance at it and know how they’re currently performing.
For data visualizations, I worked on Highcharts’ Javascript implementation. Here are several examples of the charts that I coded (Press “Run” at the top left corner to see the chart):
The new designs were launched about a month after I left, hence I couldn’t obtain subsequent feedback regarding the new design.
User Scripts
Our NBA tool utilized scripts for the users (agents) to engage the customer in a conversation. However, it was known that they were too static and stagnant, and that it fulfilled the opposite goal of what it was intended for. Hence, I worked with another colleague to figure out how to ensure the words were short, concise and understandable for the users to utilize.
The scripts were previously displayed in a paragraph format that only required the users to read word-by-word to the customers. We decided that the clutter wasn’t needed, and that if the users decided to use scripts, it should be short, concise and understandable.
The scripts were more organised after the rework. The clutter was reduced and we managed to make everything look more organised and clean.
Customer Analysis Framework
Our team also worked on improving how to efficiently determine the deals to offer to walk-in customers. Through the 3 month internship period, I was fully engaged in meetings with clients to brainstorm on several methods on how to efficiently produce an ad-hoc customer analysis for the system to determine what deals to offer the customer.
I was fully involved in the pilot of this new prompt. I conducted job-shadowing at customer touch points to determine and isolate any issues or problems with the new customer analysis framework or current as-is process.
Reflections
I learnt several things along the way, especially lessons that can be applied in UX:
- Working in a team environment. My team consisted of 30 members, and I had to learn how to communicate my ideas with each one of them effectively as everyone has a different understanding to how things function.
- Adaptability. Since I was working solo most of the time, I had to utilize the learn-as-you-go mindset. I was fairly fresh into UX at the time of my internship, and as such had no idea on where to start. I had to utilize online courses to figure out where to go, what to do whilst simultaneously working on the NBA tool redesign.
- Communication. There were several times where I had to communicate an issue or idea to several team members, or even the clients. I used to consider myself a good speaker, but this was different as it was a formal environment, hence I had to relearn crucial communication skills especially when it came to my superiors.
- Mutual help goes a long way. I collaborated with other interns throughout the internship. We conducted knowledge exchange sessions on the tasks we were working on so we could gain as much as possible out of this internship. We also bounced ideas off each other often on the tasks we were handed to.
My Accenture internship was an extremely fruitful and rewarding one. I didn’t expect my first internship to go so well, considering all the horror stories I’ve heard from my friends about how internships weren’t necessarily providing them with adequate knowledge and experience. This was my first experience in the UX field and I was glad I managed to benefit the team in the best way possible — innovating new ideas.
