Transforming Customer Support with AI-Driven Workflows

Leveraging automation in Sprinklr Care to enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction

Overview

Sprinklr’s Agent Assist is a vital feature of its Care product, designed to empower customer support agents to resolve issues quickly and effectively. However, the existing guided workflows (GWs) presented significant usability challenges, including unclear instructions, lack of progress visibility, and accessibility gaps. These issues were further compounded by an outdated design system, making workflows cumbersome and unintuitive for agents.

As part of Sprinklr’s transition to the Hyperspace design system, I took the opportunity to modernize the workflows focusing on workflow transparency, usability, and accessibility. The redesign introduced micro-interactions to support multitasking, ensuring smoother task management. Leveraging user research, actionable UX writing, and accessible design principles, I streamlined workflows, and reduced cognitive load, while creating a more intuitive and inclusive user experience.

Myself + Principal Designer +Design System Manager + Product Manager+ Developer
Oct 2022-Jan 2023

Team and Duration

As the solo product designer for the agent view, I was responsible for:

  1. User Research: Conducting interviews, surveys, and shadowing sessions to identify pain points in existing workflows.

  2. Wireframing and Prototyping: Designing and testing low-and high-fidelity prototypes to validate ideas and gather feedback.

  3. Design System: Ensuring the redesign adhered to Sprinklr’s Hyperspace design system across the platform

  4. Collaboration: Working closely with a principal designer, design system manager, product manager, and developers to ensure design consistency and to implement key features such as progress tracking and micro-interactions. This collaboration provided valuable insights into how small design choices, like hover effects and transitions, could simplify agent workflows.

  5. UX Writing: Crafting clear, actionable instructions to guide agents through complex tasks.

  6. Accessibility: Focused on improving usability and accessibility through practical, impactful changes.

My Role

Aim

The project aimed to:

  1. Create a design solution that improves agent efficiency, reduces errors, and enhances clarity.

  2. Modernize the workflows to align with Sprinklr’s Hyperspace design system and Sprinklr’s brand consistency across platforms.

  3. Implement practical accessibility improvements to make workflows more inclusive

  4. Introduced micro-interactions to help agents multitask seamlessly and access the dashboard without disrupting workflows."

  5. Introduce actionable UX writing to guide agents step-by-step.

Business Goals

Driving efficiency and customer satisfaction

  1. Enhance customer satisfaction by providing faster and more accurate issue resolution.

  2. Boost agent engagement by reducing friction and improving workflows.

  3. Increase adoption of the guided workflow tool by enhancing usability.

  4. Ensure alignment with the Hyperspace Design System across all platforms.

  5. Drive operational efficiency for agents and administrators.

User Goals

Empowering Agents through Usability and Clarity

  1. Enable efficient issue resolution with minimal delays or confusion.

  2. Provide clear and actionable instructions to avoid miscommunication.

  3. Ensure seamless multitasking and timely assistance for agents.

  4. Design workflows that are intuitive, accessible, and easy to navigate.

  5. Allow agents to interact with other dashboard elements without disrupting workflows.

THE PROBLEM

With today’s technology and digital landscape, customer expectations are continuously rising, making efficient customer support vital to any business. To accommodate the volume influx, there was a need to optimize the support workflow.

USER RESEARCH

User Interviews and Shadowing Sessions

  1. User Interviews: Conducted 5 interviews with agents and administrators to understand how unclear workflows affected their daily tasks. Feedback highlighted the need for progress tracking and multitasking capabilities.

  2. Shadowing Sessions: Observed agents managing live cases, which revealed the difficulty of working with dense layouts and the modal’s limited functionality.

Defining Key Challenges

  1. Lack of Progress Visibility: Agents had no clear way to track their progress or see the stages involved in the workflow, creating confusion and inefficiencies.

  2. Obstructive Workflow Design: The guided workflow blocked access to the Care Console, covering essential real-time widgets that agents relied on.

  3. Inability to Switch Between Workflows: Agents could not navigate between multiple ongoing workflows, limiting their ability to multitask effectively.

  4. Unclear Instructions: Vague task directions often led to errors and delays, requiring additional time for clarification.

  5. Limited Accessibility: Small buttons, poor color contrast, and dense layouts made the workflows difficult to navigate, particularly for agents with accessibility needs.

IDEATION

Wireframe explorations, iterate, collaborate, ask questions, and iterate again!

  1. Produced quick sketches to visualize basic layouts. Then, due to time constraints, provided mid to high-fidelity wireframes that focused on addressing the identified challenges using the new design system

  2. Collaborated with the design systems manager to ensure alignment with Hyperspace standards.

User Testing

Test, Test, Test!!

I Conducted a quick round of usability testing with 5 agents to validate the prototypes.

Agent Feedback:

  • Agents appreciated the clarity of the instructions and the ability to track progress.

  • Suggestions for improving collapsible modals led to smoother transitions in the final design.

Lastly, Collaboration

Just to make sure it all comes together and works as it should!

Worked closely with developers to implement features like collapsible modals and hover states, ensuring technical feasibility and adherence to design specifications.

THE FINAL SOLUTION

The Role of Administrators

Guided workflows undergo continuous refinement under administrators to ensure they align with organizational goals, optimize efficiency, and elevate the customer experience.

Administrators can create a guided workflow for agents by selecting widgets on the right pane (as seen on screen 2) . Admins can easily edit by selecting component they want to change on workflow itself!

The Agent View

Guided workflows help agents simplify tasks, enforce consistency, reduce errors, decrease assistance time, and enhance customer service delivery.

Agents can access guided workflow paths while assisting customers through live chat.

Features incorporated in the Agent Flow Final Solution

  1. Clear UX Writing: Added concise, actionable instructions to reduce ambiguity.

  2. Accessibility Enhancements: Improved contrast, enlarged buttons, and grouped content for clarity.

  3. Progress Tracking: Designed a progress bar and numbered steps to guide agents.

  4. Microinteractions: Enabled multitasking with collapsible modals and smooth transitions.

  5. Hyperspace Design Alignment: Updated components for consistency across Sprinklr’s platform.

THE IMPACT OF GUIDED WORKFLOWS

  1. Reduced Response Times: Average response times decreased by 40%, enabling support teams to handle higher query volumes with a 35% increase in efficiency and a 22% improvement in scalability.

  2. Improved Customer Satisfaction: Agents delivered faster, more accurate solutions, leading to higher satisfaction among users.

  3. Enhanced Consistency: Standardized response templates reduced discrepancies by 50%, ensuring a more reliable agent experience.

  4. Increased Efficiency: Task completion times were streamlined, making workflows faster and easier to navigate.

  5. Better Accessibility: Usability improvements, including enhanced contrast, larger buttons, and clearer steps, created a more inclusive experience.

  6. Seamless Multitasking: Microinteractions allowed agents to access other dashboard elements effortlessly during workflows.

  7. Higher Adoption: Positive feedback from agents validated the usability improvements and alignment with the new design system.

Future Opportunities

If I had more time, I would:

  1. Conduct Comprehensive Usability Testing: While a quick round of usability testing was conducted, I would prioritize more detailed and thorough usability testing to refine the design, validate decisions, and enhance workflow efficiency for agents.

  2. Address UX Writing Improvements: Although our team discussed and implemented UX Writing improvements during this process, the development of an official UX Writing Style Guide was not completed. If given more time, I would prioritize creating a consistent and actionable style guide to ensure clarity, tone alignment, and scalability across all workflows.

  3. Deepen Knowledge in UX Writing and Accessibility: Further enhance my expertise in these areas to design more inclusive, user-centered experiences that better support diverse user needs.

  4. Collaborate Post-Launch on Advanced Accessibility Features: Work with developers to implement features such as screen reader support, ensuring equitable and seamless workflows for all users.

**Note: While my primary focus was on UX and product design, I actively sought opportunities to broaden my knowledge in UX writing and accessibility. At Sprinklr, our Design Systems Manager led accessibility efforts, but I engaged in discussions and gained some insights throughout the redesign process. This experience has equipped me with a starting point, which I am eager to expand upon to create more inclusive and impactful designs.

Key Takeaways

  • Accessibility Drives Usability: Simple changes like better contrast and larger buttons significantly improved the user experience.

  • Clarity is Key: Actionable UX writing helped agents navigate workflows effortlessly.

  • Iterative Design: Time constraints highlighted the importance of prioritizing impactful changes while planning for future iterations.