BT Smart Assistant
Role: Lead Product Designer (UX/UI)
Tools used: Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Jira, Mural
01
About the project
Overview
Smart Assistant is a way for BT’S customers to diagnose and fix problems with their products online, rather than calling into BT’s call centres and diagnosing their problems over the phone. It was a complex project with roughly 100 possible diagnostic outcomes.
With a possible 100 outcomes, Smart Assistant makes it far better at fixing specific problems. No longer relying on ‘turn it off and on’. Self-serve gives BT’s customers more control and autonomy and saves time and money.
Project focus
Seamless and intuitive diagnostics experience
Improve SEO performance through strategic UX
Display complex information simply and in a hiearchical order
Reduce calls to BT's call centre, by ensuring customers resolve their broadband issue via the web.
My role
I led the end-to-end UI/UX, from accesibility and mobile optimisation to SEO. While aligning the design closely with stakeholder feedback through regular meetings and revision.
Key problems Smart Assistant solves
- Ensures that customers resolve their broadband issues within the app and reduce calls into BT’s call centre.
- Gives BT customers a quick and easy way to fix their broadband problems.
- Helps BT’s customers understand what they’re doing and why; an opportunity to educate to avoid future problems.
- Reduce frustration by allowing customers to self serve and diagnose their broadband issues themselves online.
02
Discovery
BML (Build, Measure and Learn) session
The purpose of getting the team together for a BML session was to encourage; user centred design, encourage creative thinking, have a broader insight and ensure the project team was aligned.
Ideation session
Creative workshop where the team generated a wide range of ideas and solutions for the Smart Assistant project.
Competitor analysis takeaways
Opportunities:
- Include a chip where customers can like or dislike the service
- Prioritise clear, focused layout
- Support bilingual users
- Streamlined navigation
Pain points:
- Confusing navigation
- Lack of bilingual options
- Confusing navigation
- Busy UI
- No personalised support
User journey map
To ensure a seamless and intuitive user experience a user journey map was created.
03
Design Exploration
Ethnography user research
The first iteration of the design was put into user research. The objectives of the user research session were:
- To understand how users interact with the Smart Assistant journeys/designs.
- To identify any high level usability issues or points of friction with the Smart Assistant design variants.
- To understand which variant. (timeline or chat flow) is easier for users to use and understand.
Users preferred the timeline approach. They were open to troubleshooting online before contacting their provider as they need the issue resolved quickly.
Prototype one
Prototype two
04
Final designs
100 plus screens designed in Figma.
Layout and design methodology
12 point grid system used for consistent padding, spacing and margins across all UI elements. Using this system helped to ensure visual harmony and alignment across different screen sizes.
UI consistency maintained uniform radius, spacing and proportions for buttons, cards and icons, which ensured clean, structured and accessible layouts.
Delivering the designs to development
Before delivering the designs to development, several review sessions were undertaken with the projects stakeholders, engineers, accessibiity team and management. These review sessions helped to ensure that the work could be handed over with minimal changes after delivery. By establishing any issues such as, engineers highlighting potential API errors and the screens that would be needed.
Figma link was sent to the devs before delivery, so they could take a look and see what stage design were at.
Step 05
Results
BT Smart Assistant delivered measurable improvements across key customer and business metrics. BT Smart Assistant helped BT deliver a more efficient self-serve, digital service experience, while also cutting operational costs.
Business impact
20%
Reduction in call volume
Within the first 3 months of launch, easing pressure on BT’s contact centres and lowering support costs.
16%
Fall in DSAT scores
Reflecting a more intuitive and frustration-free customer experience.
32%
Fall in escalation rate
More users successfully reached a resolution for their broadband issue, without needing to escalate to a ‘book an engineer stage’. Compared with customers who called into BT’s call centre. Calling out an engineer is a large cost to the business.