Reducing Customer Service Calls With a Triaging Solution

About HealthHub

For more than 50 years, HealthHub has been a leading provider of bedside patient engagement solutions for hospitals across Canada. I worked on this project during my part-time contract with Sparked Digital, a digital agency based in Toronto.

Challenge

HealthHub's contact page only provided a generic contact form, and a list of phone numbers for each of HealthHub’s offices across Ontario. This led to a significant influx of patient calls seeking repetitive information. Emails couldn’t be answered in real time, and hospitals were getting calls from frustrated patients.

Opportunities

The opportunity was to build an interactive Contact Us page that uses a digital decision tree to help customers find solutions to their problems and answers to their questions online.

Role and Duration

I was in communication with the Product Manager and Engineer to define problems, prioritize features, and plan designs. In the development stage, I communicated directly with the Engineer and Product Manager to facilitate the product release. Duration: 2 months

The Process

1. We Defined Two Types of Affected Users

Patients: needed help with orders, assistance in how to use a service, technical support

Hospital Staff: technical support

2. Understanding the Task With a User Flow

HealthHub approached us with a clear process flow which we needed to translate into a digital decision tree. I had to understand the user flow, so I first translated the process flow into a user flow:

User goes to "Contact Us" page > Makes selections until necessary > Receives a solution, contact information or both

The user flow was the same for patients and hospital staff, the only difference was in the backend system, where they had different types of questions they may need answered.

3. Breaking Down the Work

I broke down the work in two parts: designing the user flow and designing the icons. This would allow me to have a solid base to put the new icons on and the major part of the project would be done by the time I get to designing the icons.

4. Making Easy-to-Develop Designs With the User Flow in Mind

We needed designs for each step of the process: step 1, step 2, step 3 and solution. As users went from step 1 to step 3 the options became more granular so different designs were needed in order for the options to be scannable.

I came up with a solution with three types of boxes for the steps: large, medium and small. I delivered them to the Engineer in a style tile to make it easier for them considering the different states of each box. For mobile, I collaborated with the Engineer to come up with the best version and chose to go with the same box as step 3 but just add the icon at the end.

For the solution, I made two versions, one for an answer and a contact, and another for just a contact.

5. Creating Custom Icons

I couldn't find icons on the internet that matched my idea for HealthHub. This company was putting a lot of effort into creating customized experiences for their users, so it seemed right to also customize their icons.

When creating the icons, I focussed on: making sure they are not too different from other icons on their website, that they work well on both desktop and mobile, and that I have an icon for each selection that belongs to step 1 or step 2. I didn't include step 3 selections because those didn't use icons. See some of the icons created below:

6. The Final Product

Once we had all the separate elements, all we had to do was to just combine them with the data of question and answer relationships we got from HealthHub.

This system is still used and you can see it on the following link:

https://healthhubsolutions.ca/contact/#/

Results

With this user experience change, HealthHub saw:

A drastic increase in UX flow of almost 74% of patients moving to the Rent Now page.

Increase in utilization of the decision tree, allowing for more user autonomy and self-directed experience.

An increase in rental sales.

Decreased call centre contacts.

Future Considerations

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence chats, we could turn this solution into a conversational chat experience.