Redesigning the support infrastructure

redesigning the support infrastructure

Discovery and strategy activities done as the designer in the support tech team at Easee.

About

This a collection of some the activities I did focusing on improving the support and troubleshooting infrastructure for smart charging solutions from Easee. It involved many small tasks to address urgent issues, along with comprehensive research and analysis of the support infrastructure for charging robots.

This led to identifying opportunities and developing early strategies to improve the experience and operational efficiency for Easee and its partners.

Type of project

Design work at Easee during 2022-2023

main focus

UX research, Strategy

Contribution

This was a part of the work we did in the the product trio focusing on Support Tech.
My main contributions consisted in discovery activities (interviews, contextual inquiry, UX analysis), strategy and ideation workshops, and conceptualization.

The short version

challenges / opportunities

The number of different actors involved in the installation of chargers and unclear support roles among them caused customer frustration. This also caused unnecessary escalations leading to delays in issue resolution.

Redesiging the support system could enhance efficiency and monetizing parts of it could create new revenue opportunities for Easee.

an confusing support flow

internal document created

Main outcome

After conducting our discovery activities, I compiled a document containing all the insights we gathered.

This facilitated a better understanding of the present situation among the team and management, as well as enabled everyone to be adequately prepared for the ideation workshop aimed at defining the future vision for our support and troubleshooting tool.

The short version

timeline

The support tool had evolved from requests by the customer excellence team without much design or strategy, which is why a product trio was established. Many of our activities focused on discovery, identifying and testing assumptions, and setting a direction and process.

Design process (own visualization)

Getting started

illustration of initial strategy activity

initial strategy workshop

Shortly after joining the new team, I organized a strategy workshop to align on our understanding the challenges ahead and plan ways to tackle them.

This helped us identify areas that still needed clarification and highlighted assumptions we needed to test. It also built trust within the team, which helped along the way.

a new user group

start of discovery activities

One challenge we faced was that the support tool was used by many different types of users, and we were asked to focus on onboarding partners who had requested access to it. This was difficult because the tool was extremely complex and hard to use, and we knew little about this new user group.

However, we saw it as a great opportunity to learn how support partners work and identify ways to improve the tool to better meet their needs and enhance the speed and quality of support.

support tool's user groups

workshop during partner visit

partners visits

I led various research activities, including partner visits, interviews, contextual inquiries, feedback workshops, and conversations with support staff. I also trained colleagues to conduct contextual inquiries during partner visits.

The visits were very insightful, helping us understand partners' pains, gains, and moments of frustration. They also gave us a clearer view of their support infrastructure and its challenges. Cross-disciplinary research allowed us to build deeper empathy within the team and get a more holistic understanding of the situation. Finally, the visits strengthened collaboration with our partners.

insights and analysis

a stopped troubleshooting flow

One of the key insights from our discovery activities was that the complexity of factors affecting EV charging, combined with users' limited understanding, makes it difficult to provide effective support.

Troubleshooting is often interrupted and escalated, and the lack of clear escalation processes and documentation means the next person must often start from scratch, leading to frustration and delays.

troubleshooting flow

factors influencing support

impact beyond just the tool

Discovery activities, especially contextual inquiries, revealed insights beyond UX flows and tool usage. For example, we found that EV charging is still new, and users often lack accurate mental models, leading to misunderstandings and support calls focused more on education than troubleshooting. We also discovered that finding support staff knowledgeable in both EVs and electricity is challenging.

These insights allowed us to ideate not only on tool improvements but also explore other solutions, such as creating educational content about EV charging to reduce support calls driven by customer misunderstandings.

strategy and exploration

monetization exploration

While identifying the value of the tool and its additional services, we also explored ways to monetize a support bundle for extra revenue. I led several business model and lean canvas workshops to guide this effort.

This helped us see how the tool fit into a business model and kept us focused on strategic goals, not just fixing or adding features.

monetization exploration

example of sacrificial prototype

future vision

My work with the support tech team ended with creating a comprehensive research document summarizing our discovery activities and planning a future vision workshop. For the workshop, I prepared several sacrificial prototypes of strategic opportunities. Together with the team and management, we discussed their potential benefits, costs, and made iterations.

This helped us not only choose paths to explore further but also eliminate ideas, preventing us from revisiting them repeatedly.