Utility Warehouse: Remote appointments

Outcome

Partner-led sales ran through the remote appointment during lockdown. By December 2020 the partner and the prospect each had a defined state at every step of the remote appointment, from the invite to a dropped connection, and the wires covered an experienced partner joining to support a new one.

Context

Utility Warehouse sells its home services through self-employed partners, and the remote appointment is the assisted conversion journey they use when they cannot meet a prospect in person. The partner phones the prospect, asks them to type uw.co.uk/remote and talks them through a sales presentation, then generates a code. Once the prospect enters it, the partner can see their screen and guide them through the Join funnel.

Partners’ feedback showed where that journey failed, and most of it was about getting the prospect into the appointment. To get more appointments through to sign-up, I focused the redesign on joining and on handing control of the page between the people in the session.

Finding where the remote appointment failed

To find the steps where partners and prospects struggled most, I started with a voice-of-partner audit of the live tool. I laid its screens out on one Miro board, the partner’s journey above the prospect’s, and clustered the partners’ comments under the step each one was about.

Most comments were about getting into the appointment. Prospects searched for the address when asked to type it, the presentation and its videos failed on some browsers and phones, O and 0 got mixed up in appointment codes, and connections could take minutes or fail outright. Inside the session, prospects could not find the give-control button, older ones especially, and an order could not be edited, saved or emailed without starting again.

Most research participants were also running a video call in another app during the appointment, Zoom or WhatsApp among them. In a second frame I mapped how an experienced partner supported a new one in the live tool, with all three entering the same code.

01Journey structures

Connecting the prospect before the presentation

In the live tool the partner could not see the presentation while talking the prospect through it, and saw the prospect’s screen only once the code had been entered. At the end of September I drew the first of two structures, where the prospect connects before the presentation starts. The presentation then plays inside the live session, with the call controls on screen and a Join now button into the Join funnel. The partner can see the prospect’s screen from the start and take them straight into sign-up.

In this structure the two addresses share one entry point, uw.co.uk/remote redirecting to uw.co.uk/join/remotely, and a link with the code in it opens the session once the prospect accepts the connection. When the partner sends the link, the prospect does not have to type the address or the code, the two steps many of the partners’ comments were about. One partner had asked for such a link. Either side can start a handover, the partner by asking for control or the prospect by offering it, and control changes hands only when the other confirms in a dialog.

The board’s frames cover a partner’s own appointment, an experienced partner supporting a new one remotely, and the same support for a face-to-face appointment, where the new partner is asked whether anyone is supporting them remotely.

Sending the presentation ahead of the session

I drew the external-presentation board against five joining issues from the audit, the address, browsers and devices, video playback, the code and the connection. Ten days after the first structure I drew the alternative, where the prospect is sent the presentation first and accepts the partner’s connection when it ends. The partner picks the type of invite, one for the presentation or a direct one that skips the presentation and opens the Join funnel, then copies the invite or sends it by email. Either way, the prospect gets a link, with the address and the code as a fallback. The same invite can go to a supporting partner.

I mapped an entry point for each role and left the open questions on the board as stickies: whether a link lasts a day or only while the partner’s session is open, what a prospect sees on an expired link, and whether a supporting partner needs a link of their own.

Both journey boards end on the same feature ideas, two-way and three-way video inside the session and live sketching on the shared page.

02Session controls

Making control easy to find and hand back

I put everyone’s initials, the control button and hang up into a bar at the bottom of the page. To show either person at a glance who has control, I gave the page border the colour of whoever has it, the same on both screens.

I drew every state of a handover for both sides, whichever side starts: asking for control, waiting for an answer, taking it and holding it, and the same states for giving it away. Private view covers the fields a partner must not see, with a heading that stays on screen while its explanation hides after ten seconds.

03Session states

Showing each person the state of the session

Partners reported that connections in the live tool could take minutes or fail outright. With two or three people on one page, each of them needed to know who was connected, who had control, and what had happened when a connection was refused, ended or dropped. From the end of October to December I specified the session on a plainer set of wires, one frame per situation, and called the customer the prospect, as partners do.

The partner waits in a waiting room that still offers the invite choice from the external-presentation board. The prospect enters the code or follows the link, then accepts or denies the partner’s request to connect, with a reminder that the partner cannot see the information marked with the private-view icon. If the prospect denies the request, both go back to where they started, with an alert on each side.

Each role has a colour, pink for the prospect and cyan for the partner, and the border and the larger circle follow whoever has control. To stop anyone ending the appointment by accident, I put a confirmation on hang up that warns the appointment will have to start again. When a connection drops, the page dims behind a Trying to reconnect alert.

Letting experienced partners support new ones

An experienced partner could already join a new partner’s appointment in the live tool, and I kept that support for new partners on live appointments in both journey structures. In the wires the supporting partner enters the same code to observe, in the waiting room or once the appointment has started, and the partner accepts their request first. The prospect sees an alert when the supporting partner arrives, and a third set of initials in the bar, in yellow.

A last frame covers a partner and a supporting partner connecting before any prospect has joined, with an access code of their own.

Sources

• Current experience and partner feedbackMiro, September 2020
• New journeys, embedded and external presentationsMiro, September and October 2020
• Session states and wireframesMiro, October to December 2020