Utility Warehouse: Remote appointments

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. The redesign focused on getting the prospect into the appointment, where most of the feedback sat, and on handing control of the page between the people in the session.

Auditing the live journey

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 instead of typing it, the presentation and its videos failed on some browsers and phones, appointment codes mixed up O and 0, 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

Embedding the presentation in the session

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.

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. Either side can start a handover, the partner by asking for control or the prospect by offering it, and 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, which asks the new partner whether anyone is supporting them remotely.

Keeping the presentation outside the session

Ten days later 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 it, then copies it or sends it by email. 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

Separating controls from alerts

I put everyone’s initials, the control button and hang up into a bar at the bottom of the page. The page border takes the colour of whoever has control, the same on both screens.

I drew every state of a handover for both sides, asking for control, waiting for an answer, taking it and holding it, and the same states for giving it away, whichever side starts. 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

Specifying the session states

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 connection request, with a reminder that the partner cannot see sensitive information. A refusal sends both 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. Hanging up needs a confirmation, which warns that the appointment will have to start again, and a dropped connection dims the page behind a reconnecting alert.

Adding a supporting partner

An experienced partner could already join a new partner’s appointment in the live tool, and I kept that 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 they arrive 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.

Outcome

By December 2020 every role in a remote appointment had a defined state at each step, from the invite to a dropped connection, three months before I left Utility Warehouse.