VirtualCare User Support Page Revamp
Year 2020-2021
Think Research’s (TRC) VirtualCare (VC) application enables patients and providers to have virtual appointments in situations where in-person appointments are not possible.
The onset of the pandemic meant providers could no longer easily see patients in-person leading to a client boom for TRC across the Primary Care and Mental Health sectors. These new providers needed to be rapidly onboarded which meant we could no longer take the previously typical 2-8 weeks which in turn delayed proper adoption. We had to think critically about how we could set them up for success with the up to date support materials needed to start seeing patients virtually in under 24 hours.
The revamped support page which went live in January 2021 reduced calls and emails from clients to our support teams regarding frequently asked questions about how to use VirtualCare.
My Role
As the Lead Implementation Specialist for VC, I worked with the Product, Engineering, and Client facing teams to re-examine and rework the in-app support content to ensure it was up-to-date and easy to digest for providers, clinical staff, and patients alike.
The Challenge
When the pandemic hit, TRC signed on a number of new Mental Health providers. However, VC support content was originally designed for supporting direct patient to provider interactions in the Primary Care space. The support articles were also not used much in the past and were not consistently being updated in line with product enhancements.
My Hypothesis
I predicted that including better navigation and more up-to-date articles will reduce the time spent onboarding by half and will speed up the time to adoption per client by half.
Support Page Gap Analysis
Since we had about 6 months to revamp the content, I led a problem scoping activity with the leads from the Client Services, Technical Support, Product Design, and Engineering departments to ensure stakeholder alignment on the problem space and business priorities. I asked each of the 5 participants of the activity to list out what they saw as the ideal future state of the support page as well as where they saw current state gaps.
Sample participant feedback from internal problem scoping activity.
User Feedback Review
Excerpts of existing user feedback about the support page.
I also reviewed existing user feedback captured by our client facing teams to make sure it was considered alongside internal stakeholder feedback from the problem scoping activity.
Previous design of the VirtualCare support page.
GAPS & AREAS OF OPPORTUNITY
Based on the outcomes of the problem scoping activity and review of user feedback, I grouped my insights into the following themes:
#1 - Content
Out of date
Limited use of multimedia
Articles lengthy and hard to digest
No content available for the mobile app
#2 - Operational Processes
No recurring content review and update process in place
No data being captured on user feedback of support content
#3 - User Experience
Difficult to navigate
Users unable to share/download articles
Defining Problem Statements
Based on themes I found from working with internal stakeholders and via existing user feedback, I defined the problem statements below:
#1 - Support articles are hard to find: Newly onboarded clinical staff and providers are getting frustrated having to manually scroll through long lists of articles to find what they needed.
#2 - Support articles were not comprehensive enough: The support articles did not include enough detail to support users in performing basic actions like account registration, appointment booking, and conducting the visit over video/audio.
#3 - There is no clear operational process in place to maintain the support content: The support page was not being updated on a regular cadence to stay aligned with VC as it evolved.
Project Goals
Once the problem statements were defined, I outlined the goals of the project to align accordingly.
#1 - Develop a new information architecture (IA) to help better organize support articles and make it easier for VC users to find the information they need.
#2 - Audit and update the current support content to ensure that users can access easy to digest and up to date content.
#3 - Build and implement a content review and maintenance process to ensure this major support content overhaul would not need to be done again once a recurring process was in place.
Building the Information Architecture
I started by mapping out what current state looked like to visualize the existing gaps.
I used Whimsical to help stakeholders better visualize the current state of the support page.
Card Sorting Exercise
I conducted a card sorting exercise using OptimalSort with internal stakeholders where I asked each participant to group the existing articles in categories based on how they would expect them to be organized.
Key Takeaway: Most participants (see below) expected the articles to be sorted primarily by workflow step. This would give users clear and accessible packets of information specific to the task they were looking to complete in VirtualCare.
Final Information Architecture
I used Whimsical to categorize articles by workflow step with titling conventions incorporated to delineate specific articles by user type (i.e. Clinical User, Patient, Provider). I wanted to test the final IA on users but was unable to given the tight timelines and that access to users in healthcare is very difficult.
Support Content Audit and Revamp
After I conducted a gap analysis of the existing support articles, they were updated by the Technical Writer to achieve the following:
Consistent titling conventions where applicable (“User role: Workflow Step”).
Consistent levels of specificity across each article category.
Net new content developed for basic user functions.
Sample screenshot of new article categories and titling.
Content Review & Maintenance Process
My primary focus here was to ensure we had a recurring process to maintain and update support articles as VirtualCare evolved. Since we did not have a previous process in place, I mapped out all possible triggers for articles needing to be updated and developed and validated the new process as shown below. I pitched this to internal stakeholders and received buy-in for implementation and adoption.
The Improved Experience
Feedback from the client facing teams post go-live indicated they were receiving less client calls and emails around frequently asked how-to questions. The implementation of the new support page has enabled these teams to confidently refer users to it to help answer any FAQs and reduce the overall time investment per client. While further quantitative analysis is needed, this reduction has increased available capacity of these teams to solve more complex client problems.
Future Considerations
There’s a significant opportunity to implement use case specific support pages that could make accessing support just as convenient for providers and patients in other more complex situations.
With the implementation of additional technical capabilities for the support page in the works, this project has laid the foundation to support new opportunities to improve how users access in-app support.
Retrospective
User Interviews
Due to the tight project timelines, no interviews were conducted. As a next step, these should be conducted with both Primary Care and Mental Health providers to evaluate the simplicity and accessibility of the revamped content.
Use Case Specific Content
As any future support content for VirtualCare use cases (i.e. Long Term care) would be net new, there is a significant opportunity for research and discovery on where it can be focused to ensure users within these spaces are getting the value they need.
Evaluating Usability
A closer look at the analytics behind the new support page will be required to evaluate usability. While this was out of scope for this project, this will be important in helping answer questions around how users are searching for & using the content and whether they are actually finding the content helpful.
Learnings
Idealistic thinking is not always ideal.
I found myself taking too idealistic an approach when scoping out this project. It was not until I engaged internal SMEs that I had a better idea of what was feasible given the timelines and technical constraints of VirtualCare (i.e. dynamic support content segmentation by user group was not possible due to the technical capabilities of the platform used to host support content).
Small steps can lead to major progress.
We prioritized addressing Primary Care and Mental Health user groups, which included rebuilding the support content to clarify frequently misunderstood workflow steps. This was yet another reminder that large strides cannot be made without smaller advances first. The work done in this project has laid the groundwork for how the support content can be built out further to support future opportunities.
Consistency in content organization and language is crucial.
Even before technical changes were applied to make content more accessible and searchable, the use of consistent titling conventions for articles, terminology, and product concepts along with intuitive categorization made for a simpler and more pleasant user experience when seeking “self-serve” support.