Walgreens has been in the business of selling medications for over 100 years. Along the way, many service-oriented innovations have emerged—including some that we now take for granted, such as the drive-through pharmacy window. Fast forward to today, where online tools empower our customers to help themselves at an unprecedented level. Functionality like mobile refill-by-scan and Web access to medical records bring home interactions that used to require a trip to the pharmacy and/or doctor’s office.
As our User Experience team conceptualizes and designs these tools, our job is to make them at the same time powerful and simple to use. In order to succeed, our solutions need to be better than the existing off-line model.
This presentation focuses on seven core fundamentals that we live by when designing interactive experiences. They address issues like:
■Balancing the user’s primary task completion with up-sell
■Communicating transparently with customers—even when it’s bad news
■The critical importance of words—in labeling, instructive text, and marketing
■How brick-and-mortar and online experiences impact each other
■and a lot more!
The presentation is richly illustrated with visual UX design examples, as well as data from real customers—their own words, behaviors, and outcomes. We’ll talk about how we monitor and measure the customer experience—through customer satisfaction tools, clickstream analysis, and user research—and how that insight translates to design.
John Yesko - 7 User Experience Principles for Online Self-Service
1. 7 User Experience Principles
for Online Self Service
John Yesko
Director of User Experience
@jyesko
2. Why we do it
Our customers inspire us
I have complained about this for a long time now.
1. Quit screwing with the website. Every time I log on, I have to look someplace
else to locate how to refill my prescriptions. Once there, I have to hunt
through ANOTHER new screen to order my scripts. Your website is a pain in
the ass to use. You have no idea how frustrating your site is.
2. Find a solution to changing all this stuff on your site. It is not rocket science.
If I am going to order my scripts, I want it simple and easy.
3. I don't have time to do all this. However, if I don't take the time to type my
frustration out to you, then surely NOTHING will get done.
4. I HATE using your website. It takes so much energy to order
prescriptions, that sometimes I just call the pharmacy instead of taking time
to order them online.
5. Have I said your website is a real pain in the ass to use?
6. My web designer for my 4 businesses uses your website to understand what
I want our websites to look NOTHING like. Love, [Name].
3. To succeed, the online experience
has to be better than the alternative
3
4. Online > alternative
How is it better?
Because you keep a history
of my orders and it is just
danged easy. And I like the
staff in the pharmacy.
I only went online to order a product
that I know you sell, but it is seldom
available in the store. This is an item
for my Mother-in-law and she needs it Walgreen reminded me
about every 2 months. I will keep that prescription was due
buying it through your website as it is for refill.
very convenient.
A few clicks and I am done. Fast and
easy! Ordering via telephone is much
Because I am disabled and can't more time consuming and I have to
drive and shipping them to my home juggle Rx bottles to enter the correct
is a hole lot easier for me plus I like Rx numbers.
the free shipping. That sure helps.
I truly appreciated that
it took less than 3
I don't like waiting in minutes to order the
prescription, faster than
lines at the store. ordering by phone!
The people are not Convenience, love
my people. 24-hour service for
ordering, also pickup
at my store is 24
hours.
4
17. Multi-channel trouble
The customer may not know or care
which link of the chain broke
…always hoping "this" time it will be effortless. The
pharmacy rarely, NEVER, has the prescription on time
as stated. The last four or five months we have had
nothing but difficulty getting one of our prescriptions....of
course it is insurance fault???? Not buying that excuse
since the pharmacy has a bad track record with us. Very
much considering switching to Safeway pharmacy.
So, to be specific... you should know that the
pharmacy is not on the "same page" when it comes
to getting the orders done as promised.
17
27. Task completion
A book
―I gave it to my boss. He read it–
because it‘s short–and finally ‗got‘ what
I‘ve been trying to tell him for years
about usability. Then he bought copies
for our whole team.‖
27
32. Communicate proactively
Another book
• Improved error messages
• Understandable instructions
• Politeness online (not blaming)
• Better forms
• Customized "Page Not Found" errors
• Easy-to-use help content
• Human fallback plan
• Answer emails quickly
• …and much more
32
43. Words
Copy guidelines—incomplete list
• Clarity trumps cuteness
• Refer to things consistently throughout the site—and across channels
• Use the customer‘s language, not ours
• ―Click here‖ is banned
43
45. Data
Two big buckets of data collection
• Clickstream measurement
Observe and measure • Business intelligence
the customer • Customer experience monitoring
experience • Consumer research
• Customer satisfaction measurement
• Usability testing
Proactively solicit • Contextual inquiry
customer feedback • Participatory design
• Online surveys
45
46. Data
Tools for observation and measurement
What What
customers do customers say
Consumer Business Customer Clickstream Customer
Research Intelligence Experience Measurement Satisfaction
Monitoring Measurement
46
47. Data
User research
Qualitative research tactics meant to understand and advocate for our
online customers.
Methods Responsibilities Outputs
• Usability testing • Advocacy for the • Customer pain points
(Web, mobile, kiosk) end-user and unmet needs
• Directional concept • Knowledge • Customer
testing management and context, attitudes, and
distribution of insights drivers
• In-context and
ethnographic methods • Collaborative research • Quotes, anecdotes
with Customer and video clips
• Surveys
Intelligence and • Implications and
• Focus Market Research recommendations for
groups, diads, and
• Facilitating design and experience
triads
engagement between improvement
• Card sorting end-users and
business partners
47
50. No single right answer
Finding the balance
User Business
Needs Goals
Technical
Constraints
50
51. ―As consumers we are incredibly
discerning. We sense where there has
been great care in the design, and when
there is cynicism and greed.‖
Jonathan Ive
SVP Industrial Design
Apple
51
These are some principles that we try to follow in our work at WalgreensThe principles are fairly high-level, but I’ll give you some specific examplesThese practices are all inspired by our customers
Unfortunately, we don’t have it 100% figured out.These kinds of comments can be more valuable—if they’re specific. (More on that later)
As we design online experiences, we have a general idea that they’re better.But how?
These are quotes from real customers, which fall into a number of general categories.Hard to find products; can’t or don’t want to leave home; automation; time savings.Surely there are other reasons, but this is a good start.
Prescription refill is the top task on our website.Pre-Web, this was the typical method.It’s not that hard, but can it be better?
Here’s what it looks like online. You log into the site.Your available prescriptions are listed; you check them off; checkout; and usually still pick them up in store(although we have mail service too).As one of the customers mentioned, you can go back to your history, print records, etc. And you don’t have to talk to anyone.The website itself is fairly passive—customers have to find their way there. So we also send them email reminders, linking to the site.
The next level is text reminders, which we started a year or two ago.We know that people don’t always remember to refill when they’re at a computer, so mobile is a great medium for this.Obviously we make money, but it also helps with adherence (a big problem).Some privacy issues though—we can’t show the medication name or Rx number.
We’ve just begun to pilot a program with email.The customer simply replies to an email to refill.Compared to text, we can put a bit more info in an email.So what’s next…here’s a commercial.
We have transfer by scan now too.
Another service aimed at convenience is Web Pickup. It’s being piloted in a couple cities now.Marketed as a time saver and convenience play.
That commercial shows a specific niche, but is that enough to sustain the service? Probably not.But that’s why we test things. So far, it’s been popular with busy moms.
“Better than the alternative” is in the eye of the beholder.
We track cSat separately for ordering and fulfillment.In a new service like Web Pickup, it could mean the program succeeding or failing—even if it has nothing to do with the online portion.
This is actually pretty rare—that the customer is trying to assign the blame accurately.
Even though our site does A LOT of things, our philosophy is that we don’t get in the way of what our customers came to do.
How do we know what they came to do? We watch. On this busy home page, most people are focused on a pretty small number of tasks.There’s a strong temptation to get our customers to use all of our products and services.Because we do a lot of things, there’s a temptation to upsell and cross-sell our customers.As long as they’re here to fill a script, why not sell them some toothpaste.But we’ve learned that doesn’t work—it’s just a distraction.
Upsell.
Web Pickup promo after Rx flow.
Customers don’t always use your site the way you intended.Since we know a lot of people are coming for prescription refills, we have multiple ways to get into the service.We were getting feedback that customers couldn’t find the path to refill.After some digging, we learned that many customers were going straight for the login feature.
When they did, here’s what they found.Way down at the bottom right is a link to the Pharmacy.So, we moved this section up. It helped, but it still wasn’t good enough.
So when we re-designed this area, we put it front and center. Our pure information architecture minds didn’t quite like it because prescription refills aren’t part of the Account area, but we had to acknowledge the customer behavior.
Sometimes, the system goes down. This message doesn’t give much information.We are evaluated on customer satisfaction scores. Shockingly, this kind of thing leads to poor scores.As experience designers, we can’t do a lot about the service being down—but we can affect how it’s communicated.
This one looks a little nicer, and the copy is decent. But, it doesn’t really tell you what to do.
This page actually gives you some options of alternative things you can do.Ironically, all three of these options are hosted externally—so the site being down doesn’t affect them.The down-side is that if you aren’t interested in any of these areas, it’s not too helpful.Also we’ve found out that this page doesn’t only come up when we’re doing maintenance—and people know that.We’ve gotten customer comments about it recently—”maintenance at 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon?”
We promote the heck out of free shipping.
But sometimes it’s not free.
With all the advances in the Web and talk of interactivity, words still drive most interactions online.So the way we use them has a big impact on our customers.
I usually just stretch before I make a burrito.
Diabolical new feature to transfer prescriptions from another pharmacy to Walgreens.Early results have been good…except some 30% of transfers were already Walgreens prescriptions.
This is the taxonomy we inherited. All the category names sound decent, but where’s the aspirin? The band-aids? What’s a “shop” online?After some pretty extensive user research, we came up with a new structure, and it’s performing much better.As you can see, we broke down the vague categories more finely, added keyword-rich label, and jammed more in.
Here’s an example where we used language very proactively to help our customers (and ourselves).One of the metrics most e-commerce operations track is abandonment during checkout.This page didn’t have too high abandonment, so we thought we could do better. We found out that some customers simply though they were already done with checkout. Then they’d wonder where their order was.We made a change that had essentially zero development effort, and it made a significant difference.
It’s not always just the actual words we use either—how we present them is important too.
Here, we’re trying to communicated that the customer is about to change their prescription refill schedule, but might not realize it.However, the way it’s presented looks a little scary and confusing—with the red color and somewhat complicated language.
So we’re trying to make it a little more friendly and conversational.(This is still in development)
As I hope you’ve noticed, almost everything we’ve discussed so far depends on us having a lot of insight into our customers.So let’s talk a little bit about where that insight comes from
They’re all important, but the last two probably have the most direct impact on the design work we do.
If you work with a user experience professional, you’ve probably learned that we pretty much always think we’re right.But we try to take the approach that there usually isn’t a right answer.
Rather, it’s about finding the balance among these three areas.When we can do that, everyone’s happy.
Here are various ways to get ahold of me.If you enjoyed this presentation, please shop at these sites.