Assign and Ship Devices
The Collaboration Hardware as-a-Service (CHaaS) is a selection of product offerings tailored for remote workers for their work-from-home setups. The bundle includes things like, headsets, Desk Pros, and license for Webex.
I led the design of a new feature to facilitate how customers ship multiple and different devices to their remote employees
Partners who place orders for Collaboration Hardware currently utilize Salesforce to create the quote, execute the deal, and place the order. The entire sales cycle can take up to 6 months, which is a risk for both customer and partner. In an effort to reduce the time taken to close a deal and in alignment with the company’s as-a-Service strategy, I identified one of the most arduous and time consuming parts of the sales cycle to be the collection and upload of shipping addresses and assignment of devices to each employee.
71% of customer and partners surveyed requested the ability to upload addresses after the order has been placed. They cited it was crucial for resolving errors or unexpected address changes.
Since post-sale address upload is not a Salesforce feature, our team’s solution was to build an integration that gives partners the options to
(1) choose who is responsible for submitting addresses for shipment and
(2) a deadline for the address submission after the order is placed so the devices can be shipped.
Then, I designed the flow within CX Cloud for customers to upload addresses and assign devices.
Placement for integration in Salesforce order experience
86% of customer and partners said that they wanted to Cisco allow direct shipments to the secondary locations in order to save time, logistics, and money.
“The cost of shipping the device from Cisco to my headquarters, then shipping the device again from my company headquarters to the additional office is…a waste of money, so shipping it directly to the additional office would save me a fair amount of money...”
Customer, IT Manager
In response to this ask, I explored multiple designs, focusing on reducing friction and time and providing clarity around deadlines for the user.
I pitched 3 options and chose the most feasible within the given business and technical constraints.
OPTion 1: Spreadsheet
My first pass was to emulate a familiar environment for customers — an Excel sheet.
Feedback: It was too much engineering effort to create a table with cells. The front-end team did not have the time and resources to build this from scratch, especially because they didn’t have a pre-existing pattern for the table cells and in-line verification of addresses. The way address verification has been built in other areas was through a form. It would have been hard for them to justify building this idea for a “small, one-off” task.
I identified a creative opportunity for technical and user efficiency.
option 2: address collection form
Customers may or may not have easy access to their employees’ addresses - regardless, for the sake of privacy, they shouldn’t and the appropriate path is to ask each employee individually and guarantee security. I came up with this idea to facilitate the process of seeking permission and respecting the private information of the end user.
Feedback: This idea for a fully facilitated, consolidated experience is the ideal for users to not have to use multiple tools to accomplish this one task. However, the team felt the idea required more time and buy-in from all stakeholders, so we agreed to use
Ultimately, I balanced time constraints, ideation, and usability to ship a feature on time.
final iteration: Bulk Upload and Manual Entry
The agreed upon solution by the collective team was to scale back to manual entry of addresses and a bulk upload. Given the time and resource constraints, this was the most realistic solution. From a design perspective, it still has the minimum proper functions to allow customers to manually enter addresses or key office locations to ship to. This includes using as many pre-built components, like the address verification form, as we could and ensuring the basic functionality was in place. Going forward, I communicated to the team that this is the first iteration and that we, as a team, should embrace future iterations and build according to what the customer needs. The first pass is a good effort but we won’t know it works until it’s in the hands of the user.
To review, I designed a new process for Cisco, which will influence and enhance our designs in customer delivery going forward. While our org is going through changes and process restructuring, my work is the beginning of better collaboration between the design team and the engineering department, streamlining execution and construction. I introduced the concept of a design backlog for both cross-collaborators and internally among the various design roles with our department.
Want to talk more about this project? Feel free to reach out at rachelanlin@gmail.com.