DIRECTV - eCommerce Solution
How might we allow users to purchase DIRECTV services online.
As the UX Lead, I facilitated a Design Sprint where a cross-functional team of Product Managements, Engineers, and Designers identified the ideal plan selection and purchase path for DIRECTV packages.
Project Goal
Help users clearly understand what is available within each plan, make a selection, and transact through a somewhat complex and lengthy conversion flow without having to interact with a sales agent.
Wait, so you want me to call to order?
Until 2016, Red Ventures was creating websites that guided users to call to purchase home services, connecting them to an in-bound call center to place their order. It was incredibly successful, but many users just wanted to be able to transact online.
Challenges
Discovery for this sprint included several IDIs with our top sales agents to understand what types of questions customers were asking on their sales calls and what types of persuadability and informational tactics were most effective for DIRECTV. These conversations were incredibly insightful and helped shape our sketching and final solution.
We also did a comprehensive walkthrough with our engineering team to understand the nuances of the API that created some limitations in terms of what information we needed to gather at different moments of the conversion flow. Because the API is owned by a partner and was originally created for phone sales conversion, there were some orders of operation that felt unnatural from an e-commerce perspective. These were challenges we needed to solve for as best we could through UX copy and transparency to users.
Our solution
We focused on a simplified plan selection process that focused on 1. what all plans include, and 2. what is different between each plan. We learned from our sales agent interviews that knowing whether a specific channel was included in the plan was important. Our Day 1 solution was to create a user-friendly channel list for each plan, and for Day 2, we prioritized a "find the right plan for you" flow that allowed users to select their Must Have channels to match them to the right DIRECTV package.
We also streamlined the cart experience as much as possible, and focused a lot on the credit check step that is required. We leaned in to content on that step, to make sure users understood why we needed to check their credit, that this check would not impact their credit score, and then understand their options if they did not have the level of credit needed.
Results
Once we launched the digital cart solution, we were able to quickly identify some improvements based on data like bounce rate from certain steps, as well as some insights from session replays. After some quick improvements, we were able to increase our cart conversion rates, and decrease the number of calls our sales agents were getting for "cart assists" (which they did not get paid for at launch). We were also able to use site and user data to inform when and which users to send to a phone experience over a digital cart and vice versa. This approach enabled us to meet our users' needs at a personalized level, as well as alleviate staffing challenges for lower traffic times like nights and holidays.
