Balto Desktop App Redesign
Bringing excitement to the call agent experience through design
The Balto App is a call scripting software set to help agents stay on top of their call flow and manage the vast amount of information they are given, so they can handle calls more efficiently. The usability of the agent app is crucial: a successful agent app experience is core to Balto’s value proposition. More importantly, the agents who use Balto often go through rigorous amounts of calls each day, so their experience in the app should be as frictionless as possible.
MY ROLE
As the sole designer on this project, I was responsible for running user interview sessions, ideating early concepts, presenting to stakeholders and the team, and creating a design fidelity assurance document to ensure the end product matched the design vision.
TEAM
1 Product Manager + 4 Engineers
TIMELINE
March – May 2022
The Challenge
How do we design a more intuitive workflow for agents that is both fun to use and efficient?
Balto’s mission is to guide agents through their calls, enabling a streamlined and cohesive call flow. While the tool was well equipped to handle that effort, usage still saw a sharp decline due to usability.
The stakeholders’ initial ask was to redesign the agent app with the intention to add features that would delight agents and let them see the app as a tool they want to use, not one they have to.
With that in mind, we also had to consider reliability and intuitiveness in the design, ensuring that we set a solid foundation for future expansion of the app.
The Solution
Giving the app a long overdue facelift, to the delight of our agents
We drove conversations with our users and user-facing teams to uncover their pain points in using the app. We then emphasized a design that incorporated features to cater to these pain points, with a touch of personalization to keep each user’s experience unique.
Lastly, we introduced a new navigation flow so that agents can easily discover features and understand the value of the app.
Research
Why are agents not using Balto?
At the beginning of the project, we understood that agent adoption was low, but we did not understand why, so we centered our research around that. Because there was already a wealth of information from previous customer support requests and in-app feedback, I dug into our archives and spoke with both our Customer Support Advocates and the users they support to better understand their pain points.
NPS survey
Every agent receives an NPS survey every 60 days asking them to rate Balto and share what they enjoyed or disliked about using the application.
In-app feedback
Agents can submit feedback inside the application itself, which then gets archived. This feedback is usually submitted while agents are on a call and want to flag a technical or content issue right away, which gives us insight into the real-time challenges agents face while navigating a call flow using Balto.
User interviews
To find out why agents were straying away from using the desktop app for their daily workflow, and what challenges they face when using it, I conducted user interviews with 6 current agents.
Customer Support Advocates
Aside from speaking with agents, we also spoke with CSAs to uncover and understand the complaints and issues agents have while using the application. They provided an abundance of data through case tickets.
Insights
How can we give agents an intuitive experience?
From my research, I noticed some repeating trends, and strategized with the PM and customer support team to determine the most impactful problems to tackle for this project. Due to time constraints, we designated the pain points and key insights we wanted to solve immediately in the next phase.
01 / Navigation difficulty
Users felt frustrated with the lack of customization and ability to choose settings. The application had minimal setting options, so users relied heavily on memorizing keyboard shortcuts to select a function.
02 / Status confusion
Users were often unsure if the app was active during their calls, as activity markers were nonexistent or hard to see. This led to confusion about whether the app was turned on or not working properly.
03 / Support difficulty
Users found it cumbersome to seek support from the app during a call. Minor hurdles were amplified because users were unable to resolve errors in a timely manner.
Explorations
Focusing on the necessities
We began exploring different options to confront these issues head on. With time and technical constraints in mind, we wanted the redesign to scale with future feature expansion. To help with planning and visualizing what the navigation flow should look like, I created a sitemap to illustrate, simplify, and focus on the important features users would need.
Display panel
Color theme, text size, bold text, light and dark mode, and confetti selection.
Support panel
App install info, application reload, and log out.
Feedback panel
Categorizing feedback so CSAs can fix issues in a timely manner.
Leaderboard
A UI refresh and post-call details.
Ideation
Building a scalable base
I sketched and made wireframes to review and gather feedback from my PM and engineers on scope and technical feasibility. After creating a few design iterations on what should live in each new panel, I began turning my mid-fidelity wireframes into high-fidelity screens.
With the high-fidelity mockups, I ran usability testing with a handful of CSAs and users to uncover underlying issues with the structure, layout, and overall functionality of the desktop app.
FINAL SOLUTION
Enhancing the agent’s experience with delight
Giving agents a redesigned experience so they can have more control and customization of their daily tool.
Nested panels give us new opportunities to present structured information to users without getting lost.
Always present header
• A status indicator so agents can tell if they’re on a call.
• The stop/start call button is no longer hidden at the bottom.
• A notification icon for updates and announcements (future feature).
Familiar but better
• The bottom navigation has been improved with more tabs: Settings, Feedback, Profile (future), Gamification (future), and Leaderboard (future).
• Application management that persists.
Improved feedback workflow
• A new dropdown lets agents categorize the feedback they’re submitting.
• The support team no longer has to sift through every ticket to sort technical support from content suggestions.
• A process that benefits both agents and the support team.
Support panel
• No more keyboard shortcuts: everything has a designated home.
• Users can find install info to make sure their app is up to date, reload the application, and log out.
Adding a personal touch
• Agents can now customize their daily tool with colors and light or dark mode, which persist.
• Text size and bold text options for accessibility.
• A confetti selector so agents can choose how they want to celebrate their wins.
The Outcome
+30%
app usage within a month, tracked in Pendo
4–6 hrs
of Customer Support Advocate work lifted by categorized feedback
With the redesign, we received positive feedback from both managers and agents. Usage went up by almost 30% within a month. Custom theming and confetti also became a selling point, because customers wanted to delight their own agents with them. As next steps, we want to dive deeper into the focus areas we uncovered during discovery around users’ pain points and content workflow, and keep iterating on feedback.
The improved feedback panel, with the ability to select a feedback type, lifted 4 to 6 hours of work for Customer Support Advocates. It lets agents be specific in their feedback, which helps CSAs give them the support they need faster.
