Phone Activation Flow Redesign

Brand: Ting | Times: 2013.10-2015. 3

Background

In order to use their phone with Ting, users need to activate their phone by themselves following instructions on Ting's website. ;

- Existing problems

- A lot of users have to call our support team when they have problems during activation

- A large number of users who call in are just not confident enough that they can activate their phone by themselves so they just call us directly without giving it a try.

- Goals

The overall goal of activation process redesign is to make activation process easier in order to reduce phone calls that support team get.

Iteration 1

- Existing problems

- There was no breadcrumbs or navigation in the whole activation process to indicate where users are and how many steps left. That's why users got lost or got scared (they don't how complicated this process is and how long it's going to take),

- After users finishing online activation, they still need to change settings on their phone to sync their network, however on the last step of activation process, the page focused on celebrating that activation had been done, but at that time, users are still not able to use their phone. This is the time when they got frustrated and call us.

- Solutions

1. Add breadcrumbs on each page. Bring main navigation back to activation process. So users know where they are and what the following steps are.

2. Refine whole workflow for all scenarios so different types of activation can share consistent experience.

3. Redesign activation "congratulation " page. Give users step-by-step instructions on how to sync their phones.

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 7.37.11 PM.png

Screen Shot 2014-06-24 at 10.07.26 AM.png

- Evaluation

After we launched the new activation flow, phone calls that support team got related to network sync (last activation step) dropped from more than 60% to around 30% (of totally activation tickets ). But activation is still our top phone call driver. So we dived in deeper into Google Analytics to see what users' pain points are. We also talked to our support agents for more feedback.

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 7.47.09 PM.png

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 7.47.00 PM.png

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 7.46.41 PM.png

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 7.46.28 PM.png

After analyzing the data we got from Google Analytics and talking to support agents, we found out that the first step (sign in/up) is causing us problems. We didn't give users any context on that page other than a sign in/ up form. Users are not sure how long this whole process will take, some users are in the mindset that they need to call us to activate, and some believe that it will be faster and easier to call us. With all those feedback in mind, we started a second iteration.

Iteration 2

- Goal

Ting was expanding its network service to GSM, which requires totally different activation process. The goal of this iteration is to make activation process compatible with GSM activation. We also want to take this chance to fix small problems that we found in last iteration.

- Solution

1 Change workflow. Give users some context on activation landing page. In the first step, ask users what phone they have rather than ask them to create an account.

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 8.03.34 PM.png

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 8.06.15 PM.png

2 For GSM activation, we try to mirror existing activation flow as much as we can and only make inevitable changes.

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 8.09.52 PM.png

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 8.09.35 PM.png

Iteration 3

- Why we have to change it again

We invited hundreds of users to join our GSM beta testing. During the testing, we found out that our old compatibility checker was causing all kinds of confusions and inaccurate results. We had to make big changes to our compatibility checker to give users more accurate results. For technical reasons, the change of compatibility checker made it impossible for GSM activation to enter SIM number without sign in/ up. So we have to ask users to sign in/ up at first.

- Solutions

We made sure that activation landing page is still offering user useful information to encourage self-serve.

- Evaluation

We combined backend data with Google Analytics data to compare how workflow change affects users' activation complete rate.

It's clear that changes we made in Iteration 2 significantly helped increase activation complete per visit. In Iteration 3, the fact that we had to bring sign in/ up to landing page had some negative affect on activation completion, but we managed to minimize it.