Case Swarming in Slack

Context

Research Objectives

Insights informed

In this project, I set out to understand how the user experience of customer service users of Slack could be improved. Cross-functional stakeholders included product designers, product managers, and customer success.

Deeply explore current swarming practices
Identify and prioritize swarming-related needs and challenges

Design improvements for the current swarming interfaces within Slack and recommendations for best practices (to incorporate into a brand new paid-service prototype dedicated to swarming)

Research Questions

What are the roles and responsibilities of a customer service agent?

What tools and processes are used in case swarming currently?

What hinders effective collaboration while swarming?

What challenges are imperative to solve earlier to make the product valuable?

Methodologies

In-depth interviews

Survey

Process & Challenges

8 Service Agents, 2 Managers

Experience of swarming in Slack

Mix of industries

Mix of B2B/B2C

Google Meet

I recruited participants personally via email using the data from the internal warehouse. Answers from the interviews were transcribed and I used thematic content analyses to derive insights. I also joined hands with a colleague who was running a larger survey and added a few questions based on themes from the interview, to quantify the results I was seeing.

Challenges:

1. Recruitment: Since the sample was niche, it was challenging to get on people's calendars. I got creative (personalized emails, higher compensation) and successfully recruited interviewees.

2. Sell-ability: The insights would go on to inform the prototypes for a product that was a paid add-on service, so I had to keep that in mind while presenting my insights.

Impact

Overall, my recommendations to the product team were grounded in both statistical evidence and user narratives, making them more robust and actionable.

Insights unblocked decision points and accelerated ideation for the product team
Helped the team to think about how might we best support current processes rather than introducing friction
Prioritized key pain points which prompted product team to think about how best the current prototype can be updated