Streamlining support: A product design that reduced resolution time by 60%

Client

German Fitness Influencer

Pamela Reif

Project type

Company Client Project

Role

Product designer & manager

Led end-to-end design and development to transform a hidden email-based support system into a user-centered help experience.

joining the Pam team to fix customer support

I led the team in identifying key pain points and user needs, introduced personas, user journeys, and low-fidelity prototypes, and fostered cross-functional collaboration through multiple workshops.

The Start

Collected data from client feedback, 100+ app store reviews, customer emails, and stakeholder input.

Organized insights into empathy maps to visualize pain points :
- “I sent 3 emails and got no reply!” (Ghostee Anna)
- “I don’t even know where to click for help!” (Confused Cara)

The Challenge

"How might we make customer support faster, more accessible, and less frustrating for the Pam app users (fitness and recipes app)?"

Blocked Liza, 28

“I need instant answers, not endless email threads.”
“Why can’t I fix it myself?”

Pain Points:

Support was buried in the app (single email address).
Users struggled to resolve issues quickly ("I couldn’t find help for my login error!").
No self-service options led to repetitive queries.

Personas and User Journey Maps

Ghostee Anna: “No response after days—I felt ignored!”
Confused Cara: “The support email is impossible to find!”
Clueless Sara: “Why can’t I solve this myself?”
Blocked Liza: “My app crashed, and I lost my progress!”

User Journey Maps

Highlighted frustration peaks (e.g., users abandoning the app after failed support requests).

Blocked Liza journey

Identifying Opportunities & Inspiration


Competitive Research:

Analyzed various customer support flows in apps like MyFitnessPal and Headspace to identify best practices.
Created standardized user flow diagrams and extracted adaptable elements such as categorized ticketing and self-service FAQ features.

Collaborative Design

“How Might We” Ideation Workshop:

“How might we make it easier for users to get faster feedback?”

After multiple rounds of collaborative ideation and prioritization, we decided to pursue the following ideas, as they offered the greatest value to our users:

Categorize Problems: Users select issue types upfront (e.g., login, payment).
Knowledge Base/FAQ: Self-help articles for common issues.
Automatic Feedback: Status updates post-request.

Prototyping

Multiple rounds of Low fi prototypes disscuaed and refined in collaborative design critique sessions, led to the following featuers:

Smart Forms: Users submit details upfront (screenshots, error codes).
Empowerment: FAQ hub for self fixes.
Transparency: Automated updates and progress tracking.

The low-fidelity prototypes served as a blueprint for the UI designer, accelerating the high-fidelity design process.

Prioritizing Rollout and Technical Scoping

Cross functional Prioritizing

Orgnising workshops with the developers to prioritize features (e.g., Smart forms > FAQ hub).
Balancing UX ideals with backend constraints (e.g., real-time sync delays).

Technical Scoping