User Research on Resident Access Issues and Workflow Analysis
Background
Zeus Living is a property management startup for business travelers that specializes in 1+ month long stays. In 2020, they operated in four cities and had around 3,000 rentals.
Duration: 1 week project
Tools: Slack, Excel, Google Docs
Methods: Workflow analysis, discovery research
Team: One researcher
My Role
I was a senior escalations specialist at Zeus with an interest in research and streamlining operations for the customer experience team. I took on this project in my spare time with approval from my manager.
The Challenge
Research Goals
Since I was not yet fully involved in the UX Research world, I did have a proper research plan and goals for my project but did have some very rudimentary goals. I knew I needed to get a better understanding of the problem and show how it was impacting the company overall. The reason I was doing this work was so I could pitch my project to the product team.
01
Upon arrival to their rental, residents at specific buildings were constantly having trouble getting access to their unit due to incorrect key codes. When a resident called the escalations team for help, the team had trouble finding the correct codes. This resulted in a terrible check in experience for residents and, in many cases, required us to put them in a hotel for the night while we worked to get the issue resolved. This was negatively affecting the residents' experience and NPS scores, as well as costing the company money in refunds and hotel stays.
Over time, I had noticed where the breakdown in the process was occurring and found a potential solution that would eliminate the lock outs. The purpose of this project was to research the issue and present my findings to the company in order to get appropriate stakeholder buy-in and secure a team of engineers to address the problem and implement a solution.
Conduct an internal workflow analysis on the resident lockout process
02
Get stakeholder buy in for a team to address the issue
Analysis & Synthesis
When a lock out happened and couldn’t be resolved by the call center, the problem was shared on slack to the experience team channel. In order to find the data, I needed to manually search for these specific lockout threads on slack. (This did not include lockouts from cleaners, maintenance and inspectors).
The resident lockout process
The”lockout” workflow diagram here shows us how many people are involved in the process and where the breakdown occurs.
Findings: Through my research, I I found that 23% of resident had a lockout issue upon arrival and at least one of them was a VIP at a large beverage company. The biggest issue was the negative impact the lockout had on the residents experience. The residents often gave poor CSAT scores, requested refunds, wrote negative reviews and damaged the companies reputation among high executives. In addition we found:
On average, it took 45 minutes to resolve the lockout issue
On overage, it toook 3.7 people to assist with the lockout issue.
Research Process
Lockout communication
Internal teams struggling to find someone who can help with lockout.
After gathering the data from 35 lockouts over 15 months, I created a visual to show the current workflow process and where the breakdown was occurring. Next, I analyzed the data to find the average time it took to resolve each issue as well as the number of people involved.
Research Impact
UX Recommendation: Update the key code section to on platform to provide residents correct access codes and provide information to support agents to correctly help when a lockout happens. The result would decrease the time, people, and steps needed to resolve the lockout.
Impact: I presented the project at Pitch day to the CEO and company. After the presentation, two engineers joined my team and the CEO personally reached out and thanked me for presenting my project and dedication to improving the customer experience and the teams efficiency.
🔑 Advocate for the user
⚖️ Tell the right story
The biggest takeaway I gained from this project was getting a better understanding of how to present the data in a compelling way. I learned how important it is to present my findings in a digestible manner that also emphasizes the impact the research has on the business. When I initially shared the problem I was seeing, I was having trouble getting managers buy in and I learned that my delivery wasn’t strong and I didn’t have the data to prove my claims. You absolutely have to be able to share your findings in a way that connects with the stakeholders, otherwise the research could be misunderstood or not be used.
This project taught me how to advocate for the user when you spot a problem that is causing a terrible experience. Had I not had empathy and a drive to get the issue solved to reduce the problems users were encountering, I’m unsure when this problem would have been addressed. By putting the user a the core of my project, I was able to tell a compelling story and get a team to help with the issue.