Redesigning an IT service product that reduced support tickets by 47% and increased orders
As the Product Design lead for the SkyKick email migration product redesign, I led the design strategy, ideation exercises, UX prototyping, and UI component design. I worked closely with product managers on research and executive presentations, and collaborated with engineering to deliver specifications in an agile environment.
The redesign drove significant results, including a 47% decrease in support tickets, a 53% increase in migration projects, and a 24% growth in migration seats.
Team
Myself
3 Product Managers
9 Engineers
+1 Product Designer (Q3 2021)
+1 UX Researcher (2023)
Timeframe
2020-2023
Audience
IT Service Providers
Problem
Before: The legacy Migrations UX had a linear flow with two distinct experiences.
Creeping competition and dissatisfied users
At SkyKick, the flagship email migration product was a key driver of user acquisition, but over time, technical debt stifled innovation, increased support costs, and left users frustrated. The fragmented user experience and outdated backend couldn’t keep up with competitive demands. After years of patchwork fixes and deprioritization, the company committed to investment into a full redesign.
Goals
Balancing interests
SkyKick had a legacy product with growing churn and unsustainable manual support. My task was to solve for these business challenges while advocating user-centered solutions.
Business Goals
⬇︎ Reduce Manual Support
⬇︎ Reduce Churn
⬆︎ Increase ROI
User Goals
⬇︎ Reduce Effort
⬆︎ Increase Predictability
⬆︎ Increase Profitability
Research
Synthesizing user feedback
Beginning with a discovery phase; analyzing user surveys and feedback from both users and internal support teams. I began identifying themes, mapping connections in the experience, and generating insights. Since I was analyzing a legacy product, I had a volume of qualitative feedback.
“For those of us who have more IT experience, it would be nice to have a bit more control and insight into what's happening on the backend.”
– IT technician
In building the business case for the redesign, the product owner conducted a post-migration survey evaluating aspects of user churn. The results guided early UX exercises.
“You have a migration tool that does a nice enough discovery, but it is too limiting in options and too limited in capabilities to compete with other providers.”
– IT technician
Strategy
Aligning with the B2C journey
Why were users asking for this? Typically, users of the migration product are IT technicians serving small-to-medium-sized businesses. Traditional IT operations involve managing customer relationships, which takes time and often brings surprises during migrations. Understanding this dynamic between IT technicians (our users) and their customers helped create empathy and made it clear that the redesign needed to accommodate the customer service challenges of our users.
This insight shaped the design strategy: to align the user experience with the customer journey that was happening in parallel with the migration process.
Forming design principles
I collaborated with the PM team to articulate guiding design principles for the team.
Transparency
Provide users with clearer insights into the migration process, especially for those with advanced IT knowledge.
Configurability
Allow more control over the migration, giving users the ability to troubleshoot without contacting support.
Predictability
Improve real-time feedback and notifications, so users feel in control of the process and have fewer surprises.
Ideation and exploration
My task was to design a user experience that was not constrained by the legacy interaction models. To keep loose and not get too hung up on details early in the process, I created quick wireframes - capturing the outcome of collaborative whiteboard sessions. I iterated through a range of UX patterns and user journeys; with regular critiques and testing.
Wireframing allowed for quick, low-fi iterations of new UX patterns and user journeys.
From the start of the design phase, I led several key initiatives, including:
Whiteboard sessions: Mapping out key migration events and user activities.
UX flow map: Visualizing the migration process and capturing critical decision points.
UX patterns: Defined new UX interaction patterns; creating technical specifications and guidelines.
Coded prototypes: Developed CSS and HTML to guide engineering efforts.
Usability Testing
We tested early and often. As we refined features, I participated in conducting the usability tests and analyzing the findings. We began by testing draft UX wireframes internally with the support team and then began recruiting existing users of the legacy product.
7 Prototype Tests
Discovery phase, Q1 2020
We began validating high-fidelity clickable prototypes for validation of concepts and patterns. Users should responded positively and were eager to provide feedback.
6 Product Beta Tests
Refinement phase, Q3 2020
With a limited functionality beta build of the product, we tested sandbox data in the UX. Users responded super positively and helped prioritize feature roadmap.
Solution 01
Get to value, faster
Insight: In order to scope the project, users needed configurations from the customer’s server, but the legacy product’s linear, requirement-heavy process slowed them down.
Solution: By streamlining requirements to just the essentials and simplifying access to discovery tools, the redesign enabled users to start quickly, gather project details, and build a scope of work. Flexible navigation allowed users to pick up where they left off, and the discovery tool provided a high-value return.
Source Server: Users accessed discovery tools to detect settings on a source server.
Solution 02
Insight: Users needed flexibility to migrate specific customer users, like executives, separately from the full group and apply unique configurations for these users.
Migration flights
Solution: I designed the Flights feature to allow users to schedule migrations in batches of mailboxes. I named the feature ‘Flights,’ which became a key pillar in marketing. Flights was immediately intuitive for early user testing.
Flight dashboard: This view served IT technicians as a launchpad for for detailed management, providing high-level visibility.
Solution 03
Project plan configuration
Insight: Users struggled to plan a migration and groom the mailbox lists in collaboration with their customer, slowing the activation of a migration.
Solution: By enabling users to quickly import source mailboxes and organize them into a review-ready plan, we aligned with their external workflow and streamlined their process. Changes to the plan could also be applied after the migration was active, freeing up a user to start a project sooner.
Mailbox Flight: Each flight can have a unique properties and this UX supports quick movement of passengers between flights.
Solution 04
Patterns to fit a flexible path
Insight: Users need to sequence migration events and reference settings from multiple points in the experience.
Solution: Identifying and prioritizing highly referenced data – flight sync settings and migration milestones are accessible from multiple views, using the Drawer component for easy reference. Dependencies like the project cutover date could now be compared and even edited after the migration was underway.
Flight Settings: Configuring a flight allows for setting advanced properties
Business impact and usability wins 🎯
47% ↓
Decrease in Support Tickets
53% ↑
Increase in Total Projects
24% ↑
Increase in Total Seats
Phased release beginning Q2 2023. Full feature release and metrics from H1 Y24.
Users are hyped on the value
“I'm not getting these types of features from other vendors. Your approach to enhancing the pre-sales process and how it naturally lines up with our existing process is awesome.”
– IT technician
“Flights, the customization, is most valuable to us. That's going to be absolutely monumental in the control that we have on all migrations moving forward.”
– IT technician
Want to hear the next steps?
For a detailed presentation with additional insights please reach out.