The Problem
The diagrams above highlight a problem with traditional customer service. We force people to jump around to get an issue resolved. I used the screens to anchor the problem and used them again in the Patent filling.
Salesforce.com Answers
The solution is a product around social customer support or Salesforce.com Answers. It is a one flow experience from the customer perspective. Instead of forcing people to jump between multiple channels to get an issue solved, we create one integrated experience that ties back-end case management with a front end Q+A experience.
Best Answers. FAQ
Start the experience with what people expect, frequently asked questions. This is an early wireframe screen to help anchor the project.
My Questions
Mix of public and private conversations. One key feature of the product is an integrated thread that pulls everything related to the issue into one conversation.
Question and Answer
Detail design of the life of a question. We didn't want the user to jump around track an issue. In the screen above we we see how a question evolves through multiple states. 1. Starts as a a public questions 2. Questions with public answers 3. Introduction of a private block from the agent 4. Question that has been resolved. The exciting component was including the private conversation within the thread.
Reputation
Use reputation to qualify answers and encourage people to answer. The goal was to create a product that enables people to help each other. Reputation was an important component of the experience.
Mobile.
The same experience needs to move to mobile.
Problem. Latest Activity.
Another diagram from the early pitch deck that helps explain why we don't want users landing into a the latest open questions.
Solution. Land on Solutions!
This of this a the new social modern version of the FAQ page.