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Guided Support

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Opportunity

The new IBM Support Portal Beta team approached my design team to envision a way for IBM customers to self-serve assisted by cognitive technologies. IBM Support has a larger support transformation initiative headed by the Senior Vice President for Support and this capability was in keeping with some recommendations made by IBM Design's Incubator program. If IBM could prototype this capability and get feedback from IBM customers and IBM Support Engineers, it could be a shared capability to help reduce the number of tickets.
Starting a Guided Support Session A user has come to Websphere Application Server page by conducting a search on the IBM Support Landing Page or via a Google Search and linking the user to this area. Since they log in automatically, Guided Suppo

Starting a Guided Support Session
A user has come to Websphere Application Server page by conducting a search on the IBM Support Landing Page or via a Google Search and linking the user to this area. Since they log in automatically, Guided Support welcomed the user using their name.

Past Guided Support Resources and Session History A user could see their past favorite resources and session histories for reference and could also start a new Guided Support session.

Past Guided Support Resources and Session History
A user could see their past favorite resources and session histories for reference and could also start a new Guided Support session.

IBM Support Professional Intervention In case Guided Support cannot find the right resource for a user, an IBM Support professional can pick up where Guided Support left off. The goal is solve a user's query so they do not open up a support tick

IBM Support Professional Intervention
In case Guided Support cannot find the right resource for a user, an IBM Support professional can pick up where Guided Support left off. The goal is solve a user's query so they do not open up a support ticket.

Resource Accuracy Guided Support will ask the user 'Before I pull more resources, does it seem like I am looking in the right place?' which helps IBM understand the accuracy of the suggested resources to the user.

Resource Accuracy
Guided Support will ask the user 'Before I pull more resources, does it seem like I am looking in the right place?' which helps IBM understand the accuracy of the suggested resources to the user.

Suggested Resources With the first set of resources, the Resource Advisor prompted the user to "Take a look at these six resources by clicking on their titles and let me know if they help you out."

Suggested Resources
With the first set of resources, the Resource Advisor prompted the user to "Take a look at these six resources by clicking on their titles and let me know if they help you out."

Individual Resource Page This was a concept to clean up the existing IBM Support Portal resources which are in different formats and hierarchies. This included overall resource rating, what other users have viewed and standardized resource secti

Individual Resource Page
This was a concept to clean up the existing IBM Support Portal resources which are in different formats and hierarchies. This included overall resource rating, what other users have viewed and standardized resource sections.

Resource Gathering The user types in a question and Guided Support begins to search for useful resources by calling Watson Alchemy which does a keyword text analysis and then it also calls Asset Reuse Manager database for additional resources. T

Resource Gathering
The user types in a question and Guided Support begins to search for useful resources by calling Watson Alchemy which does a keyword text analysis and then it also calls Asset Reuse Manager database for additional resources. This is an indeterminate waiting state while the resources are being found.

Methods & Practices

Adam's UX team reviewed the concepts around cognitive and talked with IBM Support Engineers on what type of support documents are most helpful to users, as well as reviewing user interviews on the same subject. The Support team is developing a new database called Augmented Reuse Model (ARM) where support resources (a resource can be anything) are evaluated for their usefulness by users. They also reviewed a self-help concept called IBM Care that was powered by Watson Alchemy. They also spoke with a Watson team that was experimenting with self-help support.

​ Adam's UX team concepted Guided Support that would be a workspace that would take an initial search query and use that as the starting point to collaborate between a user and ARM/Alchemy databases. They determined the types of messages and forms that would be generated to help a user narrow the support resource funnel and produce a series of resources for each conversational transaction. A user can review the resources and evaluate their usefulness or reject all the resources and ARM/Alchemy will continue the conversation until a user either is able to solve their query or open a ticket for IBM Support to solve.

​ Adam's UX team gave access to Guided Support to several IBM Support Engineers to use for Websphere Application Server (WAS). They found the overall concept helpful and had comments on the usability of Guided Support as well as comments about the usefulness of resources. They then gave access to several WAS customers and they provided feedback. For each cycle we made specific improvements to Guided Support from a UX and database standpoint.

Impact & Outcome

Adam's UX team was able to prove the validity of Guided Support as a self-help resource that could reduce the need for users to call IBM Support as well as open tickets prematurely. Guided Support remained in the IBM Support Portal Beta through December 2016. Guided Support could also be abstracted as a larger capability for IBM Support Portal around the handoff between cognitive help and IBM Support professional help.