Case study: AOL Support Portal

A customer support site can earn its keep and improve customer satisfaction ... if it's designed with the user experience in mind.

The Challenge:

AOL Support Portal is the answer to online self-service for all AOL customers. It's a one stop shop for all things AOL from service and billing questions, to legal guidelines and privacy policies. What's more, it's become the first line of support as the business transitions away from a call center support model. But tackling the job of supporting millions of customers in a common user interface is a behemoth user experience and technical integration challenge.

The Siteworx Approach:

Having engaged Siteworx early on in the Visual Design and HTML/CSS phases of the project, AOL requested a more wide-ranging engagement for its latest release. The engagement included the full range of Siteworx capabilities including Discovery, User Testing, Information Architecture and Technical Integration. And in keeping with its strategy to move to an ad-supported model, the team incorporated advertising in the support site's design. In addition, the team created the ability to customize the landing page with targeted information for the authenticated user.

New content publishing solutions leveraging the Siteworx Axiom� content management system were created to support site management and Siteworx built integration points with AOL's third-party self-service, contact center and peer support applications.

The Result:

From a user experience perspective, the new site has a more polished and professional look and feel, with more informative user information available on the home page. By improving usability of the search interfaces, Siteworx delivered more consistent and user friendly help information.

In fact, AOL's new customer support site has achieved double-digit customer satisfaction increases in virtually every key metric:

• 46% increase in overall user satisfaction in just the first 3 weeks

• 46% increase in successful problem resolution

• 18% increase in overall user experience

• 11% more customers said the site meets their expectations

• 18% increase in satisfaction with the content provided