The Challenge
As mentioned in our guide upgrading to latest Drupal, a major site upgrade is an opportunity to revisit, revamp and reimagine site functionality (or just entirely cut it out!).
EDF Energy’s Seamless upgrade to Drupal 10 provided such an opportunity to review their Help Centre. The original Drupal 7 build had performed very well, exceeding expectations both in Customer Experience and business KPIs.
The original Help Centre had supported a large shift toward Self Service, simplifying access to important information and bringing reduced load to Customer Support. Whilst it’s important to not break a working Customer Experience, it’s also important to invest continually in your online experience and bring new developments based on recent User Research. Maintaining, improving or breaking this key site experience could have notable impact on the business.
On the editorial side, the amount of content created for the triage process was becoming more and more difficult to work with - an unfortunate side effect of its success - so editorial UX and data architecture reviews were also required.
Our Approach
Often taking project-leading roles as Business Analyst or Solution Architect, we’re proud of our ability to assess problems with pragmatism - and real data where possible.
This project desperately needed some clear content modelling to help the system architecture meet the aspirations of the experience refresh. Our team were able to extract a selection of visualisations and helpful data models to support the process.
Analysis showed that content needed to be reusable from multiple points in the tree, and design analysis gave further detail to the modelling requirements. The final content model was then designed to facilitate those needs, and our admin experience design made it simple to work with.
A successful reimagining
Through the use of EDF Energy’s data on customer interactions and our modelling of the existing content, we together designed and built a valuable iteration on the previous Help Centre triage workflow. The team and the customers are happy, and the refreshed look and feel deliver a positive experience.
Easier to work with
Improved data architecture and edit forms made for happier editors, who could more easily understand what they were working with and get changes made quickly.
Modernised design
Rebuilding to a new design brought the Help Centre up to scratch with clean, modern web expectations both on mobiles and larger devices.
Improved performance
Behind-the-scenes improvements delivered faster page loads and interaction times for customers.
A faster, cleaner Customer Experience
The adjusted triage tree, with clearer groups of options from the start, sets customers up for a better triage journey. Rebuilt data structures and fresh new javascript implementations bring that journey to the page quicker, helping customers to self-serve more enjoyably.
A faster, cleaner Editorial Experience
Grown far beyond the original expectations, the previous interface representing hundreds of triage data points had become cluttered and difficult to use.
Now, with just a short introduction, the Editorial team can now manage the Help Centre faster and more reliably than before.
Happy editors get things done, so this improved experience will serve benefits all round for years to come.