Presenters:
Jeniffer Oburu, Business Process Owner, Global IT Service Management, The Coca-Cola Company
Helena Agronow, Principal Engagement Manager, ServiceNow
"Can you upload your design elements to ServiceNow Share?"
This was the third question that Jeniffer Oburu of The Coca-Cola Company received after she had finished her inspirational presentation at Knowledge15 in Las Vegas last week. The request is great testament to the quality of the new Service Catalog Jeniffer, Helena and teams put in place at one of the largest, most ubiquitous consumer brands in the world. The project was also supported by Fruition Partners and Right Answers.
Deliver a Consistent Brand Experience
This year, Coke's iconic contour bottle celebrates its 100th birthday. The brand is more alive and vibrant than ever — and the company wanted to strengthen the user experience for employees engaging IT. The question Jeniffer asked was simple: "Why would the experience on the inside be less compelling than what we put out there?"
With the goal of aligning internal user and brand experiences, a project was kicked off to accomplish these main goals:
- Shift left — drive self-service to enable users to solve their own problems.
- Personalize - use data that is already known about visitors to improve experiences.
- Standardize - give IT Service Management users an experience comparable to the employee self-service experience.
- Mobilize — ensure consistency regardless of the device being used.
Let User Preferences Lead
"We took our inspiration from the Coca-Cola Freestyle project which allows consumers to create their own Coke bottle with hundreds of variables in flavor, taste and branding," Jeniffer explained, "It's all about the consumerized, personalized experience."
"Coca-Cola really immersed us into their brand world as part of the early explorations," Helena added. "They wanted their free-style campaign to be part of the CMS redesign, so as part of the project kickoff, they bought tickets and sent the ServiceNow team members to see and experience their fascinating World of Coca-Cola exhibit. They wanted us to learn first-hand about their history, their product lines, their marketing style, and to get excited about their project."
The team looked at a number of consumer-facing Coca-Cola websites and it was the 'World of Coca-Cola' website that closely resembled what the team envisioned for the new IT Service Catalog. The site was colorful, sizzling and bubbly, engaging, clear, with snackable information to help visitors find what they're looking for.
Data + Feedback + UI Design = A Powerful Self-Service Experience
Jeniffer and Helena spent plenty of time on research and focus groups. "We didn't want to go ahead and build whatever we thought was good for our users," Jeniffer said. "We ran incident analyses to identify bottlenecks in the service delivery process. We used surveys to collect feedback about current experiences and where it could be improved."
The most commonly received feedback was that people didn't know where to look for the information they needed. The categories made sense to IT, but not to the end user. And the layout wasn't very user-friendly. "While there are a lot of useful services," one user said, "the UI and terms make it difficult to get anything done. I am in IT and I dread it. I couldn't imagine a business user putting up with it."
Remember the Power of Category Definitions & Tags
Creating categories and catalog that actually made sense to non-IT users was another key success factor. In order to fix terminology issues and make it easier for users to find things, the team created meta tags for the top requested services. This way, one catalog item could be found in multiple categories, which makes it easier to find information within the portal.
Break Down Silos & Barriers for Ultimate Collaboration
Once the foundational elements were in place, the team quickly moved to the actual design of the service catalog. "We documented user stories," Helena explained. "We organized daily scrum meetings and weekly Show & Tell sessions as we moved along — all to ensure that our stakeholders were frequently consulted and could guide us along the way." The team leveraged the ServiceNow StartNow implementation methodology and followed an iterative development approach that involved no workstreams or no silos of any sort. Added Jeniffer, "We didn't want to work in siloes but we wanted to be fully aligned at all times. That was the right decision."
The project took 5 months from kick-off to release:
- Sep-Oct 2014 — Project initiation and requirements gathering
- Oct-Nov 2014 — Design validation and development
- Dec 2014-Jan 2015 — User Acceptance Testing and release
> Jeniffer Oburu reveals the new Coca-Cola Service Portal at Knowledge15
Make Use of Internal Resources
"At Coca-Cola, we are lucky enough to have access to some of the brightest brand experience designers in the world. They did a phenomenal job in turning our input into wireframes and from there into a beautifully designed, user-friendly and engaging Service Portal," said Jeniffer.
The new CMS is mobile responsive, equipped with live chat and provides rich search functionality with results showing both service catalog and knowledge base items. 'Top solutions in my region' and a personal dashboard with the items used on a daily basis are just two examples of the enhanced experience.
> Personal Startpage with direct access to top regional information, chat and contact details.
Data-driven Metrics Prove the Business Case
Needless to say, the new Coca-Cola Service Catalog images shown at Knowledge15 evoked plenty ooh's and ah's from the audience. The design is aligned with Coke's corporate brand identity, mobile, contextual and extremely user-centric. And it's driven the exact behavior the team set out to impact. Jeniffer's team saw a 40% increase in chat engagement with the service management organisation. "Yes, people like it. It's fast. They find the answers quickly."
> Creating a best-in-class mobile service experience was among the project's key objectives
Take-aways: 3 Imperatives for Success
To summarize, these are Jeniffer's top take-aways:
1. Validate requirements and ensure stakeholder agreement from the start will help accelerate adoption.
2. Leverage internal resources with branding/user experience expertise where possible.
3. Collaborate, communicate and congratulate often.
So, how did Jeniffer answer the question about uploading the design to ServiceNow Share?
"You're not with Pepsi, are you?"
Thank you Jeniffer Oburu and Helena Agronow for this excellent presentation!
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