An online information portal for front office tellers

At local branches of bpost, front officers are required to promptly respond to customer requests for service or information from a vast product portfolio. To increase efficiency and customer satisfaction, bpost turned to Namahn to improve the information provision via support tools. We designed and implemented OASIS as an easily accessible information portal that assists front officers via its comprehensive search function, which allows them to retrieve context-sensitive online help quickly upon request. We also recruited and trained content writers and produced support documentation for the new tool.

Understand
We observed 25 front officers in 11 post offices throughout Belgium. While at work, their information-seeking behaviour was most interesting as input for this project.

Explore
We devised a classification scheme for the products and services of bpost based on the results from a card sorting exercises with front officers. The input was incorporated in an extensive mindmap that we used during the design and content authoring phases.

Based on Scenarios of use, we created first conceptual designs with a tab based interface to account for the product-oriented structure of the content while accounting for the large amount of information per product.

Incorporating feedback from Usability tests, we refined the initial conceptual designs into a detailed design. As the final prototype, we delivered a working HTML mock-up which was evaluated in further test sessions.

The new information portal for front officers was evaluated in Usability tests during the conceptual design and prototyping phases. The most significant insight led to the change of the information classification inside the tool from topical to alphabetical.

Define
Together with the final prototype of the OASIS portal, we delivered detailed engineering specifications for developers, covering aspects such as design constraints, screen layout, content templates, information architecture, and maintenance.

We both recruited and coached future content authors for the information portal in-house at bpost. Additionally, we conceived the authoring workflow and wrote a style guide for content input.

Our complete solution enabled bpost to launch a new tool for information search that was grounded in user requirements and design best practices. Assisted by the context-sensitive online help, front officers at branches throughout the country increased the efficiency and customer satisfaction for postal services, advice and product sales.

We ensured continuity in the style and layout of the tool’s content by conducting the respective training for content writers ourselves and equipping them with a comprehensive style guide.