Task alignment

Teamwork Desk
My role
Qualitative research - ongoing user interviews, community feedback analysis, observed behaviour sessions.

Quantitative data analysis - Existing analytical observations and controlled experiments tests post release.

Data research and analysis, hypothesis setting, benchmarking, user story mapping, MVP strategy analysis, product concept prototyping, UI visual execution, design system contributions, user-testing (pre-release), experiment analysis and iterations.

July 2022 — Jan 2023
Project Overview
Teamwork Desk is a help desk and ticketing system designed to easily manage customer emails in one location. Essential to the functionality of Desk is the ability to create, manage and report on tickets through which interaction with the customer and agent is formed.
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With the objective of enhancing the Desk feature set, research showed that users sought the ability to create tasks directly from a customer email. Creating tasks for project management purposes remains the core functionality of Desk’s sister product, Teamwork projects. Allowing the option to do this in desk would allow users to bridge the business gap between customer service provision and scheduling tasks for completion.
Problem statement
The core functionality of Desk is that of being a help desk to provide customer support. Consumers will send emails into a support team, who, in-turn, will respond and solve queries. Essentially, this flow does not allow the ability for agents to schedule tasks directly from the initial email - Desk lacked any form of project management scheduling.

Data showed a drop off in Desk usage as agents had no logical way of creating project management tasks from customer complaint emails. The lack of flow between Teamwork Desk and Teamwork Projects had significant strategic implications.
Research and hypothesis setting
Design problems within the ticket page of Desk were discovered through qualitative (user interviews, community feedback analysis and observed behaviour sessions) and quantitive research.

In terms of qualitative research, specific stats allowed us to set various measurable design hypothesis.

Data showed that 79% of existing users wanted to assign a task to a colleague when dealing with a customer complaint email. Our hypothesis was that by allowing users to tag agents to specific tags, a project management loop would be created within Desk and drop off rates would be significantly reduced.

Research also showed that approximately 31% of complaint emails required tasks to become recurring events at project management level. Allowing duplication and scheduling tools would save agents significant admin time within Desk and improve productivity.
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Hypothesis -  Allowing dependant tasks will link projects
When using a copy and paste workaround, users have no option to associate the original support centre email. It was also not possible to link dependant tasks from within Desk in order to fully solve the email request issue.
Hypothesis - Task creation tooling will reduce drop off
Support requests sent into help desk usually require some form of action from wider team members. Users working on the help desk currently have to copy and past requests into a Teamwork sister product, with no association to the initial support email sent by the customer.
Hypothesis - Quickly adding multiple tasks will increase seats
When looking to solve specific batches of tickets on a customer account, an admin will often need to quickly assign various tasks to team members. The inability to perform this action within Desk on a batch basis results in the process being very time consuming.
Hypothesis - Task reminders will remove 3rd party tooling
Even when using a work around method of creating a separate task in a sister project management app, there is no option available for users working within desk to set reminders to action tasks amongst teammates. Often a follow up action is needed to close support emails - this functionality isn’t automated and has to be done manually via other apps.
User personas
As a support desk app, Desk serves as an invaluable tool for efficiently managing consumer communications, particularly through email.

With an average session time of 7 hours and 7 minutes, users often find themselves inundated with support emails that necessitate the allocation and assignment of tasks to various team members.

By effectively allocating tasks, the turnaround time for resolving support emails could be significantly improved.
Jobs to be done
Foundations for an MVP feature backbone were created by analysing the user stories at agent level when working within the inbox area of Desk. User mapping workshops helped define the requirements of our core users. Examples that were used as design parameters can be found below

Design hypothesis
Task reminders will remove 3rd party tooling
User scenario
Support agents creating tasks in a sister app via copy and paste currently have no option within Desk to create a reminder and thus have to use 3rd party tools. Allowing a reminder that can be assigned to specific agents will keep agents within Desk and reduce drop-off, while also creating an enhanced productivity loop.
Solution #1
Solution
The option to repeat a newly created task at specified times allowed support teams to automate their support to customers within Desk. The link between support and project management within an organisation was also strengthened at a process level. Repeat tasks also notified designated agents.
Design hypothesis
Allowing dependant tasks will link projects
User scenario
When solving a customer query, various actionable tasks may be created from an email. On occasions, one core task is dependant on other sub tasks being completed in order to close the query. Previously, there was no way within Desk to associate tasks from the same ticket to each other.
Solution #2
Solution
Allowing users to associate previously created sub tasks with newly created tasks allows admins some project management control when trying solve a complex query email.
Design hypothesis
Assigning multiple quick tasks will increase Desk seats
User scenario
When an admin seeks to resolve particular groups of tickets on a customer account, they frequently have to delegate multiple tasks from one customer query email. The lack of capability to execute this action in Desk leads to a time-consuming process. Our hypothesis is that adding quick task creation would vastly increase the number of project management tickets created within Desk.
Solution #3
Solution
Support users can now quickly create multiple tasks directly from the email repose page of desk. The tasks can be assigned to specific users who will receive notification and reminders if st by the task creator.
Impact
Desk subscriber counts grew consistently for 3 years as of 2023. Revenue has also risen from 80k pm in 2018 to £500k pm in 2023 as part of the design uplift.
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Qualitative feedback via surveys and core user communication suggests a vastly improved experience for users spending large amounts of time answering client queries on the Desk app. Agents were able to integrate a process into solving a customer query directly from the initial customer email. Huge amounts of time was saved by allowing an integration with Teamwork Projects and effectively adding project management and task assignment capabilities to agents working within the support desk.
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