Background:

In Senior Living facilities the Direct Supply TELS platform manages the maintenance request workflow through its app and platform. The platform manages both work orders for the internal facility maintenance team and also sources specialty maintenance companies for niche or big jobs. One of the problems Direct Supply identified was miscategorized requests causing the wrong specialists to arrive at Senior Living facilities. It was causing a nightmare for Direct Supply’s operations team and additionally, it was affecting customer satisfaction. The development team needed to rework the maintenance request workflow, understand which categories were being misused, and why.

Actions:

• Data analysis of miscategorized requests (completed by intern)

• Qualitative discovery user interviews

• Journey mapping

• Subject Matter Expert interviews

• Qualitative prototype user interviews

Insights:

• Three specific service categories were the most misused

• The old platform workflow boxed users into selecting the wrong category of service

• Specific industry language was confusing for requesters

Result:

The data and user research informed the feature set for the project and simplified the scope of the project. The request workflow was redesigned, resulting in fewer steps and fewer errors.