Text Review Request

Demandforce is an Automated Marketing Communications platform which helps small medium sized businesses send appointment reminders, marketing campaigns, and manage their online reputation.

Text Review Request gives businesses the ability to send their patients or customers a link to write an online review on their behalf. Text Review Request is one of many features aimed towards gathering text message consent from our Businesses’ customers/patients, yet also providing a greater control over a business's online reputation by being selective with whom to send a link to write an online review via text. 

Demandforce’s review capture process still depends on solicitation via email, which is a crowded channel. Emails yield a 20-30% open rate while text messages have a 98% open rate.¹ Texting is becoming the dominant form of communication for consumers. However, there are potential legal issues with automated review solicitation by text, which limits how we could go about generating reviews by text. Demandforce does not have a method of capturing text consent from consumers.

 ¹ Velocify study, 2016

Product Requirements Documentation

I worked with my manager, Greg Li, to create the Product Requirements Document which defined the problem, target customers, solution, success criteria, user flow, and rollout plan. I used Jesse James Garrett’s Vis Vocab to plan the user flow in order to give a high level explanation to stakeholders of how Text Review Request would work.

I was responsible for the Interaction Design for this feature. This involved documenting the use cases, competitive research. I used Sketch and InVision to create low fidelity prototypes for user testing and high fidelity mocks and design specifications for developers.

I decided the best place for this feature would be in an existing feature called “Today’s Follow Up Actions”. Originally, this section showed patients who were scheduled to visit and had a missing phone number or email address. The front desk relied on this section to know which customers they need to follow up with for missing information. This information is crucial for Demandforce’s platform to send automated communications.

I also used this opportunity to improve the usability of Today’s Follow Up Actions.

Before

After

Collapsable Preview

Collapsing the sections only helped save vertical space but hid any important information. Users had no visibility of what was contained within. 

Now, when Today’s Follow Up Actions is collapsed, a preview of 3 customers will be shown according to the relative time. For example, if it is 12pm, the 3 closest patients within 15 minutes will be shown.

Sortable Headers

This section is originally sorted chronologically. However, one limitation of Demandforce’s platform is that we only know the beginning times of appointments. Giving users the ability to sort by Patient name gives users the flexibility to best search for a patient.

Pagination

I worked with our UX Researcher, Sean Tangco, to conduct user testing on usertesting.com and user interviews with current Demandforce customers. Sean helped analyze our findings into recommendations to improve the flow and functionality of Text Review Request.

"Iterate, Test, and Repeat"

"How would Text Review
Request work?"

Wireframes helped me explore the functionality of what was originally called "Quick Text Review", a.k.a. Text Review Request. In order for Text Review Request to work, we needed our business users to ask their patients/customers for the text message consent and capture their responses. I received feedback from internal team members and stakeholders before conducting user testing.

One of the key feedback I received from the wireframes is users will not know how to ask their patients /customers for text message consent. Text Review Request is a new feature which requires the user to complete a verbal task as part of completing the flow. I included a script and tested a more conversational interface and flow.

When users saw the prompt in the previous iteration, many didn't understand whether Demandforce was stating the prompt to them or if it was a script for them to read aloud to their patient/customer. This third group of iterations focused on making the act of reading the script as part of the Text Review Request flow clearer. I used graphics and iconography to demonstrate what we were asking our users to do.

Design Specification

Once we had a final prototype, I worked with our Visual Designer, Youngsun You, to create high fidelity design specifications in preparation for development. I worked with Youngsun to ensure the iconography and placement of copy and buttons was cohesive with our current product UI. After, I documented the various interactions for developers using Google Docs and InVision Inspect. I wrote out the Acceptance Criteria and worked with QA engineers to create test cases. 

Feature Release

I presented our final specifications for review with our CTO and Project Managers. As the product manager, I was the product expert of how Text Review Request would work. I worked with developers and QA engineers to explain and check feature functionality. I also worked with Marketing, Training, and Client Success teams prepare the necessary communications and training needed to ensure a smooth feature release.

“Sometimes an Extra Click, Helps the Feature 'Click' ”

What we found from our user testing is how reducing the number of steps and clicks is not always the best UX. Functionally, our initial prototype only had 2 steps. The first screen had a prompt for our users to read to their customers. Below the prompt, we had a phone number input with a button that said "Customer Consents".

What we found is that users often ignored the prompt and they would go directly the to response input. While our users understood Text Review Request would send a text message to their customers/patients, they did not understand that the “Customer Consents” CTA was capturing their customer’s consent to receive text messages.

In our final version, we separated the "Customer Consents" function into a second step. Users are first presented with the prompt if the customer had not consented to text messages yet. If the customer agreed to consent, the front desk employee could advance to the second screen and submit their customer's consent and phone number. Afterwards, a confirmation screen appears to give our front desk employee feedback that they've completed the Text Review Request flow. 

Users felt they completed the task with the final version. The additional step of "What did they say?" helped users understand they were capturing their patient/customer's response.

“Copy is part of the User Experience”

We don’t have a dedicated UX writer on our team, so I reached out to our Marketing and Customer Support teams to review the product copy. Writing about the importance of TCPA compliance can be very intimidating, so we focused on how asking for text message consent is important for our businesses. Reviewing the feedback we received from our internal teams and user testing helped lead to our final solution.

“Walk-Ins are not Welcome”

Text Review Request worked for our businesses who depend on previously scheduled appointments. However, for businesses in Auto, Spa/Salon, and Animal Care businesses who have many walk-in appointments, Text Review Request does not work. This was an intentional decision due to legal compliance issues.

The appointment data Demandforce synced from a business’s Patient Management System allowed us to assume the patient/customer was in business’s office. There was no feasible manner for us to prevent a user from entering phone numbers manually to trigger a Text Review Request. One way we prevent this is with a double opt-in process where the owner of the phone number has to reply back to an initial text to confirm their opt-in. Status Notifications is another feature we have created for businesses who depend on walk-ins instead of pre-scheduled appointments.

What were the challenges?

Legal Compliance

How can we convince our users to log into the portal more often? How can we convince businesses to take an active part in achieving legal compliance? Why is this feature not automated?

Without written consent from customers/patients, Demandforce is unable to send automated reminders and maintain the level of automation our businesses have grown to love. Which is why it was important that Text Review Request provided value and incentive for our customers to stay logged into the portal and help take an active part in achieving legal compliance. 

Asking manually bypasses any legal concerns about sending out automated marketing messages over text, but still allows a relatively low-friction way for businesses to start collecting reviews and to build a list of consumers who have opted-in to text messaging. Once our businesses have a comprehensive list of consumers who've opted-in to text messaging, Demandforce can explore automating Text Review Requests. 

Nicholas Tasato