How can we help customers help themselves?
When designing e-commerce in a groundbreaking new space, two of the most important tools in your arsenal are trust and information. In this project for DOZR — the world's first online heavy equipment rental marketplace — I was tasked with designing a customer support system that proactively arms users with the information and confidence they need to complete their purchase at every step of their journey.
I performed qualitative and quantitative research to find customers' main questions, pain points, and decision criteria. This project culminated in the design and development of a Webflow-based Resources site. It features simple, intuitive information modal, built-in search, support for videos, rich text content, equipment spec guides, tutorial and more. Plus, it's entirely responsive and build on a CMS platform designed to make new articles and content updates and new articles easy for any member of the DOZR team.
Challenge
DOZR is the world's first online heavy equipment rental marketplace. One of their major business bottlenecks is scalability, due to a heavy reliance on a phone sales team which is costly and difficult to scale alongside a growing customer base. According to my research, the majority of DOZR customers who rent heavy equipment are predisposed to make transactions over the phone because of DOZR's vague and outdated messaging surrounding the online rental and equipment sourcing process, and the overall lack of transparency on the DOZR site.
Solution
I developed a comprehensive, two-pronged support system to bolster trust and transparency throughout the entire customer journey. Avenues of Support proactively feed customers the answers they're seeking at the appropriate point in their workflow, while a redesigned Help & Resources site with fresh content provides a wealth of self-serve knowledge in an intuitive, searchable format, built on a Webflow CMS that affords easy content updates by members of the DOZR team.
Result
The launch of Avenues of Support improved online rental conversion, with a significant decrease in phone calls from customers who interacted with the new support components. The updated Help & Resources site saw a 2x increase in traffic to DOZR's support content, along with increased time on page and higher conversion back to the shopping cart.
Surface Area Analysis
Defining the Problem
DOZR is the world's first online heavy equipment rental marketplace.
Customers can browse thousands of equipment listings from local rental providers and rent them online, either through their phone sales team of right from the website. DOZR handles the logistics to get them the equipment they need, when they need it.
One of DOZR's major bottlenecks is scalability. The main barrier is their heavy reliance on a phone sales team, which is costly and difficult to scale. Based on my customer research and our analytics, I learned that the majority of customers who rent heavy equipment are predisposed to make transactions over the phone. Why is this? DOZR's customers can be binned into two broad categories: Industry professionals, for whom phone transactions are the modus operandi because they can rely on a real person to get what they need, when they need it. For inexperienced customers (e.g. homeowners completing a landscaping project), a human touch-point can help provide guidance for the equipment they need and how the rental process will work, from the initial deposit to pickup & delivery.
Initial Research
The goal of this project was to increase conversion through DOZR’s online storefront by building a support system that proactively primes users with the information and confidence they need to understand DOZR’s process and choose the right equipment – at every step of their workflow – without falling back to our phone sales team.
The project began with a comprehensive surface area analysis and user research to identify pain points, key decision points, and most common questions. I first interviewed members of our sales team to identify the most common questions and blockers from customers calling in. These were:
- How does DOZR source my equipment, and how do I know I’ll receive it on-time?
- What happens if I need to cancel my order?
- What kind of equipment is right for my job?
- What if my equipment breaks down?
I reviewed Hotjar recordings from sessions with abandoned carts to identify where in the ordering process customers were getting stuck. This helped determine the most appropriate touch-points for support content. When those customers went on to complete their order via the phone, I listened to a recording of the phone session. Usually, the conversation with the salesperson helped identify what customers still needed more confidence with before completing their order.
Avenues of Support
How might we surface questions users are asking at any given moment?
Tip Cards
This carousel is strategically placed on the two main pages of the DOZR shopping flow: search and checkout. With friendly language and inviting illustrations, we can catch the user's attention with keywords that match their most common concerns and give them guidance right on the page. For example, quelling concerns about whether customers will get their equipment on-time by informing them of our delivery guarantee.
Content principles for Tip Cards:
- Bold leading text must have the keywords related to key questions
- Lead with the assurance, trail with the mechanics/how/policy
- Use keywords in the CTA, if possible
- Reference DOZR Team instead of “we” to build social connection
Clicking the CTA opens an inline support modal.
Tooltips
The Tooltip component highlights important features of our platform, and invites users to learn more.
Support Modal
When a user clicks on a tooltip, it brings up modal providing inline information to address their questions and give them confidence to move forward. The goal of the modal copy is the be succinct, but comprehensive. Users seeking more detailed information are gently directed down the support funnel to the appropriate articles in our Help & Resources site. I also used the footer as an escape hatch to contact DOZR's sales & support team, to catch more leads. By placing real faces and an online status indicator on the bottom, we offer further social proof and reassurance that DOZR is more than a faceless company.
The final step of the support funnel is the Help & Resources site.
Help & Resources
DOZR's existing FAQ site had a number of glaring usability issues. The single-level navigation structure had very little hierarchy. There was no affordance for searching or categorizing articles. Much of the content was poorly-written and outdated.
Design Goals
- Inspire confidence. Give users the tools they need to be comfortable renting on DOZR by clearly communicating our process and policies
- Be proactive and helpful. Create an intuitive information architecture, provide powerful search, and create entry points to the appropriate support content when it's needed across the customer journey.
- Be beautiful and engaging. Elevate our support content with video, illustrations with personality and scannable formatting.
- Build an extensible system. Develop templated and language guides, and an CMS that's easy for teams to expand and edit.
I started by taking the time to re-write all of our support content from scratch. I worked with Product Management and Marketing to refine the list of topics and articles. After multiple reviews and collaboration sessions with Marketing, we created a central Source of Truth for DOZR's policy and internal operations. This living document formed the basis of the DOZR Resources.
Once sign-off was achieved from the executive level, this writing was transferred to a Webflow-based CMS. I designed the CMS to be easy-to-use for members of DOZR's marketing and fulfilment teams, with pre-formatted headings and image slots.
Little touches I'm proud of:
Back to DOZR
When users follow one of the FAQ links on the main DOZR page, the breadcrumb navigation gets a new "Back to DOZR" button. Clicking it will take the user back to their original context, down to the specific equipment search and filters they have set or the items in their cart. I worked closely with the engineering team on the implementation to make sure our customer's inputs were never erased.
Online Status Indicator
The footer on every page includes a link to contact DOZR support. In designed an online status indicator that turns green during our business hours, and wrote the JavaScript code to implement it into the Webflow site. We now re-use this component across many pages to increase user confidence.
Illustrations
I developed an orthographic illustration style as an extension of our brand, for use in the tip cards and category cards. I believe the visual execution was successful and helped this project achieve it's goal of being beautiful and engaging. We've since adopted this style across other facets of our product.