User-centered eService design and redesign

ABSTRACT

As telecom service providers struggle under the financial pressures associated with the continuing sluggish economy, plans to trim operational expenses and grow margins have been fundamental parts of their business models. Key among these expense-cutting efforts has been the redirection of cost-intensive customer services communications to significantly less-costly web site portal interactions, such as online bill presentment and payment web services. However, the telecom industry survey results showed that expense savings and competitive differentiation should not be the only reason for developing these web services in order to ensure high use rate of these eServices [1]. These web services should be developed to enhance customer experience with these services. This paper presents how the user experience engineering techniques and usability test results were applied to redesign online bill presentment application to ensure the high rate of positive customer experience, and high percentage of use and adoption of these eServices. The online bill presentment application, one of eServices, has been developed for AT&T's business customers.

REFERENCES

• 1: Gartner Inc Business Report. En User Analysis: Adoption of US Telecom Portals Dependent on Billing, 2003.
• 2: Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, New Riders Publishing, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1999
• 3: Yankee Group Business Report. B to B EBPP: Hype or Happening, Report Vol. 2., No. 8, July 2001.
• 4: Tower Group Business Report. Building the Business Case in B2B EBPP and EIP, January 2001.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: User-centered design

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology; Prototyping

Keywords:
eServices and eBusiness, interactive design, usability testing, user-centered design, web application