Yell Customer Experience Innovation – Chatbot
“…I needed DWG to manage the UX team as interim lead, to mentor members of the team, to evangelise UX/UI, work with the Product Leads, other department heads and stakeholders, interview candidates and ensure we were always up to date and moving forward..”
Head of Consumer, Yell.com
Yell is the UK’s No.1 provider of managed digital marketing services for all types of local businesses. Over the last 50 years, they have supported the marketing needs of local companies across every industry and every region of the UK. Trusted by over 100,000 businesses, they continue to evolve cutting-edge solutions using automation and machine learning to deliver the best returns, leveraging relationships with the leading players in the industry – including Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.
Yell was looking for ways to quickly and easily create a marketplace between its consumer customers and its business customers. They also saw an opportunity to innovate and embrace conversational commerce using Apple Maps and Spotlight search on the iPhone and iPad.
The Yell AI Chatbot – using ‘Apple Business Chat’ – would enable a powerful new way for businesses to connect directly with customers using iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watches.
The Chatbot would need to handle thousands of conversations, guiding customers to the information they needed, and then finally handover to the merchant/business owner, who could then respond via the Yell Business app through their working day.
DWG provided expert onsite UX capability to act as interim Lead for the duration of the project, managing two UX Designers, one senior and one junior – who also benefitted from ongoing coaching and mentoring.
Close, collaborative relationships were formed with all key stakeholder relationships and strategically important partner stakeholders.
The value of having a DWG expert onsite at Yell was evident, as Kai as hit the ground running, trusted to advise on a myriad of things. From UX issues for other Yell products, working with SEO, interviewing potential UX candidates for after the project completion, through to putting together design ideas of what a new Yell website could look like with guides for a pattern library.
They ensured that the business goal was clear and everyone was on the same page – with a shared understanding of the user goal. Driving an insight-based project was the key to successful outcomes. The right personas were developed, and we implemented an exhaustive competitive analysis to understand behaviours and expectations. This work led to the creation of the initial designs and approaches, which were further iterated to evolve into the delivered solution eventually.
All the detailed work and iterations culminated in the creation of a minimum viable product to support alpha testing in the first trial in Manchester.
The initial user group was carefully selected and focused to support immediate testing. The added dimension and effects of remote working and distancing due to Covid highlighted the efficacy of the solution and the benefits it brought to businesses who were looking to connect with their customers in new and innovative ways. This initial success has underpinned a national rollout for the whole of Yell Messaging.
“I have worked with DWG a number of times now and I know if I need someone who will work to understand the customer and business needs swiftly, who will conduct thorough research, who will work with boundless energy and have an excellent understanding of UX procedures, they will provide this.”
Head of Consumer, Yell.com