ACC
Client self-service channels research & design
Research | Service Design | CX Design
Following on from the implementation of the transformational Next-Generation Case Management project, this work came about from a desire to understand the activities and interactions ACC clients were engaging in to manage their recovery, including their use of ACC’s digital channels.
I worked alongside 2 other designers from the service design team to bring digital design expertise and knowledge of ACC’s digital products, in particular MyACC which I was embedded in at the time.
Helping make decisions that enable ACC clients to manage their recovery in a way that works for them.
The project’s goals were to:
Establish whether self-service tools were delivering value in the right way for ACC’s clients.
Find where there may be gaps and room for improvement with what we offer at the moment, working towards delivering a great experience for all clients
and
Make recommendations for how we can be empowering customers with all the information they need, when they need it, and the way that they need it, so they have autonomy and agency to manage their own recovery pathway.
Research focus areas
In order to answer these questions, we divided our research focus into 3 areas and developed tailored questions and approaches for each.
Awareness & Motivation
2. Access / Accessibility
3. Functionality
Primary research: Client interviews
To answer our research questions, we gathered some preliminary insights by reviewing feedback from regular client surveys ACC conducts and engaged with contact centre staff who speak to clients regularly to understand their perspective. These inputs allowed us to create a set of hypotheses we could test through our interviews and focused our questions so we could gave high quality conversations, building on what’s already known.
We then interviewed clients from across Aotearoa, making sure to included a diverse range of demographics that are traditionally under-represented in research ensuring we heard the voices of a mixed range of age groups, clients using assistive technologies, and our Māori and Pasifika clients.
We also ran a series of sessions within the team practicing responding to potential scenarios that may arise when speaking with our more vulnerable clients - many of whom had recently suffered a serious or permanent injury or who might be using assistive technologies to communicate with us - to make sure we could respond appropriately and safely and not cause any harm by engaging with them.
Research synthesis
We conducted 20+ interviews, ensuring a good mix of participants across the priority groups identified. The conversations we had were in-depth and allowed for us to establish rapport before discussing the experience clients had managing their recovery through ACCs mix of channels and the services they interacted with.
To make sense of what we heard, we uploaded transcripts to online whiteboard tool Miro to tag, group and synthesise interview comments to uncover themes within each group and across the entire sample. This meant we could create insights at a micro and macro level which was particularly useful when communicating what we heard to business stakeholders, who had different areas that were of particular interest to them.
Insights & recommendations
The next step was to translate themes from the interviews into responses to our initial hypotheses for each of our areas of enquiry. We wanted to honour the stories told by communicating what was shared with us in a way that would have impact, resonate with different audiences and provide a strong call to action for business units and stakeholders responsible for actioning the recommendations we were making.
To do this, we combined our interview themes, quotes and statistics with existing research and strategic documents known in the business to build a compelling story that combined personal experience with broader data across ACC’s clients self-managing their recovery.
1. Awareness & Motivation
We found that awareness around MyACC was high, but uptake was low across certain groups with some saying they didn’t understand why they should sign up or what benefits it provided them. Issues with lapsed invites and more generally the timing of information being communicated was also highlighted.
Many cited recommendations from friends or trusted support people as being a key motivation for them to sign up and recommended we prioritise efforts through established networks such as rehabilitation providers, support workers and medical practitioners.
2. Access/Accessibility
Our conversations with clients highlighted, unsurprisingly, the importance of access and accessibility of MyACC. Injuries were often coupled with mental, emotional and/or physical impairments that made accessing services more difficult. We heard that the ability to self-manage online was actually favoured by clients using assistive technologies and the number of these clients using online channels to manage their injury was higher than expected.
Generally, participants felt that this option should also be made available more widely to provide more choices for those who might not automatically be invited to register under existing settings.
Work was needed to help those who weren’t confident using digital services access and navigate them more easily.
3. Functionality
We heard that our clients expect digital self-service channels to be a place they can manage everything they need without the help of ACC staff and that by giving people the right tools to complete actions themselves online, we empower them to determine the best outcome for themselves autonomously.
While satisfaction with the platform itself was high, there was a desire to have more services available to them online and ongoing development should prioritise new features and additional functionality in the MyACC portal.
We also found that many clients, even those who were actively using MyACC to manage their injury, were currently using other channels to perform tasks that they could otherwise be doing themselves online, and experiencing frustration in doing so. Better visibility and improved usability of these features was recommended to create an improved experience.
Outcome
These insights were shared through a presentation to a large group of senior stakeholders in the business to create awareness of the research outcomes and key recommendations. A set of packs pitched at a range of different levels and degrees of detail were made available to help those wanting to communicate what we had learned do so in a way that was engaging, meaningful and backed evidenced where needed.
I also worked with the MyACC team one on one to share the key recommendations, translating them into actionable outcomes for them and helping them connect with what had been said in a way that helped them understand the importance of certain design features being proposed in MyACC. I also shared some of the tangible, specific ideas our interview participants had which the team were excited to introduce to the product development plan.
We also collectively came up with ideas about how we might bring these insights into the ongoing development and improvement of the platform and it was rewarding for them to hear the positive impacts their work was having on clients experience managing their recovery.
Images by freepik