In 2022, my team at Eventbrite transformed the customer support experience. We overhauled the design, information architecture, content, and user flows for the Help Center.
Target audiences:
- Event organizers: users who publish, promote, and sell tickets to events
- Event attendees: consumers who explore, register for, and attend events
Our mission was to leverage a new content management system to build a flexible, scalable “Help Experience Platform.”
As the senior content designer, I was responsible for:
- Shaping strategy
- Leading user research
- Designing content and flows
- Measuring effectiveness
- Aligning designers, engineers, operations folks, and stakeholders around a shared vision
Problems to solve
Research revealed several problems with the existing help experience:
- Users’ help expectations and preferences are shaped by their experiences with other brands. For example, if they’ve emailed Mailchimp support in the past, they expected Eventbrite to offer email support too.
- Most users weren’t allowed to contact support via phone, chat, or email. When they needed help, they were forced to self-serve—leading to frustration (according to survey results).
- Users who don’t typically receive human help can still get it in some situations. On the Contact Support page, if a user successfully clicks through a particular combination of buttons, a form to email support appears. In other cases, they see a snippet from a Help Center article. User testing shows customers aren’t sure what these buttons do or that there’s sometimes email support available at the end. The goal of this “topic-selection tree” was to deflect contact as much as possible, so the form to contact was somewhat “hidden.” (screenshot below)
Before
Former Contact Support page: features 116 topics, nested under three layers of navigation:
One Eventbrite user described their experience contacting support like this: “If I clicked ‘contact us,’ I already looked through the support articles and Google resources. So I feel like this is just redirecting me to reiterate my problems again. I’d rather contact somebody directly instead of going through this path.”
How might we simplify the Contact Support experience? I developed a content strategy that empowers help seekers to find do-it-yourself solutions and reduces friction for everyone who wants to contact human support. Our goal: make help easier to find and boost customer trust.
The design process
1. Discovery
I interviewed 12 stakeholders about customer support strategy. Then I analyzed user analytics data, customer comments, and user interviews. Finally, I explored how competitors designed their “Contact Us” experiences.
2. Design
I partnered with a UX designer and a content strategist to design a “Common issues and questions concept.” We simplified the topics from 116 down to 21: eliminating unnecessary content and focusing on the most frequent issues.
3. Testing
I tested the prototype with Eventbrite customers to verify clarity and usability. The team was delighted to see the new design performed well, and we learned some opportunities to improve the content and user interface design.
4. Iteration
I led a workshop with customer support agents to finalize the UX copy. Once content was clear and accurate, the team deployed the new page.
Impact
Key metrics from the Help Center redesign
Improved usability by 52%
I led a heuristic evaluation that revealed the new Help Center is 52% more usable than the previous design.
Reduced support costs
More than 75% of visitors to the Contact Support page use the self-serve solutions, reducing unnecessary support contact
More users find an answer, instantly
42-95% of visitors who read an FAQ do not click thru to contact support–their issue is resolved instantly, without needed to wait for a customer support agent
30% faster page load
The new site is WAY faster: overall page load time has improved by 30% on web and 27% on mobile
After
The new Contact Support experience achieved the goal: empowered visitors to find solutions more easily and contact support.
Check out the new Contact Support page, which features a simplified “Common Issues and Questions” section and prioritizes contact options.
