How do I equip my call center with all the information they need?
Provider Portal built with Custom Workflow Application Logic
YourHearing.com provides easy access to a network of hearing care professionals and state-of-the-art hearing aids. Consumers call YourHearing’s professional call center to find a YourHearing Certified professional in a YourHearing certified clinic in their area. YourHearing approached us directly to build an easy to use provider portal for its call center and participating clinics. We built the portal as a custom .NET application that empowers employees to create and find contacts, schedule/revise appointments, update contact status, and place orders quickly and efficiently.
Designing and Building a Custom Portal to Support YourHearing’s Business Objectives
Taking time for technical planning was crucial to the success of this project since we didn't have an agency partner and had to both design and build the portal ourselves. When we took over the project, we inherited designs that we couldn't use because they didn't properly handle the real world use cases and take into account YourHearing's overall business objectives. To prevent this from happening again, we stepped back to look at the big picture, asking the following questions:
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What is the problem the portal needs to solve?
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What is the real world application of the project goals?
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What will users see?
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Where do they go after completing each action step?
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What options are they presented with?
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How will this all fit together and how can we best architect this?
As the process evolved and we discovered the answers to these questions we were able to intelligently design a portal structure and workflow to support the use cases that the call center would face.
We applied custom workflow application logic to build out a workflow process that employees follow to schedule, place, pay for, ship, and receive orders, and implemented AltaPay to process credit card transactions. The workflow itself was not straightforward and several factors needed to be considered when building out the process including the warranty period, ability to cancel, refund, and return products. In addition to the scheduling and workflow process functionality, there was a heavy integration with YourHearing’s CRM tool Microsoft ClickDimensions.
Changing Business Requirements Supported by Agile
We employed an agile methodology for this project, with two-week sprints and demos after every sprint. We had sprint planning meetings where we collaborated with stakeholders from YourHearing’s team to set development targets and populate the backlog for future sprints. We based these targets on what logically needed to be built next in order to reach the business requirements as they were presented.
In the demo environment we provided, YourHearing staff was able to test functionality as each development sprint concluded. This testing environment enabled them to learn as the project was moving forward and for us to make adjustments as needed based on their feedback. Using an agile approach for this project allowed us to address changing business requirements and build trust with YourHearing forming a true partnership.
What’s up Next for our LTE Team?
The provider portal was developed as an MVP deliverable that our Long Term Engagement (LTE) Team is continuing to work on with YourHearing. We are currently collaborating with YourHearing.com to repurpose the clinic lookup code that we built on the portal to replace what they currently have and will be deploying the update shortly. We’re also working on an HTML5 geolocation update to pull user locations automatically, migrating clinic locations off of Sitecore and onto the CRM for more accurate data, map enhancements (directions, street views, etc.), SEO enhancements to boost results per state, and updates to their existing WordPress blog with a new theme, internal search, and SEO updates.
