Universal Help Module

A machine-learning-powered help application to provide self-service resources, guided assistance, and human support in one unified experience. Over time, it evolved into a localized, modular platform embedded across all customer touch points in 7000+ web pages in 40 countries and 24 languages, and in 7 products.

ROLE

DESIGN LEAD

AREAS

STRATEGY, RESEARCH, INTERACTION DESIGN

PLATFORM

WEB APPLICATION

DURATION

3 YEARS

Background

Autodesk is a leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software. In 2016, the company transitioned to a SaaS model, shifting customer purchases from resellers to direct online sales. As a result, customers began expecting faster, more direct support.

Customer Problem

We were hearing customers through various channels that finding help was very frustrating.

  • No consistent way to get help

  • No direct paths to help

  • Scattered options

  • Inefficient agent to agent transfer

“Provide a support number or a live chat feature”

"Why do I have to jump through hoops and spend hours trying to find someone to help me”

Internal Issues

  • Varying help strategies across products and geos led to confusing pathways, exposing customers to internal complexities

  • Complicated routing rules resulted in Support and Sales teams wasting time solving similar issues and re-routing cases

Goal

  • Get the customer to the right answer at first touch

  • Provide in-context and customer-specific help options where the customer needs it

  • Reduce post-sales human contact by 13% while maintaining customer satisfaction

Teamwork

This project was the first of its kind where many different organizations worked together to align and implement this product over the span of 2 years.

🔆 I collaborated with 40+ Business Stakeholders, Sales Specialists, Support Agents, Product Managers, Engineers, Data Scientists, Taxonomists, Data Analysts, Content Strategists, Researchers, Visual Designers, Program Managers, and Scrum Masters.

Design Principles

I developed key principles grounded in research insights from the learn and help space. These principles served as a foundation for making informed decisions and navigating trade-offs during roadmap planning and feature prioritization.

Approach

Top Pain Points

Evaluated a year’s worth of case data from various touch points to establish top issues. Led workshops with stakeholders to align on top pain points to prioritize for e-commerce and post-purchase support.

Complex Business Rules

Helped stakeholders document a matrix of business rules based on customer’s subscription type and user role. Engineers then coded these rules into the help application so that customers got the contact options they are entitled to.

Agent Ecosystem

Sales and support agents are skilled based on topics across the customer lifecycle, the product a user has and the language they speak. I facilitated workshops with agents to try and help simplify the skill categories to reduce overlap and make it easier to guide customers to the right agent.

MVP

The very first application was deployed on 5 product pages in the US website, delivering guided support for issues with buying, installing and troubleshooting Autodesk products.

The experience was divided into 3 parts:

  1. Issue classification: Users navigated pre-determined decision trees or formulated their own questions

  2. Self-help solutions: curated links to articles, short answers, dynamic links if question was captured, and Watson-based workflows

  3. Human help: variety of options for customers to choose from to connect with an agent, such as phone, chat, case, etc

Issue Classification

Users narrowed down their issue through 2-4 levels of topic selection. I worked with data science and content strategy teams to design several versions of this tree based on case data. Then I partnered with our lead researcher to test labeling and presentation with customers to ensure that topic selection was meaningful and efficient

🔆 Customers prefer typing in their question so we introduced machine learning in a few branches to classify and route issues.

Self-Help Solutions

For branches with topic selection, 2-6 curated knowledge articles or a short answer were presented in the help tool. I worked extensively with content strategy to identify which solutions would be shown and provided guidance on styling and layout of the short answers.

In branches where users entered a question, the recommendations were dynamic and depended on how well the users described their question. I worked with the search platform team to understand their technology enough to offer guidance on structuring better queries and helped fine tune how the results are displayed. We also piloted a self-service workflow where a virtual agent guided them to get a download.

🔆 Clear navigation ensured that users know where they are and get to where they want to go.

There’s always a way out

Users should never feel trapped and always have the option to restart or exit.

🔆 Customers always had an escape hatch to change course or get to a human.

Variety of Human Contact Options

While users prefer self-service, there are times when they face urgent or complex issues where they prefer connecting with a human.

🔆 Utilize customer account information to offer product or subscription based human help options.

🔆 Seamless handoff to live chat, callback, scheduled calls or email case options within the module.

User Research

I worked closely with the Research team to formulate and run several studies to evaluate various aspects of the experience. We used Treejack and First click studies in testing labeling and order of decision tree topics, and ran usability tests to test interactions and flow.

🔆 Initial selection is extremely important so having fewer topics upfront and displaying a short description helps them choose the right path.

Results

  • While engagement with the ““?” icon is consistent month over month, it is overall lower than expected < 1% website visitors

  • 75% of customers who engage with the app click on at least one article or contact an agent

  • Visits to dotcom that had interaction with the help module resulted in 5% higher cart additions and almost 2% higher number of orders placed

“I really like how this is laid out… live chat, schedule a call, create a case….because sometimes you have to go through menu after menu after menu and it just drives you crazy to do it. This is actually very nice.”

— Customer with a Standard Subscription

Post-MVP: Broader - Deeper - Smarter

After the first 6 months, the modular, extensible Universal Help platform was expanded to cover more use cases in more languages across multiple web properties.

  • Global Coverage & Designed for Localization: Universal Help was gradually deployed to all global sites (>7000 pages) — adapted to 40 countries and 24 languages, with geo-specific content. Since support articles and agents were available in only 10 languages, we designed effective ways to guide users from their local language to English and worked with local experts to make cultural and language accommodations.

  • Personalized branches in Account Management Portal: The help app was embedded in the customer’s Account and leveraged the authenticated customer and right away guided them personalized help with their downloads, installation and user management activities.

  • In-Product Support via Chat: Embedded inside Fusion product canvas — open rate of 41% and decreased resolution time by 20%

  • Raise Visibility via Pop-up Nudge: Implemented a time-activated nudge to drive awareness on the site, increasing engagement by 15%

Autodesk Distinction Award for Team Collaboration (2019)

Awarded for exceptional collaboration as Lead Designer for the Universal Help Module, along with Lead Product Manager & Engineering Manager