IN-PRODUCT
HELP CENTER

OVERVIEW

As part of another initiative, I surveyed our customer support team and set up focus groups with 8 call center reps. In the survey and focus group findings, we realized that there was another user problem to solve: Users didn’t have a place in the product to find answers to their questions. Several of the focus group participants stressed the need for help content in the portal. Users were often confused, couldn’t find answers, and then called — frustrated and panicked.

I partnered with cross-functional team members (Lead Product Designer, Product Designer, Senior Marketing Manager, Senior Product Manager, legal, customer care) to create the first in-product help center for our users.

THE USER PROBLEMS

THE BUSINESS PROBLEMS

THE CHALLENGES

THE PROCESS

As lead of this initiative, I started the project with a kickoff with cross-functional partners. Together, we filled out a Lean UX Canvas and defined user problems, business problems, possible solutions, and a hypothesis. 

Before I started on the content, I also gathered research from the previous customer support survey and focus groups, as well as evaluated comments in our NPS survey. In addition, I analyzed research done by our marketing department on our customer base. Based on that research, I was able to get a better idea of what our customers expected from a product like ours. I wanted to make sure that we answered the most critical questions for users. Then, I mapped out a list of topics that would be shown per page in the product (below). 

List of Help Center topics by page
List of Help Center topics by page

After drafting content, I went through several rounds of cross-functional reviews. I reviewed internally with the content team, which included our Senior Marketing Copywriter and Sales Copywriter. This helped me also make sure that the language used in the product was consistent with marketing materials. Then, I reviewed with our Product Designer and Senior Product Manager, as well as our customer support and legal teams.

Before flipping the switch, I worked with the Product Designer to create an in-portal pop-up that informed users where they could find help: in the new Help Center. We also created contextual corner pop-ups to point users to the Help Center if it was needed.

Once we were confident that the content would help our users efficiently and effectively, we launched!

We saw great results after launching. In a survey, the customer support team indicated that they saw a decrease in calls about a certain feature once the Help Center launched. We were happy with the conversion rate of users visiting the Help Center, and we evaluated the top topics that users were clicking on and made plans for the next iteration of the Help Center.

SAMPLES FROM THE FINISHED PRODUCT

Image of Help Center pop-up
The in-portal popup that users saw once they logged in
Contextual help cues
Contextual pop-up to direct users who need help (small, non-disruptive)
How I approached the content for sensitive topics — like data breaches — to help users take action and feel reassured
How I translated confusing jargon to simple, easy-to-understand language

RESULTS

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