Partner Registration
Partner registration journey, this piece of research dealt with identifying areas of potential drop off points and looking at Support tickets to identify areas where partners are taking the time to create support tickets for answers.
tl;dr
I get it, life gets busy! Here are some key takeaways from this piece of research:
Business Challenge: The IBM registration journey is the first point of contact that initiates the relationship between IBM and a business partner. Improving partner onboarding can increase partner engagement, impacting revenue growth and reducing support tickets related to registration issues
Research Goal: To understand partner pain points, identify gaps in the onboarding journey that contribute to partner disengagement, and uncover areas that could improve the partner's registration experience.
Solution: A two pronged approach to a) assess the current journey flow b) to supplement findings by analyzing support tickets
Results: Identified potential areas where partners could abandon the registration journey, gave recommendations for improvements that could alleviate user issues, and identified areas that could be self-serve for partners to reduce burden on Support. This led to a 300% reduction in Partner support desk tickets and registering a company went through a 28% improvement in conversion.
My Role: UX researcher
01
INTRO
In an effort to reduce the burden on IBM business partners, the registration journey was simplified to be completed in 7 steps. Great idea! 10/10. Bravo!
So why bring in research? Why now?
Because the flow was not vetted with actual users.
And that's where I came in.
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The registration journey is the first step for IBM to establish a relationship with a business partner.
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It sets the tone for the partner for how easy the relationship will be.
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We want to make it as easy as possible for partners to sign up and start generating revenue with IBM
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We also wanted to uncover any potential drop off points, self-service points and areas we can simplify to relieve Partner Support desk
Design thinking process
02
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We are here
Approach
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We decided to take a two pronged approach and incorporate secondary research from Support ticket data to reach our objective
Usability testing
Support Tickets
Unmoderated usability study to watch users actually go through the flow
Support tickets analysis to uncover areas where partners needed help
04
Project Roadmap
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Establish & priorities Scoping meetings
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Stakeholderinterviews
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Find participant pool
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Create Usability Script
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Create prototypes for testing
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Schedule participants
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Run the usability sessions
Research prep
Conduct research
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Re-watch user testing videos
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identify themes, patterns, and points of friction
Analyze data
usability testing
Project Intake
Establish research
support tickets
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Establish research plan
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Creating research protocol
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Review research plan with the team
Playback & Share findings
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Playback findings to design teams
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Iterate
Research prep
Conduct research
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Collaborate with Support team
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Get the report with relevant support tickets
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Group tickets by type and in a way that is relevant to the user journey
Analyze data
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identify themes, patterns, and points of friction in the support ticket data
05
Overview
Teams Involved
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UX Research team
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Product Owner
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Workstream lead
My Role
I was the primary researcher on this project. I ran the unmoderated usertesting.com study and analyzed over 400 support tickets
Timeline
The course of the research ran for 6 weeks
06
Usability testing
Registration Journey
the study
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Participants went through a registration flow prototype and gave feedback
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10 Usertesting.com sessions were completed
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Screened for partners of companies similar to IBM but NOT current IBM partners to get the perspective of potential new partners
research questions
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What specific obstacles or gaps might lead to partner disengagement?
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Where are the critical drop-off points in the registration journey?
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How can messaging and onboarding steps be refined to minimize drop-offs?
hypotheses
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Information on the registration page may lack clarity, contributing to drop-offs.
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Gaps in conveying the value proposition may lead to partner disengagement.
feedback
Overall, there was a very positive reception of the. Partner Plus registration process
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Positives:
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Liked the progressive disclosure
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Simple, easy to go through
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Participants were enthusiastic about how easy the form was to complete
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Users appreciated the autofill from LinkedIn option
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Improvements:
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Uncovered areas where users would not know where to find certain bits of information like Tax ID number
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Users would like to know the which bits of information they need to have before starting the flow
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Would also like the option to save progress
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Some participants were unfamiliar with aspects of the terminology
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07
Support tickets
the study
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Based on a report from the Support team consisting of >400 entries related to registration or Portal from Aug 2023-April 2024
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Support tickets fell into a few broad categories across the journey
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Most Support tickets were a combination of partners requesting information for themselves OR distributors requesting information on behalf of partners
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Caveat: We are not given much context on how the support tickets were resolved
findings
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Many partners & distributors come to Support with questions regarding sign-up errors or registration issues.
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Many Support tickets are opened looking for IBM to expedite or get a status on a contract.
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Often times it is a time sensitive matter associated with an Opportunity.
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Potential Gap : Providing reasons for why a contract was denied
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Potential Gap: Improve the experience for how partners handle requesting updated contact information of their primary relationship contact
takeaways
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Many support tickets opened around the registration journey and also subsequent steps involved in the journey to revenue.
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By making key experiences self-serve such as giving partners autonomy to check the status of their contract and to changing their distributor, we might be able to reduce the load on the Partner Support desk.
08
Research outcomes & business impact
Identified potential drop offs
Uncovered drop-off points where partners could abandon the registration journey. Found points in the journey that could deter partners from completing registration
Reduced burden on Partner Support Desk
Efforts on this front led to a 300% reduction in Partner support desk tickets regarding the partner journey.
Identified self-serve areas
Identified areas that could be self-serve for partners, getting them to core business activities faster.
Improved conversion rate
Implementing improvements in the registration journey resulted in an 28% improvement rate in conversion.
09
Lessons Learned
Its very important to collect before and after metrics to gauge how improvements affect the overall experience. This was one project where we were successfully track downstream success and were able to calculate the impact that key changes made.
Incorporating Support ticket data into the research might be a tedious process but it shed light on key issues that drastically added dimension and context to things we might not have caught in a usability study or 1:1 interviews.
