Corporate rewards: Admin experience
Introduction
The CSRconnect team has been doing research for a new rewards experience, first focusing on the admin experience of reward program set up and followed up by the employee experience of logging and tracking their rewards. With a new rewards system clients will also need to manage requests from employees for redeeming a reward and there is an opportunity to provide an improved experience.
Discovery goals and objectives
For this discovery effort, we set out to define the process admins go through to manage their current programs. We wanted to identify any pain points or successful interactions within matching donations, volunteer grants, and incentives (the various reward features we currently offer). This information could then be used to define the management experience for rewards.
User process
Admin survey
The first thing we did was send out a survey to determine the frequency that users were managing requests and the data they were looking at to make a decision. The survey asked users which of the data points they looked at in the current management experiences while managing requests. The results varied. Each data point was selected by at least one user, showing us that client programs looked at a unique set of criteria and might require a more custom experience.
Admin task flow
We followed up with clients from the survey to get a variety of programs to dive deeper into the actual tasks a user performs to approve a request. The sequence of steps was similar among the client admin users we spoke to:
Navigate to the list of open requests
This revealed a broken information architecture where clients would get frustrated by the lack of structure to the backend. The management pages were not always located where the user expected them to be, often due to the inconsistency between the many rewards features currently available in CSRconnect.Apply filters to narrow the scope of data
Filters were heavily used by every admin to narrow down the requests due to the large amount of data they are presented with on the list pages.Confirm with outside sources
This is a time-consuming process where an admin will take a piece of data and have to confirm it outside of the management panel, typically by impersonating an employee or looking up a nonprofit outside of CSRconnect.
The problem defined:
Client admins lack the flexibility to review their reward requests efficiently due to the amount of data displayed in the current experience that is irrelevant to their programs.
Prototype testing
With a clearly defined problem, we were able to try proven patterns from SKY UX in a prototype for our CSRconnect admin users to provide feedback on options for a more customized experience. We spoke with 6 admin users and 3 customer success managers.
The main components we introduced were:
The data grid
This was tested to provide a multi-select display to show more requests upfront and hopefully create a more scannable experience.
Result:
5/6 admin users preferred the prototype to the current experience. Clients stated that the presentation of information was more digestible.
3/3 CSMs believe the prototype was an improvement on the current experiences and would help their clients work more efficiently.
The columns selection
The purpose of a customized selection for the data grid was to allow the admins to alter their view based on their program needs.
Results:
Before realizing that a user could customize their data grid, many of the admins mentioned how they would reorder the columns to meet their own needs. After finding the new functionality, 100% of users said they would use columns to customize their data. Users believed that the ability to choose the data in the grid would make their process more efficient.
The fly out
The expectation was that users would be able to view additional information without leaving the data grid, so they could review finer details while still acting on line items in the grid.
Results:
The flyouts were specifically called out when it came to reviewing receipts. Employees can log a donation made outside of CSRconnect which requires a receipt to be uploaded and reviewed by admins. This is currently a tedious task when approving a request. The flyout provided admin users with a way to see details in the receipt without having to leave the requests they were reviewing.
Action hub
We tested this page as a new idea where an admin was notified about any outstanding requests or important data they might want to track or take action on.
Results:
The action hub was rated a 4.25/5 on usefulness when users were asked if the information presented would help them accomplish their task. Several clients asked if this would be the new client admin panel home screen, stating that they would be happy to have this view with even more data pulled in and more action items that could show up under the “needs attention” area.
Summary
Admin users initially stated that they are comfortable with the processes they currently have in place to review reward requests, however, they were excited to see CSRconnect propose improvements to help make their job easier. Overall users believe that the enhancements presented in the prototype would improve the efficiency of their work and they would prefer the prototype to any of the current reward management experiences.
