Project Overview
Role: Sole Designer
Company: ServiceNow
Timeline: Fall 2024 (4 weeks)
Summary
Agents were abandoning CSM Workspace setup because they felt lost in a sea of features with no clear starting point. I designed personalized onboarding experiences that meet users where they are—whether they're workspace newcomers or legacy migrators—transforming their first interaction from overwhelming to confident and accelerating time-to-value.
Product Context
CSM Workspace is a customizable interface that allows agents to manage customer cases on the ServiceNow platform.
Business Impact
The lack of direction and lack of knowledge had direct business implications.
Limited adoption of key features (Plugins, Agent Chat) When agents don't understand core Workspace capabilities, they miss critical features like Plugins and Agent Chat that could streamline their workflows, leaving powerful tools unused and value unrealized.
Slow migration from legacy Agent Workspace Agents hesitate to migrate from the familiar legacy Agent Workspace to the new configurable version, creating a fragmented user base.
Risk of declining satisfaction If agents struggle with their primary work tool, their customer engagements suffer from slower response times and lower-quality customer interactions, impacting their Agent Productivity and ultimately eroding trust in the platform.
The Problem
In mid-2023, CSM Workspace adoption was 25% below target, with time-to-value taking 1.5-2x longer than expected.
User Impact
Several user problems identified in research revealed reasons for low adoption.
Lack of direction: Agents felt overwhelmed on where to start
Lack of knowledge: Underutilization of capabilities led to setup abandonment
Competitive Analaysis
To reveal best practices and identify opportunities to differentiate the onboarding, I conducted a competitive analysis of onboarding experiences across other Saas products such as Notion, Figma, and Zendesk.
I conducted further research on the user base and identified three distinct user personas with different onboarding needs
Defining Users
1. New to Workspaces
Needs: Quickly understand product capabilities and learn case revision workflow start-to-finish
2. New to Configurable Workspaces (Migrating from Legacy)
Needs: Understand new features and their locations and how it differs from Legacy Workspaces
3. Returning Users
Needs: Learn complex setup and configuration; Discover hidden navigation tips and hard-to-discover features
Meeting users where they are- Personalized paths for new and returning users
The Solution
Onboarding Principles
Key Features
Personalized experience depending on user’s familiarity with product
"What's New" guides for migrating users
Quick Start in-product experience for advanced configurations
Understanding Technical Constraints
I explored existing onboarding components to ensure a seamless user experience while working within our technical constraints.
Measuring Business Impact
Agent Productivity: Efficiency completing tasks in CSM Workspace
Adoption Rate: Percentage of users completing onboarding
CSAT: Product satisfaction surveys (comparing pre-onboarding and post-onboarding)
Engagement: Clickthrough and abandonment rates
Future Considerations
Create baseline success metrics for ongoing measurement
Explore AI-powered Quick Starts using customer context
Implement sandbox environments for practice configurations
Evaluate feasibility of spotlight highlighting during tours
Key Learnings & Takeaways
1.Consider distinct user needs
Segmenting personas prompted tailored experiences—from quick tours for new users to in-depth configuration guides for migrating users. I hypothesized that when a software understands and adapts to individual user needs, onboarding becomes more engaging, ultimately driving greater adoption of key features.
2.Research grounds design
Understanding both user problems and technical constraints early shaped a realistic, high-impact solution. For example, Figma had embedded video components at each onboarding step, however technical limitations hindered me from implementing something similar into my design solution.
3.Reimagine an AI-native onboarding
Given advancements with AI since working on this project, I would love to redesign this project with AI, such as drawing on customer profiles to deliver a hyper-personalized onboarding experience.