The Motivational User Interface
Linda Hole 1, Simon Crowle 1and Nicola Millard2
1 School of Design, Engineering & Computing Bournemouth University, Poole
BH12 5BB, England
2BT Laboratories
Martlesham Heath, Ipswich IP5 3RE, England
ABSTRACT
The interface design focused on performance support for the advisers in a customer service centre. It evolved in close collaboration with users handling the incoming calls. A study of the advisers' motivation to perform their jobs produced a rich set of data which generated concepts presented as motivators in a Motivational User Interface (MUI). The 3D graphical objects which form the MUI were well-received by the users, who offered further design suggestions.
KEYWORDS:
GUI, performance support, call centre
INTRODUCTION
Development of the Motivational User Interface (MUI) was focused on the BT Customer Service Centre advisers' work with a call handling system. The aims of the project were:
to discover what motivates customer service advisers to achieve their targets; to investigate how the interface could support their selling capabilities; to ascertain what other performance support could be added to the interface; to design an interface which would prove enjoyable and motivating to use.
The designers were based in the customer service centre, so the team gained a clear insight into the working lives of the advisers through interviews, team-based card sorting exercises, and attitude questionnaires. The data gathered provided the foundation for a useful set of concepts which are presented in the MUI.
ADVISER MOTIVATION
The study found that there were four aspects to the advisers' motivation:
extrinsic, service-based motivators from both the organisation and the customers, plus the advisers' intrinsic motivation in terms of what they want from the job and in their relationships with the customers and other members of their team.
The advisers felt that their company wanted them to be efficient 'problem-solvers', providing informationwhich included both service and product data. They needed to use good interaction skills to exchange information, and to promote customer loyalty. Advisers considered selling to be part of a larger picture in which they represented good service to the customers on behalf of the company. They felt that they were good advisers, but that they could improve performance. The advisers realised that the customers wanted a pleasant and positive response to their calls, and they preferred to obtain all the information they needed within one phonecall. Customers' reactions could affect the advisers' spirits throughout their shift, which was often considered tiring. At times, system demands caused them to break their conversation with the customer to concentrate. The advisers did their job for the rewards of a salary and people contact. Team work was an important aspect of the advisers' job: other team members could help them in their work. Many advisers agreed that discussing the work with others helped them do their job better.
The customer service centre advisers valued the intrinsic motivations inherent to their job (customer and team contact and the satisfaction gained from dealing with difficult problems or customers) at least as much as the extrinsic motivators in place at the call centre. That is not to say that the extrinsic motivators were not effective, but they appeared to not exploit the full potential of the advisers or their teams. To motivate the advisers in their work, a good mixture of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators should be sought. Addressing this problem involved identifying those aspects of the advisers' work which they valued most and making them more visible in the work context.
THE MUI OBJECTS
The factors arising from the advisers' daily work activities were acknowledged in the design of performance-relevant objects which appear in the MUI. The objects are presented as 'concrete' components of the advisers' working environment; their design evolved from earlier work based on the call handling system (Millard, Hole & Crowle, 1997). There are six main elements to the motivational
interface, which offers the customer advisers a tailorable working environment. This is achieved initially by their selection of an outside world,which provides the backdrop for their personal workspace. There are currently two environments within which the adviser can work: either a tropical island beach house or a courtyard in Florence. The customer capsuleis a self-contained representation of the customer which appears as the call is taken. It acts as a 'key' to the database, invoking the relevant customer information to appear at the interface. The customer bookis an amalgamation of the three separate books prototyped in the earlier interface: the 'phonebook', 'streetfinder' and 'bills file' appear as sections of the customer book, accessed by filing tabs. Further sections concerning 'issues' and 'bookings' (for appointments) have been added to the book. Fields of information held in the customer book can be 'peeled off' as notes, and then edited and attached or sent to other objects. The communication cubeoffers a variety of functions, via six faces:
the customer face
provides visual communication with the caller;
the two buddy faces the team-leader face the team face
the worldface
provide email communication with other team members; provides direct access to the line manager;
provides communication between team members; provides intranet access and email communication.
The product information is generated in the form of script bubblesfrom the intranet site. These are used to break the monotony of reading fixed product scripts to the customer. The moodiesprovide qualitative measures of the types of callers the adviser has to deal with during the shift. They appear as little images of people whose colour conveys the mood of their enquiry.
PERFORMANCE SUPPORT AT THE INTERFACE
Use of the MUI provides performance support in the following ways:
the adviser handles a stream of customer calls: these are represented in the outside world, at the customer face of the communication cube, by the customer capsuleand the moodies; a phonepadoffers dial-out facilities to return calls.
the adviser acts as a go-between from the customer to the database: database access is simplified by the facilities offered by the customer capsule, the customer book, and email and intranet access via the communication cube.
motivators encourage the adviser to perform well within the team: the buddy, team-leader, and team facesof the communication cubeprovide moral support, and the moodies and email enable the advisers to signal that they are having specific difficulties with particular customers.
PROTOTYPING AND EVALUATION
The MUI prototype was developed in Macromedia DirectorTM. It demonstrates the behaviour of the interface objects and expands on their use during call handling scenarios, with a limited amount of data handling. The Director prototype was used as a focus for discussion with the customer advisers, to gauge their initial reactions to the Motivational User Interface idea. The concept was well-received by the users, who offered further design suggestions. The next stage of the work will involve user performance trials, with the MUI re-engineered to act as a live interface for call handling. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to BT Laboratories for their support for this project.
REFERENCES
Millard, N., Hole, L., & Crowle, S. (1997) From Command to Control: interface design for future
customer handling systems, in S. Howard, J. Hammond & G. Lindgaard (eds), Human-computer
Interaction INTERACT '97, London: Chapman & Hall, 1997, pp. 294-300
