Elevating Customer Experience

The Conversation Coach was developed around the core hypothesis that improving the quality of customer conversations would streamline service delivery, reduce repeat calls, and ultimately drive revenue growth. By equipping frontline staff with tools to facilitate more effective, needs-based conversations, we aimed to create a more customer-centric and efficient support experience.

Identifying customer pain points

Frontline staff often face the challenge of not having seamless access to relevant customer data during interactions. This is largely due to the fragmented nature of Telstra’s information systems, customer data is dispersed across multiple platforms, requiring agents to switch contexts mid-call. When a conversation shifts, staff struggle to pivot quickly and confidently, often leading to breakdowns in communication and a degraded customer experience.

As a result, service teams rely on multiple systems to piece together a customer’s context, slowing response times and creating inconsistencies. Without a standardised process, the experience varies widely depending on the agent, which negatively affects trust and satisfaction.

 

Telstra Wireframes 001

Conceptualising a solution: Conversation Coach

Our proposed solution is the Conversation Coach, a dynamic tool designed to empower Telstra’s customer service representatives. By consolidating relevant information and services into an interconnected suite of tiles on the desktop, this tool will allow staff to access what they need when they need it—without jumping between systems. The Coach will adapt in real time based on the conversation’s context, helping agents maintain fluidity and coherence throughout their interactions.

This solution provides more than just a technical fix; it is designed to standardise the support process, ensuring that every customer receives a consistently excellent experience, regardless of which agent handles their call.

Telstra Board 001

Delivering value to customers and the business

The Conversation Coach delivers measurable value on two fronts:

Customer Value

  • Faster, first-call resolution of inquiries
  • A more consistent, reliable service experience
  • A deeper understanding of customer needs and more proactive problem-solving
  • The ability to recommend products and services that align with the customer’s interests
  • Fewer repeat calls, leading to improved customer satisfaction

Business Value

  • Increased revenue, driven by more effective product recommendations and higher customer satisfaction
  • Reduced operational costs, primarily from a decrease in repeat calls and rework
  • Enhanced reputation through consistent, high-quality service
  • Better staff morale as agents feel more empowered and less overwhelmed
  • Reduced attrition, both among staff and customers

Target Users and Early Adoption

The primary users of the Conversation Coach will be Telstra’s call center agents and in-store staff, who interact directly with consumers and unmanaged business customers. For initial testing and rollout, the focus will be on customers who benefit from needs-based sales conversations. This approach simplifies early deployments by limiting the number of required system integrations, allowing for quicker wins and organizational-wide scaling.

Telstra end state vision

Measuring success

Success will be evaluated using several key indicators:

  • Customer Complaints: A reduction in complaints, rebates, and credits will signal improved service quality.
  • Revenue: Increased sales through better customer understanding and tailored offers.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): A higher NPS will reflect overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Call Volume: A decrease in repeat calls indicates that issues are being resolved more effectively during the first interaction.

Improve Containment %

  • Increase Consumer from ~80% to 96%, delivering ~10k incremental SIO’s
    (service interactions online)
  • Increase Business Containment from 50% to 60%, delivering ~8k incremental SIO’s (service interactions online)
Chuck_Version_Final

My role

As the lead UI/UX Designer, I led the end-to-end design strategy for the Conversation Coach initiative, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams including product management, engineering, and customer operations. I was responsible for:

  • Conducting discovery research with frontline staff and CX leaders to identify pain points
  • Facilitating co-creation workshops to align stakeholders and define opportunity areas
  • Developing prototypes and interaction models to unify customer data into one intuitive interface
  • Designing a scalable system of contextual “tiles” that adapt to conversation flow
  • Defining design success metrics in partnership with the analytics and ops teams
  • Supporting rollout strategy through usability testing, agent feedback loops, and iterative refinement

My work helped Telstra reimagine the support experience from the agent’s point of view, unlocking measurable value across both customer and business outcomes.

The outcome

The Conversation Coach initiative delivered both strategic and tangible results for Telstra, aligning with the original hypothesis that improved conversation quality could streamline operations and enhance customer experience.

Customer Outcomes

  • Achieved a notable increase in first-call resolution rates, reducing customer frustration and improving satisfaction.
  • Delivered a more consistent and coherent support experience, regardless of the agent or channel.
  • Reduced repeat calls, resulting in faster issue resolution and greater trust in support services.
  • Improved Net Promoter Score (NPS) across pilot groups, signaling stronger customer loyalty.
  • Enabled more relevant, timely product recommendations, increasing perceived value and relevance of offers.

Business Outcomes

  • Increased revenue through better alignment of product recommendations with customer needs.
  • Reduced operational costs driven by fewer repeat interactions and streamlined workflows.
  • Improved containment rates, increasing:
    • Consumer containment from ~80% to 96%, contributing ~10k incremental SIOs (Service Interactions Online).
    • Business containment from 50% to 60%, contributing ~8k incremental SIOs.
  • Boosted staff morale and retention, with frontline staff reporting greater confidence and less cognitive load.
  • Provided a blueprint for scaling customer conversation tools across broader segments of the business.