Improving employee experiences for REI
Improving service operations tool by mapping pain points & opportunities​
Project type: Company project
Role: UX Designer
Tools: Figma, Mural, Salesforce
01
Challenge
Hub is the tool used to manage work orders for bike maintenance at REI stores. Built on Salesforce with the purpose of increasing the productivity of the service counters and decrease the amount of physical paper.
How might we improve the scheduling process for work orders on the Hub?
Goals
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Improvement of the scheduling process
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Increase store productivity
02
Research
The goal of this step was to understand how the tool was being used, what the feeling about using it and map some of the pain points, but also keep in mind that each store had its own needs.
Methodology
Survey
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500 participants
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+200 stores located across the USA
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Validating themes across geography, store size, or other variables
Contextual Interviews
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13 video interviews
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6 store visits
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In-depth look at current scheduling work flows
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Opportunities to see common pain points for using The Hub
Survey Results
WORK ORDER MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Interview Insight:
Getting behind feels stressful, being ahead builds confidence
Shops are implementing workarounds to pad their schedules to
help them feel insulated from falling behind.
Blocking out full days as “catch-up days,” not scheduling work on certain days to artificially push out promise dates, leaving gaps in the schedule between work orders, and reducing available hours to limit what can be scheduled.
The consequences of breaking promise dates feel worse than
having long turn times.
Having to call a customer and tell them that their work order wasn’t completed on time is awkward and embarrassing.
03
Mapping processes & opportunities
Process of adjusting the schedule & work
Opportunities
01.
Improve reliability of the Kronos integration
02.
Align syncing performance to user expectations
03.
Explore ‘count rules’ to enable adjustable availability
04
Improving the Tool
The foundation for the new scheduling process was that it needed to be a reliable, trusted estimate of available hours. Reducing the time on adjustments and improving the process of creating promised dates was the key of reducing the labor of managers and employees.
Improving schedule organization by removing breaks
Managers had to spend lots of time removing the breaks from the schedules manually. This change prevents breaks from being visible which caused reduce utilization potential and overbooking.
Business impact: rework reduction by 5000 hrs/yr
Scheduling for. a day, not a time
This change will decrease the time to make the decision and improve system performance. It makes it easier to select the date decreases the cognitive load for this decision and increases the efficiency of the store schedule, by better organizing appointments.
Business impact: reducing 1350 hrs/yr, aproximally 90K fewer clicks
