i-Exchange
Knowledge Base Overhaul
Summary
Stuck for time? Here's a quick run through...
How did I get involved?
While working in fraud prevention, I used i-Exchange to serve customers. I thought I could improve i-Exchange, so approached the product owner who recruited me as a UX Designer/Business Analyst.
What was the problem statement?
"i-Exchange is not effectively providing colleagues with the information they need to carry out their work, preventing customers from receiving support."
What did my research show?
My research revealed two major pain points; trouble with the search engine and difficulty finding relevant content. Additionally, the navigation was confusing and the UI outdated.
Why does this matter?
With 5 million searches every year, i-Exchange was costing the business money in wasted time. Every time a colleague was struggling to use i-Exchange a customer was waiting longer to have their query resolved.
What did I do?
Over 12 months, I implemented a new AI search engine, personalisation features, a UI overhaul, and solved 34 usability issues and bugs.
What was the result?
I achieved a 12% increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS), 35% improvement in search accuracy, and a 50% drop in searches. My work saved several hundred hours per month for the business, and significantly enhanced user and customer experience.
Background
Let's set the scene.
What's i-Exchange?
i-Exchange (or information exchange) is a process knowledge base used by frontline colleagues at Santander during every customer interaction. Simply put, it's a big instruction manual for banking processes.
How did I get involved?
In a previous fraud role, I used i-Exchange every day to follow the correct processes.
i-Exchange was was full of bugs and usability problems. It was so frustrating!
I wanted to do something about it, so I pitched my ideas to the Product Owner. They offered me a job!
Empathise
I started a discovery phase to understand more about the problem. I wanted to know more about i-Exchange, it's users, and constraints.
Research plan
I teamed up with a UX researcher and together we built a research plan.
What do I want to know?
Why people use i-Exchange.
How users interact with i-Exchange.
What makes a good knowledge base and how competitors solve similar problems.
What content is held on i-Exchange.
What causes colleagues difficulty when using i-Exchange.
What are the constraints and limitations.
How will I know when I've learned it?
I will know what my user's goals are when they open i-Exchange.
I will understand how users access, navigate, interpret and apply the information available on i-Exchange.
I will be able to articulate why knowledge bases exist, what makes a good knowledge base and where i-Exchange falls short.
I will have deeper knowledge of what content is available on i-Exchange and how it is presented.
What company goals will this support?
This work will support all areas of the bank as all customer interactions colleagues use i-Exchange.
Think customer, embrace change, smarter solutions, stronger foundations.
'Making it easier for our colleagues to make our customer’s better happen'.
Where am I in the product development process?
I have a functional product that is meeting colleagues needs. However, there are many flaws that colleagues raise.
I am in a discovery phase to inform long term development.
What decisions will my research enable?
Inform what changes to explore for i-Exchange.
How to prioritise effort going forward.
The research will be shared with the wider i-Exchange team to promote discussion and ideation for solutions.
Research methods
In order to fulfill my research plan, I used a variety of research methods. I spent time with many different colleagues from contact centre to branch to really understand their needs.
Surveys
Surveyed colleagues to understand their experience with the current system.
Competitor analysis
Analysed other knowledge base platforms to identify best practices and opportunities.
Interviews
Conducted in-depth interviews to dive deeper and understand pain points.
Workshops
Facilitated sessions with frontline colleagues to generate user-centred ideas.
Shadowing
Observed colleagues in their daily tasks to understand real world usage patterns.
Journey mapping
Created a map for the site and user journeys, so I knew where to focus my efforts.
I created a site map to build a thorough understanding of the current website structure, this helped me to understand the information we held, how it was organised, and if we had logical information architecture.
By auditing i-Exchange content, I gained a better understanding of what users might search for and the additional services to consider as part of the redesign, particularly 'Announcements' and 'Community' forums.
Heuristic analysis
Home
Messy nav bar and no footer
Old nav bar had the main pages, but a 'messy kitchen drawer' with all sorts of systems hidden in a 'coaching and development' drop down.
Missing filters
No options to filter audience from Home, so all initial searches were unfiltered.
Wasted hero section
Hero section banner was decorative and overlayed with the search bar and welcome message. Additional banners below make Home feel like an advertising board.
Confusing communications
Combined list of incidents and communications made it hard to distinguish messages. Manual filters were available, but testing showed they weren't used.
Search
Hopeless prompts
Users prompted to use filters after every search query, if only there was a simpler way to do this!
Exact match search
Outdated exact match search bar that was buggy and often led to void results.
Missing information
Article information limited to title, topic and ID. Surely we can make these more helpful?
Misplaced iconography
Iconography can help distinguish UI elements, but what's the point in having a book icon if every result has the same icon?
Articles
Missing article features
Users expect functions like sharing, expanding menus and copy to clipboard. When reviewing competing knowledge bases these were always made available.
Faulty accordions
Content held in accordions can only be searched for if accordions are expanded. Users had to manually open multiple accordions to search for key terms.
Broken breadcrumbs
Clicking the navigation options in the breadcrumbs is buggy and results in page not found errors.
No version history
Challenging for QA when they need to review a customer interaction completed on a previous version.
Define
To include all of my findings in this case study would be too much, so I'm going to focus on the biggest problem that my research revealed.
Problem statement:
i-Exchange is not effectively providing colleagues with the information they need to carry out their work, preventing customers from receiving the support they need.
For a website called Information Exchange, you'd think we had this nailed. However as a previous user, this was no surprise to me. It's the reason I joined the team!
There were key flaws in the system that could be broken down into two pain points...
"The search engine is slow, doesn't interpret queries and has no allowance for user errors. This repeatedly wastes time for colleagues and customers."
In response to the survey 45% of users reported issues with the search engine
Exact matching was prone to error and did not support users to find processes quickly
Lacked natural language interpretation and advanced search features such as spellcheck and genius suggestions
If the user makes a small spelling error, that search is essentially voided, and provides no results or suggestions.
“It needs to have an update on the way we find information and the way in which you navigate the system, it is outdated.”
“Anything that would assist navigation would help but honestly, I don't know what!”
It's frustrating for users to navigate through different business area (audience) content, the majority of which will never be useful to them.
There are over 6 thousand communication articles, how to guides and technical documents on i-Exchange categorised into the relevant audiences. Setting up i-Exchange to make it easy for each user to access relevant information is a huge challenge.
Ideate
Now I knew what I was dealing with, and had achieved the goals of my research plan, I was well equipped to start ideating potential solutions.
I'd heard murmurs of a better search engine that was too difficult to implement and was warned about long development times on ServiceNow, the platform that hosted i-Exchange.
How to improve the search engine?
Some ideation sessions require workshops and collaboration, this problem was more technical, our systems needed a serious upgrade.
There are many ways to improve search engine optimisation (SEO). Such as changing the way source content is written, including metadata to tag certain search terms, and tweaking the search engine in the back end to 'weight' certain attributes of the source documents differently.
However, the product owner had already attempted to use the above options to improve SEO. I would be trying to optimise thousands of documents for a search engine that realistically wasn't up to scratch.
We needed a more fundamental fix. I dived into the ServiceNow technical documentation on the available tech for search engines.
AI powered search results.
After hours of reviewing system requirements and technical constraints, I discovered that ServiceNow offered an AI search engine that we could use. In fact, we were already paying for it!
AI search offered improved speed, machine learning, advanced reporting and analytics, natural language interpretation, autocorrect, and genius results.
So why wasn't it being used?
Global governance. It was an upgrade to the existing system that required global ideation.
Any changes to the way ServiceNow works at Santander affects all teams globally. In order to deploy the upgrade, I needed to get votes from other Santander countries to agree that AI search should be the next thing to develop. This was no small task.
Influencing upwards
I set up meetings with IT, HR and Customer Interactions teams (all of which use the old search engine). After rallying the teams to get behind me and raise the search issue from multiple angles, I got the stakeholder buy in I needed to get the upgrade discussed on the international forum.
I built a business case and submitted the ideation request with the approval of senior leaders.
What happened on the global forum?
It passed the vote! I'd managed to sway the other countries by offering to be the pilot country for the deployment.
I knew that the features available on the new search engine were certain to supercharge the search experience on i-Exchange.
We weren't out of the woods yet, we still needed to upgrade our systems, develop, test, and implement the new search engine.
How to find relevant information on i-Exchange?
I scheduled workshops with contact centre and branch colleagues to tackle the problem of finding information. I framed this as 'Navigation' to make the theme simpler to form a workshop. I wanted to open the floor up to my users to let them come up with their own solutions before starting to create any new designs.
Workshop handout
What happened in the workshop?
Make toast!
First, I asked how they make toast. This simple exercise gets people empathising with other's experiences and recognising that we don't all do things the same way!
Then I asked a simple question...
What issues do you have with finding information on i-Exchange?
Everyone put their thoughts down on post it notes. These comments were really broad, so I used affinity mapping to draw out the key themes.
Affinity mapping
Personalisation, system issues and quality of content were the three main themes.
What did I do with these themes?
I was in the process of upgrading the back end systems and had the ball rolling on improving our content as part of another project, so I honed in on personalisation.
If you could change i-Exchange however you wanted, what would you do to make it more personalised?
Jennifer showed her favourites and frequently viewed articles, with direct links to processes specific to her business area. She also shared an idea about folders for her favourite articles.
Paul wants i-Exchange to recognise his audience and show tiles of his main processes. He caters the communications list to his audience. Paul also requested folders to store favourites.
Leah wants columns that display alphabetical processes, most used processes in her audience, and a favourites list.
Logan wants audience specific updates for his job role, better options to navigate to popular systems, favourites and frequently used articles.
User's only want to see their audience
Audience filters were not available from the home page, where the majority of searches start. It's no surprise that less than 10% of colleagues were using them.
Users were expected to filter content manually, wasting several seconds after every search.
Could what seemed like a problem navigating to the correct information, actually be a problem with the content that's displayed due to a poor filter mechanism?
If users were able to save their audience, I could automatically apply their preference to filter searches, communications and other content.
A new home
Starting from scratch on the home page, the goal was to use existing data to provide colleagues with what they need and leverage the saved audiences idea.
I started wireframing some ideas based on feedback and suggestions from the workshops.
Prototype
I created prototype screens like the one below to test with users.
Wireframing: Getting some ideas down!
Wireframe 1: Introducing ways of laying out communications and favourite processes.
Wireframe 2: Incorporating the profile feature to emphasise personalisation.
Lo-fi: Adding some colour!
Lo-fi 1: Adding some colour to banners and communications. Included a 'My articles' section.
Lo-fi 2: Building on the existing nav bar, introducing a footer for key processes and reworking the comms section with colour and iconography.
Test
Now I had some rough prototypes for the homepage, search experience, and articles, it was time to test them.
I knew I could create something more polished, but I wanted to validate my designs before spending more time refining them.
User testing
I was limited with user testing tools due to colleagues requiring a downloadable plug-in that IT could not approve. I was not swayed by this and persevered with moderated testing.
Sitting down with colleagues and seeing them interact with the prototype gave me ideas for how to organise the tab and footer menus more effectively.
Testing with the comms and incidents team meant that I could refine the communications and incidents list to what really mattered. They also gave me approval to develop a new customisable banner space!
I was able to show them how the saved audience feature would filter their searches and the communications list. My colleagues were over the moon!
Search testing
Search testing was incredibly important to make sure I delivered on the upgrade with as little friction as possible. Every customer interaction depended on i-Exchange, so it was really important to get this right!
I set up a team of business analysts to run 4,000 manual searches in the test environment. Real user queries were tested on the existing search engine and the AI search engine, with and without audience filters applied. Results were graded as a promoter (1-3 in the search list), neutral (4-5 in the search list) and detractor (> 5 in the search list).
Using these gradings, I created a net promoter score to compare both search engines and how much impact using a filter made.
This was more than enough validation to push ahead with the upgrade and move into implementation.
AI search improved NPS by a baseline of 5% on day 1 without any machine learning optimisation. Filters were far more impactful. Applying a filter cut failed searches by a third and gave a top 3 result 66-70% of the time, regardless of search engine used.
Full steam ahead!
Testing was complete, the new ideas were validated with users, and I was ready to polish the UI and implement the changes!
The final product
My research indicated that users were very apprehensive about change, many had used the existing system for years and feared it would make their lives harder if we started changing things quickly. It was really important that the new system felt familiar and that I didn't turn everything upside down!
This project was dealing with a wider suite of problem statements surrounding feedback, articles and navigation. The screens below cover the pain points I've discussed above, plus other smaller pain points that I have addressed.
Home
Navbar and footer
Navigation options simplified. Useful links expanded and included in new footer.
Banner and cards
Clickable banner making use of hero section. Smaller cards to promote internal initiatives or events available as 1, 2 or 3 cards.
Saved audience and AI search
Saved audience available from Home, promoting accurate searches of relevant content. Temporary prompt to encourage adoption on launch.
Communications and incidents
Communications and incidents separated and given colour and icon coding. Saved audiences apply to these lists automatically.
Favourite processes
Added a favourite articles list to Home under 'My processes', making sure that users had access to their preferred articles.
Frequently viewed
Frequently viewed articles included under 'My processes'. Each user's list is personalised on their article view count.
Search
AI powered
AI search offers improved speed, machine learning and natural language interpretation.
Save my audience
Saved audience can be amended from the search page, allowing users to remove filters to see other business area processes.
Genius suggestions
Pulling from processes directly, we can provide an AI generated summaries and suggest the best option.
Spellcheck
People make mistakes when typing, we now include autocorrect suggestions for when users don't have time to go back over.
Relevant data and buttons
View count, options for opening in a new tab and sharing a link for the article are now available from the search results list.
Analytics reporting
Full reporting available on top queries, knowledge gaps, search synonyms and failed searches.
Articles
Digital adoption
Purple banners on processes that can be self-served digitally to support the business goal of promoting digital adoption.
Version history
Full version history available for each article, allowing QA to do their work and users to experience less confusion during changes.
Article links
Copy to clipboard, link share, expand all accordions and add to favourites updated in line with conventions for article documents.
Feedback
Feedback options allow users to provide their thoughts, helping knowledge managers know which articles need improving.
Implementation
I own the full development life cycle, so I planned implementation the search upgrade and scheduled a product backlog to release saved audiences, the new home page, search page and articles.
Dual-track agile approach
I adopted a dual-track agile approach for implementation. With the upgrades in motion for the search engine being worked on by the developers in the long term, I could break down the saved audiences and UI upgrades into smaller chunks to work on in the short term. This meant weekly releases that put technology in the hands of users as early as possible.
Long term - AI search
The search upgrade was an enormous piece of work that took nearly a year to complete. This included challenges with ServiceNow as we found bugs during development.
This work was ongoing in the background but did not let this get in the way of updating i-Exchange with the other new features.
In November 2024, I deployed the new AI search engine to i-Exchange. I saved months on this stage by deploying a minimum viable product (MVP) with an interim UI, that I iterated on over time following the back end upgrade.
Short term - UI changes and saved audiences
I broke down 'Saved audiences' into sprints which meant we could start to deliver changes much faster based on an MVP. First we created a space to store the data, then we allowed users to select their saved audience, then we displayed it, and finally applied it form the home page.
The home page followed a similar approach, small but frequent updates that eventually led to the whole release and meant consistent delivery of features every two weeks.
Results
Users could find information
Search accuracy jumped 35%.
Once the search engine was deployed, we saw search queries reduce rapidly. This was a great sign as repeat searching was less frequent, meaning that our users were finding the information they need and ultimately save more time for our customers.
Spellchecks, genius suggestions and machine learning were working and the new analytics dashboard enabled us to identify emerging search trends.
Clear and relevant content and communications
Saved audiences are now fully deployed, reaching 50% adoption in the first month and increasing the percentage of filtered searches 3-fold.
Saved audiences save the business at least 120 hours every month by increasing search accuracy and removing the need to repeatedly apply audience filters.
The estimated benefit of this could be much greater when extended to saving customer time, preventing mistakes and reducing cognitive load.
i-Exchange was back on track
The key theme of personalisation was embedded onto the homepage, meaning that users saw more of what mattered to them.
In just one year, I increased i-Exchange net promoter score (NPS) by 11.7%, successfully turning the tide on user sentiment and getting i-Exchange back on track.
Retrospectives
Let's take some time to talk about how things could have gone a little smoother.
Research
It was really difficult in the workshops to keep people on task. I invalidated my first workshop, as I spent the first half of the session talking to them about why we were there in the first place!
This is why I created the handout for the next session, as it meant that people who attended at least understood why the workshop was taking place. On reflection, I will be completing training on workshop facilitation to understand how to keep things together as a facilitator.
Testing
The screens I created were really difficult to test without the correct software, the problem I had with the user testing plug-in was discovered shortly after I set up my first test, and I embarrassingly had to let users know that I would rearrange to complete in person.
This issue meant that testing was less comprehensive and there was less confidence moving to production.
I need to look into setting up testing with colleagues in the future, so that I can leverage the power of unmoderated testing next time.
Figma
I thought I knew a lot about Figma, but I was just getting started.
I wasted loads of time formatting content, and figuring out how to provide access to developers with external email addresses.
During this project, I improved my skills massively and if I had to do it again I would have created my design files and hand offs very differently.
Mid way through the project I was onboarded onto Santander's Flame design system which saved me a learning curve in styling content. However it's key for me to build on these skills and make sure I don't become dependant. Auto-layout isn't so scary once you know what you're doing!
That's all for this case study. Fancy another?
Colleague Assist (Cassi)
AI Chatbot Feedback Journey
Community
Support Forum Project
Rentokil
Technician's Sales App
What's i-Exchange?
i-Exchange (or information exchange) is a process knowledge base used by frontline colleagues at Santander during every customer interaction. Simply put, it's a big instruction manual for banking processes.