Postmark Designer Tool for Pitney Bowes Launched

Project Brief
On average, Pitney Bowes UK processes about 150 customised advertising slogans per day, requiring significant resources to fulfill this demand. Brilliant had already successfully created a multi-language web portal for Pitney Bowes Europe, which allows customers to order their advertising slogans online; our new brief was to create browser-based software which would seamlessly integrate into the existing order process and allow clients to actually design and approve their own advertising slogans.

Objectives

To increase customer satisfaction by giving them greater control and providing a more convenient, efficient service
To reduce the resources required within Pitney Bowes to fulfill the service, and therefore reduce overheads
To achieve a 70% slogan success rate, in order for the tool to be viable from a business perspective

The Results
To date the pass rate for users of the designer tool has been 81%, far surpassing the target set. User testing has shown that in the first beta version 80% agree or strongly agree that they were satisfied with the process of creating their customised advertising slogan, rising to 92% in the second beta version.

The tool will now be rolled out across Pitney Bowes' European websites and has the potential to go international.

What we delivered

Usability Consultancy
Information Architecture
Graphical User Interface Design
Web Development
Flash Software Development
Content Management System
Multiple Language Support
Technical Copy Writing
Customer Assessment Questionnaire
User Experience Analysis
Ongoing Consultancy and Support

Our approach
We used our existing knowledge of Pitney Bowes' customer account structure, and our recent experience of creating the online customised advertising slogan ordering system, to effectively analyse the requirements of the brief and propose an integrated software solution.

Any process which shifts the majority of the work from the service provider to the customer has to have clear benefits for the end user. Therefore, we began the project by specifying the required functionality of the software in relation to the needs of the user. This top-down approach enabled us to arrange user tasks into defined groups, which could then be woven into the existing order process in a logical sequence.

We created wireframes of the information architecture and process flow which were tested, amended and approved before moving on to the graphical user interface design. The visual appearance had to accommodate new interface elements while remaining consistent with the existing portal.

After approval was gained via several stakeholder meetings, the visuals were used to develop a working Flash prototype which pulled in live data from Pitney Bowes' product databases and passed the finished slogans back into their workflow.

At this point, we wrote user help documents which offer advice and further explanation at each step of the process, and subsequently a beta version of the tool was made live to UK users for testing.

User testing is hugely important for developing a truly intuitive, user-friendly interface. Feedback from our specially-written Customer Assessment Questionnaires allowed us to identify and repair specific bugs, before going live with a second beta version. Due to the improved customer assessments and high success rates, the second version was deemed ready to go live permanently.

The customised advertising slogan designer tool allows users to: