Update Record and Get a Social Security Card

Project Summary

Nearly everyone in America at some point in their life needs a Social Security card. Hundreds of thousands of people each month request Social Security card services. Their reasons may be for proof to work, their child's first card, or a new card with an updated name. The latter often occurs after marriage and was the use case we evaluated for this project. Our capacity to serve these customers in person is no longer viable based on demand.

Results

Increase in online usage by over 15-20%.
Statistically significant increase in customer satisfaction by 2-3%.

Process

  • Scrutinize the problem space and identify the boundaries of the problem.
  • Understand who our users are and what are there needs.
  • Talk to staff in the offices to understand how they perceive and address the problem.
  • Ideate through creative design sessions with stakeholders.
  • Build personas, user flows, journey maps, and service blueprints to understand the experience of both customers and staff.
  • Translate wireframes into high fidelity prototypes for user testing.

    • Key Learnings

    Customers were not well informed of this new business model and showed up expecting in-person service. They also had many issues trying to navigate the online application to request a card and could not easily find the existing scheduling system.

    Problem Space

    Problem

    The agency responded to an increasingly high demand for Social Security card services by requiring every customer to schedule an appointment before visiting an office. While this helped staff and offices better manage their time, it often worsened the conditions for customers. They were not well informed and traveled to an office to be denied service. They were further frustrated after waiting weeks or months for an appointment that only took about 10 minutes.

    Challenge

    This approach did not address the root cause of the problem and the demand for these services was still too high for our staff to process requests timely. The appointment backlog grew. Early on the problem was misinterpreted and likely the result of poor measurement practices. The federal government was under a hiring freeze for the foreseeable future.

    Goals and Objectives

    Get to know our users

    Willow represents our target audience.

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    User Flow

    Our Approach

    Detail the user flow steps from the perspective of subject matter experts. We diagrammed the flow to understand how the process aligns to the actual experience we would observe in later research.

    Column chart displaying drop off rates for account creation.

    Journey Map

    Our customer journey map focused on telling an emotional story from Willow’s point of view. We wanted to show how her emotions moved from anger to joy throughout and highlight opportunity areas to improve. We conducted interviews and synthesized open-ended feedback from our Voice of Customer platform – Medallia.

    image showing a journey map with customer emotions and touchpoints.

    Service Blueprint

    In this case, we had to consider multiple touch points and interactions including web, phone, and in-person visits. This blueprint demonstrates the complexities of human interactions within complex systems. We conducted ethnographic studies to understand the behaviors of our customers, employees, and the props they interacted with.

    Column chart displaying drop off rates for account creation.

    Design Prototype

    From our research and analysis we learned the path through the digital card product wasn't as straightforward in real life. There were 5 different product teams working in silos and building disjointed systems. This meant the customer was often left to find their way through a maze of information and poor handoffs between product boundaries.

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    Conclusion

    The new process created a more equitable and improved customer experience. To find success in solving this type of problem, it is paramount that you step in the customer’s shoes. You need to experience how they interact with the people, process, and technology that enables service. The best journey incorporates all available props and technology (i.e. web, phone, SMS, mail, etc.) to create a seamless, omnichannel experience.