VodafoneZiggo

Background

Liberty Global, of which Ziggo is a branch, is currently developing business services hosted over their proprietary network. One of these services is ‘Hosted Calling’ and works through a virtual switchboard. To manage these, Ziggo developed an application aimed at two different kinds of users: administrators and end users. End users can use the application to listen to voicemail messages, check their call history, etc. Administrators can set up virtual phones, create calling groups and configure menus.

However, Ziggo wasn’t satisfied with the ease-of-use and design of the application. The app wasn’t “sexy” enough. Consequently, Ziggo asked TRiMM to create a brand new, best in class, responsive, multi-brand design, and to develop it into a complete front-end application.

Goals of the project

The main goal of the project was to increase ease-of-use by delivering a simple and recognizable user interface. At the same time TRIMM was tasked with developing a solution that allowed the application to be easily used for multiple brands. This is because Liberty Global also aims to offer its hosted PBX services via UPC, Virgin, and Unitymedia.

The other goals are directly linked to the two groups of users.

End users:

•    Consistent experience for all of Ziggo’s business services
•    Reduce the learning curve
•    Decrease number of support calls
•    Ensure a pleasant experience

Business users:

•    Consistent experience throughout all brands and countries
•    Increase customer retention
•    Decrease number of support calls
•    Reduce learning curve for agents
•    Increase sales
•    Increase international adaptation
•    Advocacy

Results

The concrete result is that Liberty Global was able to make the leap from an outdated, difficult to use application, to one that all user groups found easy and pleasant to use. This also led to significant reduction of the learning curve for the self-care environment. Additionally, many smaller goal areas are already seeing a marked improvement, despite a time-constrained development cycle.

Currently, the application is already being used by 500 companies situated in the Netherlands. This result was achieved without any additional marketing or sales efforts. Enthusiasm is building in different countries as well, which leads us to believe that adoption levels will be high. Roll out to Ireland, Romania, Poland, and Germany will begin shortly.

One indirect result is that Liberty Global was able to position itself ahead of its competitors in the market, thanks to a design and user experience that users described as “best in the class”.

Furthermore, Liberty Global experienced hands-on that a user-focused approach to application development projects is crucial to success. Good reason to equip other self-care environments with a user-focused interface.