Customer Context - B2B to B2C

Our business partners

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) buy our eero Wi-Fi routers and services to sell to end-customers.

End-customers

End-customers are the users who engage with the products sold by Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Product Challenge 

Remotely resolving physical Wi-Fi issues was cumbersome to Internet Service Providers and their support agents.

In 2020, eero started to partner up with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to deploy eero routers to end-customers. This new partnership led a growth to the ISPs’ business, but it also put a strain on their customer support teams. Agents found fixing Wi-Fi network virtually was difficult without seeing the actual hardware in the customer’s home.

Product Solution 

We built a topological map, a virtual view of the customer’s Wi-Fi setup, for agents to better resolve physical issues.

Prior to introducing the topological map, Internet Service Providers dispatched technicians to assist customers struggling with Wi-Fi network setup, a costly and non-scalable approach. Drawing inspiration from user-centric products like Google Maps, which immerse you in the user's experience, I developed a product for ISPs to seamlessly step into their customers' environments.

Product Deep Dive

A lot of agents are visual learners, so having a list view of the customer’s Wi-Fi setup was difficult for them to retain information.

Instead of requiring ISPs to take notes and mentally troubleshoot, I suggested the idea of a topological map to reduce cognitive load.

From the start, I worked with engineering to discuss the types of view to design for our ISPs. Topological maps came in many forms, but we gravitated towards the diagrams engineering had access to in their database. We wanted to move fast and gain momentum at the beginning.

I workshopped designs with engineering to map out required components and created a demo to get early feedback from leadership.

At a high-level, the goal was to display the user’s the physical routers and personal devices. Using simple shapes to convey my concept, engineering efficiently translated my designs into code, transforming them into an interactive interface. This was helpful to get early feedback from leadership and ISPs.

We opted in for outlined visuals over rendering because they loaded faster, elevating the overall experience of the customer call.

I explored different visual options in representing the user’s eero routers and their connection to personal devices. We moved forward with using vector visuals, because engineering confirmed they’re is less likely to lag.

Based on early feedback from engineering, I pivoted from using organic lines to angular lines because it contributed to a cleaner codebase.

Initially, I used organic lines to represent the connection between routers, instead of straight lines because the latter looked stiff. The organic lines were meant to indicate to the ISP the components were interactive. However, because calculations were required to ensure a cleaner codebase, we pivoted to angular lines.

By organizing the topology map in some sort of structure, ISPs were able to read 2x faster and more accurately.

Initially, the topology map was focused on showing the distance between routers (distance impacts Wi-Fi signal strength), creating a flowchart-like diagram. But ISP agents felt it looked scattered and confused where to start looking. Later, I pivoted towards a layout that scaled more cleanly

Initial Iteration

Flowchart layout: Contextual and informative for ISPs to identify weak Wi-Fi signal due to distance between routers and devices. The main drawback is it’s not scalable.

Proposed Iteration

Hierarchical layout: Clean and structured for ISPs to scan and troubleshoot. It scales better when dealing with larger Wi-Fi networks.

For a connected experience, the dual view allowed ISP agents to see both a bird’s eye view and detailed view of a customer’s Wi-Fi setup.

Adding a visual diagram to eero Insight was new to the team, so I brainstormed an infrastructure where ISPs can view the communication (the sending and receiving of Wi-Fi signals) between a router and a device.

Initial Iteration

Full view: The entire content moves together when the viewport is zoomed in or out, but ISP agents find themselves needing to repeatedly zoom in and out to view details for multiple devices.

Secondary Iteration

Modal view: ISP agents don’t have to leave the main page, but content feels crammed and requires an extra tap to pull up the viewport.

Proposed Iteration

Sidebar view: Despite the reduced vertical space, this structure enables ISP agents to seamlessly zoom in and out of the topology map while accessing additional content

ISP agents didn’t have a quick view of the impact affecting a customer’s Wi-Fi network.

To help ISP agents address hidden issues, I worked on an interactive component that enabled agents to skim visible events across a 24 hour time frame.

Initial Iteration

Building structure: Viewing the timeline in a 6-hour interval helped organize a large set of events.

Second Iteration

Leveraging color: Simplifying and color-coding which timeframe had the most critical issues help guide the ISP agents.

Third Iteration

Maximizing space: Reducing repetitive text helped ease clutter.

Final iteration

Designating a page on eero Insight for the topology map encouraged feature usage by ISP agents.

Our team’s findings, derived from 3 rounds of usability testing involving 15 participants, reveal that users didn’t feel the topoplogy map was as important when displayed as a button on an existing page or a hyperlink. Adding an etry point from the menu bar was the strongest factor in improving the perception of this feature’s value.

After launching our MVP, we reduced the average duration of support calls by 3-5 minutes across ISP partners.

ISP support agents, who are visual learners, can now piece a customer’s Wi-Fi setup together when resolving an issue virtually. The topology map alleviates the cognitive load associated with recalling minor issues that collectively contribute to larger problems.