October 19, 2015 Leave a Comment
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Inside Cisco IT

Cisco IT’s User Experience Playbook: Feedback Systems and Sentiment Analysis

For us to make user experience (UX) a pervasive, positive experience for users across the company, we need to put feedback systems and sentiment analysis in place. This process helps enable continuous improvement and in-the-moment feedback. That’s what Chapter 4 of our Cisco IT User Experience Playbook is all about.
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How do we know the impact our services are having on our user base? And how do we better know where to prioritize our improvement efforts? The IT service owners know what the users have to say because we empower employees to communicate their opinion. Through closed-loop communication, we enable a process of Listening, Analysis, and Action.

We have a couple of ways of capturing feedback. One is Sentiment Analysis, which collects information (in natural language) from a variety of sources: mailer lists, surveys, and remedy cases. This information is aggregated, analyzed, and displayed on a dashboard that gives details about where the feedback is coming from (geographic location), and identifies key trends and overall sentiment around a service.

Another way we capture in-the-moment feedback is from our own solution called: InTouch. This feedback system bridges the gap between users and service owners in a very simple and clever way: you give a thumbs-up if you like it or a thumbs-down if you don’t. Users can also leave a comment or recommendation, and these data entries notify the service owner and team. The data is also aggregated, analyzed, and displayed on a service-level dashboard with all the details for that particular service, as well as in a leadership summary view that lists and ranks all IT services per rating and overall sentiment in a percentage scale.

In Touch aims for simplicity and transparency; the solution can be accessed viaweb or mobile. Feedback helps improve our quality of service. Here are some comments I’d like to share from IT service teams:

“I am able to get in-the-moment feedback from users, and most of it are actionable suggestions. . . .We are in the process of integrating with Deep-link, In-the-Moment Embedded Widget, and Open APIs. Overall, it’s just the right tool for me as a service owner to move the needle towards our goal to ‘Surprise and Delight’ the user experience.” – Vital Nattuva, Finance IT

“When introducing the new Computer Recommendation Tool, we knew ongoing user feedback would be essential to making this tool a success. An integrated, easy-to-follow, and intuitive way for users to provide this feedback and for us to review this feedback was essential. InTouch delivered on all levels. The integration options mean we now consider it part of our tool, not supplemental to it. Great job!!” – Paul Clements, Communication and Collaboration IT

“The Enablement Workspace and Experience team looks forward to using InTouch to better support the user feedback and capability ideation process around our SalesConnect platform, which is very much a seller-driven experience designed by sellers, for sellers.’ As such, we have an ongoing need for rapid, consistent, and centralized user feedback methodologies, such as those offered by InTouch. As InTouch expands to support partner audiences and tools, we’ll be deepening our use of InTouch to support the SalesConnect platform.” – John C Bell, Sales

My next and final blog in this UX playbook series will be about IT service owner auctioning and country IT readiness. For a refresher on my previous playbook blogs, please refer to the following:

  • Chapter 1 – Understanding the relationship people have with technology. 
  • Chapter 2 – Delivering a consistent experience across our services.
  • Chapter 3 – Using search capabilities, content management, and collaboration to provide a way to create, share, find, and consume the right information at the right time in the right context.