A customer support tool that's GDPR-compliant and actually better
- UX Research
- Service Design
- UX Design
- UI Design
- Business Analysis
A full redesign under pressure from legislation and a tight deadline.
Shell Recharge Solutions' customer support tool needed a complete redesign to comply with BCR and GDPR legislation. Not a wish list — a hard requirement, within six months. The tool is used by support staff to help customers remotely with technical issues. Every day of delay had direct consequences for customers and staff alike.
🔍 Understanding how staff help customers
Before starting to design, I wanted to understand how support staff used the application day to day. I used design thinking methods to do this: listening in on calls, observing how they used the tools, conducting interviews, and analysing everything together. This showed me not just what people said could be better, but what was actually happening in practice.
Based on those insights, I organised stakeholder workshops to test two things:
- What are the product requirements relative to other internal tools, and do they connect well?
- What do end users actually want to see? I validated this through co-creation with users, walking through the current application together and brainstorming improvements.
⚙️ Thinking technically as part of the design process
The tool was heavily dependent on integrations with other systems. Rather than waiting for development to tell me what was possible, I actively dug into the technical landscape myself. I evaluated where existing integrations could be improved to give staff better insight, and made sure the design made optimal use of what was technically feasible.
That technical understanding was essential for designing a tool that doesn't just look good, but can also be realistically built within the available time.
🎨 From validation to final design
I validated the improved design with users. Then I developed it into a final, documented design in Figma.
But I didn't just deliver a design for the deadline. I also designed a future version with improvement recommendations, so the team had a clear direction to build towards after my engagement ended.
✅ Outcome
All required features were delivered on time and integrated coherently within the set deadline. Support staff were able to help customers more effectively thanks to the new functionality. At handover, a fully worked-out vision for the next version of the tool was ready to go.
Interested? Leave a message!
Joris Laenen
Product Owner & UX designer · Eindhoven
+31 6 454 529 56