Problem Statement
In the previous version of the customer portal, all device and subscription upgrades required action from an account manager. Requiring an account manager to perform every upgrade/refresh action presented issues for scalability. Also due to idiosyncracies in the upgrade process, there have been errors in correctly coding an upgrade or renewal action as a revenue gain or loss.
Solution
We designed a new upgrade/refresh flow that a user can self initiate from Subscription Management. Users still have the ability to escalate an upgrade to their account manager throughout the process. The goal was to allow roughly 90% of upgrades become self serve motions, freeing up account managers to focus on more complex issues when needed. We included options for multiple upgrade paths so that eact transaction would be correctly coded and eliminate the errors in tracking metrics. The upgrade flow was designed to resemble the existing store purchasing and checkout experience since users would already be familiar with those patterns.
Additional status tracking would be needed for upgrades requiring user action post transaction (primarily with device returns/refreshes). We added appropriate statuses to Subscription Management to help users track the status of an upgrade, and proposed a new menu tray showing the current status of an upgrade and the ability to retrieve useful information, like shipping labels and tracking.