Press two keys and you're done.

Redesign of the DB Dialog customer portal

Customers must be able to find the right service quickly and intuitively in the telephone portal. Together with DB Dialog, we have restructured the existing customer portal in a user-friendly way.

Services
Call flow analysis, UX analysis, UX writing, user-centered
Dialog design & editing, user testing, strategic support and expansion

The problem

A maze of options.

Deutsche Bahn 's customer service receives 5.5 million calls a year. From telephone ticket bookings to Bahncard services, complaints or information on timetable changes – Deutsche Bahn is the point of contact for concerns from many different subject areas. Our task was to redesign the structure of the telephone portal, which has become increasingly complex over the years, and to ensure that customers find the right contact person quickly and easily.

Our analysis of the Deutsche Bahn telephone portal showed that users needed an average of two minutes to find their way around the portal structure. The large number of menu items and internal terms caused the most confusion. Unnecessarily long announcements also put callers off. As a result, one in three people hung up before even speaking to Deutsche Bahn's service staff.

Our Approach

Distinct paths through the telephone portal.

Our goal was simple yet ambitious: No matter how complicated a concern may be, DB's telephone portal should work equally intuitively for everyone. To achieve this, we clustered all topics into two that make sense from the customer's point of view: travel and complaints. All subsequent subtopics can be switched directly after these two concerns. The result: callers reach the right service agent after just two selection keys.

The advantages of the new portal

The result

Finding the best of many solutions.

We were able to provide a lot of impetus to make the telephone portal more user-friendly. In addition to the structure, numerous other aspects of the telephone portal were adapted to the needs of callers. For example, the comprehensible everyday language, the consistent use of important terms and the dynamic alternation between a female and a male voice improve Deutsche Bahn's service and increase customer attention.

The caller experience is always at the forefront. That's why we released various beta versions of the new portal and evaluated which version worked better in subsequent discussions with customers. After successful testing and implementing final changes, Deutsche Bahn's new telephone portal was launched in 2017 and has been helping millions of customers every year since then.

»We have completely cleaned up the telephone portal. Since the relaunch, we and our callers benefit every day from the much leaner portal. We've also learned a lot about how acoustic user guidance works.«
– Jens Lunze - Product Owner for Customer Contact Applications and Workforce Management at DB Dialog GmbH

This is how it continues

New potential – new portal.

Since the restructuring of the portal, a lot of new technologies have entered the market. AI-based portals help bridge data interfaces between telephony and the service center and offer a range of possibilities for new self-service offerings. We look forward to continuing to support DB Dialog in all matters related to the restructuring of its customer portal.

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