“Have they forgotten my application?”

“IRCC sends our applications to a Delhi office to get abandoned”

“My friend got his PPR, where is mine?”

These might sound like exaggerations, but these are quotes from clients we’ve been able to speak to during our primary research.

Our clients worldwide go through tremendous mental and emotional hardships during the current application process.

And in this, the IRCC Customer Support Centre becomes their beacon of hope.

Unfortunately, according to a 2019 report by the auditor general of Canada, the IRCC Client support Centre is only able to answer 22% of all incoming calls. That’s 68% of all callers don’t even get to talk to an agent about their difficulties.

And through our research, we learned that out of the ones that DO call, only 33% express satisfaction with the call experience. That’s only 7.26 people out of a hundred!

So, as a team of international students, we empathized with the problem and jumped at an opportunity to solve it.

The UX Research Process

Our target was to uplift the customer satisfaction numbers of the ‘Family Class Immigration’ line of business. We started our research by taking a multi-method approach using surveys, user interviews, and usability tests. The research team dove into the fuzzy front end by conducting a rigorous background literature review of more than 40 research papers to gain insight into the problem.
Data gathered from this stage of the information was then collated and organized into a comprehensive
30-page literature review highlighting the problem surrounding immigration processes (Domestic and international), call centre operations of public as well as private industries, the psychological effects stemming the uncertainty of waiting, and solutions used around the world to tackle such issues.

The team used those insights to develop a survey to gather further information directly from the clients of IRCC. The survey was drafted around 2 parameters:
1. We made sure that it collected as much quantitative data as possible (a few subjective questions were added if the participants wanted to elaborate).
2. We kept the survey under 15 minutes long. This ensured that all the participants completed the surveys, thereby reducing the risk of survey abandonment.
3. The survey was also used as a tool to recruit willing participants to interview with the research team during the qualitative stage.

Through this survey, we managed to gather around 130 responses with around 25 responses specifically for our program.

The data gathered from the surveys, coupled with the background understanding derived from the literature review allowed the team to draft in-depth questionnaires that would then be used for the interviewing stage.

The subjects for the qualitative interviews were classified into 3 main brackets:

• The Clients of IRCC
These were the Family Class applicants who make up the population that calls the IRCC Client Support Centres. Interviews with this group would illuminate vital insights into how the current immigration services manifest for our end users. And therefore, understand the personal context and motivations that inspire calls to the IRCC.

• Subject Matter Experts
This group consisted of experts like immigration lawyers, journalists, immigration policy analysts, call-center employees, etc. Conversations with this class of participants would enable us to view the issue through a larger social, economic, and political lens.

• Experts and representatives from the IRCC
The team was also in regular consultation with IRCC spokespeople thereby gaining a crucial understanding of the logistical structures and limitations of the current system.

The interviews were then transcription and the synthesis of this interview data in conjunction with surveys and literature review help us draft artifacts such as Personas, Journey Maps, Experience Maps, etc. leading us to our eventual key insights.

Personas were build to capture the applicant’s main needs and frustrations

Using the key insights, and based on continuing consultation with IRCC, the research team drafted a few proposed interventions ranging from short-term solutions (modifying the language of client-correspondence based on psychological principles to provide immediate relief), mid-term solutions (redesign the current application tracking portal) to long-term solutions (a substantial overhaul of IRCC’s IT spine).
Low-fidelity (and eventually high-fidelity) prototypes were drawn out of the preferred solution and presented to the IRCC.

The prototypes were then progressed into the validation phase of the study.
This phase was characterized by Usability Studies and follow-up interviews with users, subject matter experts, and IRCC representatives to gather feedback on the interventions proposed but the team.

THE FINDINGS

The survey showed that around 60% of the population that calls IRCC does so after submitting their application and almost all of these calls are made to get updates on the status of their application.

The research revealed a combination of factors dramatically affects an applicant’s likelihood of calling IRCC.

The team found that the one-size-fits-all approach of the application tracker is harmful and works against reassuring people about their application. The researchers also discovered that the lack of personalization of the applications gives rise to comparisons that people make between each other’s applications. These comparisons combined with the long intervals between updates result in heightened panic, anxiety, and increased susceptibility to misinformation.

And eventually, when these applicants finally call the IRCC, they are contradictorily informed that each application is unique and has a unique application process. This dissonance between what the client sees and hears is jarring and therefore becomes an excellent breeding ground for worry and anxiety.

A rough map of an applicant’s experience shows the various factors that fuel frustration and anxiety

So, those are your two culprits right? Anxiety and a lack of transparency?

Well, when we talked more with the users, we learned that anxiety can arise from different and unique sources. For example, one of the participants confessed that she was afraid for the future of her arranged marriage if she couldn’t reunite with her husband in Canada. Meanwhile, another was desperate to bring her ailing mother to Canada to care for her.

But even though the anxieties arise from different spaces, we discovered that they all converge in the same space: the application tracking portal.

All applicants visit the portal to check for an update and calm their nerves.

So, that’s it. We had found our opportunity space.

The team went back to the application tracking portal and conducted a heuristic analysis on the website. We learned that the portal, as it stands, is severely opaque and shows everything except the information about the application that the applicant needs.

PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS

Based on the data, the researchers proposed 3 solutions for the short-term, mid-term, and long-term respectively.

In the short term, the team suggested that certain psychological principles and methods used in the online dispensation of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy be employed (with the consultation of mental health experts) to redesign the IRCC’s correspondence with their clients.
This would include a rewrite of their current email templates, phone IVR recordings, and scripts provided to the phone operators, with the intention to temporarily de-escalate anxiety among callers, thereby making them less likely to call again soon.

A mid-term solution involved redesigning the application tracking process to add more personalization according to each applicant’s case.

The long-term solution would be to redesign the IT infrastructure of IRCC to remove significant procedural blockers and unscary redundancies such as having multiple portals for applications and tracking immigration processes.

For this study, the mid-term solution was chosen.

Every application case in the IRCC is updated in a Global Case Management System. Our solution makes use of the GCMS notes that are publicly available.
Information from the GCMS would be divided into confidential and non-confidential, and anything that isn’t confidential will be displayed upfront to the application portal itself.

Moreover, the team also discovered that if you take the information that the applicant submits and find ways to curate a unique application tracker for each applicant, they will gain many further insights into the process, thereby reducing the stress and anxiety caused by comparisons and misinformation.

Additionally, when an applicant does log into the portal, they are more likely to see movement, alleviating the anxiety of believing that their application is forgotten.

With this understanding, the team drew out a few prototypes of what a redesigned application portal could look like.

This high-fidelity prototype was then used by the research team to advance into the validation phase of the project.