Integrated assistance for Azure SQL Database

Innovation provides a new method, idea, or solution that did not previously exist. From 2009 to 2012, I worked on a small team at Microsoft to develop an innovation that solved a problem with the Azure customer experience.

In 2009, Microsoft Azure was a new product, and it was delivered in a new way. Customers did not install Azure software before using it. Instead, they paid for a subscription, logged into a portal on the Internet, and then built databases and applications on remote servers in Azure datacenters around the world.

This was the dawn of cloud computing at Microsoft. At the time, there were very few companies providing a platform to host enterprise software on a private cloud. The benefit to Azure customers would be that they could focus resources on their own business processes – for example, a commercial airline could focus new software development on more efficient flight schedules or pricing models - and let Microsoft take care of server maintenance, computing performance, and application uptime.

I was the technical writer tasked with documenting the steps to get started with Azure SQL Database, and there was a lot at stake. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had recently announced in the press and to Microsoft shareholders that he was betting the company on Microsoft Azure.

Soon after that, technology companies around the world began to assign their software developers and database administrators important projects that relied on Azure SQL Database. But there was a problem.

Azure customers were confused about how to use this new product. Getting started was unfamiliar. The steps were confusing, there was new terminology, and the look and feel of the Azure product presented a user experience completely different than the software they were used to.

Our software telemetry and user data clearly showed new users with partially complete but dormant configurations, new but abandoned subscriptions, and the phones at Microsoft customer support were ringing off the hook. Customers wanted to try Azure, but there were significant obstacles for new users.

To address these blocking issues and customer pain points, I worked with user researchers to design a usability study. We also interviewed Azure customers to learn where we could make changes that would improve the onboarding experience for new users.

We learned that the documentation was correct, but many customers were not using it. Instead of expanding the docs or writing in all caps, we decided to reach out to customers right where they were working when they needed help. And Integrated Assistance was born.

Using results from the research study and customer interviews, in combination with customer call data from customer support engineers, we were able to identify several points in the “getting started” part of the customer experience where we were able to conclude with confidence about users, “We know what you are trying to do, we know what problem you are likely to have, and we also know what the solution is.”

The good news was that these known issues had known solutions. The blocking issues that were frustrating to users could be resolved. The challenge was to communicate the solutions to users inside the user interface where the customer was working at the time they needed help.

Working with an interaction designer and a program manager, I developed a set of “helpful nudges” in the form of help bubbles, links to targeted documentation, and a slide-out Help Drawer that provided crisp content, a video demonstration of a feature, and links to subject matter expert wiki sites about the operation users were working on. Each Help Drawer was developed for a particular feature or operation, activated by a “Learn more about <feature name>…” link. 

The drawer launched inside the browser tab where the user was working, it could be dragged to an adjacent monitor, and it could be resized as needed. Customers could learn about a feature or get unstuck without changing their focus or stopping their work to search for documentation.

One of the help bubbles focused on a particular pain point where customers were connecting an application to an Azure SQL Database. The help bubble for this use case included sample syntax for connection strings that could be copied from the help bubble and pasted directly into the UI to get the user unstuck. 

Integrated Assistance provided help for specific blocking issues and pain points. It provided help inside the user interface, right where the customer was working, at the precise time the customer needed help. If users did not need help with an operation, the Integrated Assistance solution remained out of the way.

Results were immediate and significant. Customer satisfaction increased, as did the rate of product adoption, because we helped customers overcome their pain points. We reduced support costs by taking pressure off of support engineers, and increased revenue for the company. We also received a Cloud + Enterprise award for engineering innovation. The greatest satisfaction from this project was the effective use of data to solve a problem that genuinely helped customers.