Customer Scenarios

A scenario is a description of a way a persona uses a product to achieve a goal in a certain context. The full understanding of possible scenarios is necessary to consequently design the information architecture and a set of wireframes.

Purposes

The main purpose of the platform is to help users to reach their goals quickly and easily. Scenarios describe the ways of achieving these goals.

A scenario generally contains:

• A title: a brief description of the scenario that specifies the personas, goal, and context.

• Personas: scenario actors.

• A goal: the goal a persona achieves after completing this scenario. Besides the goal pursued by a persona, for example, “register a domain”, the scenario can contain a business goal as well, for example, “sell more domains”.

• Context: the UI environment, for example, the user panel UX1 and a predefined set of options that a persona can select.

• A story: a description of steps to achieve intermediate tasks and the ultimate goal.

• System and application changes: resources added, removed, or updated.

Scenarios for Personas

Usually, you need to define personas and scenarios for each of them. A grid similar to the following must present all scenarios in a compact way.

Resource	Provider’s admin	Customer’s admin (Samantha)	End-user (Emily)
Subscription	* Provision services for a customer	-	-
Offer (predefined email account configuration)	* Create an offer for customers * Reconfigure an offer * Delete an offer	-	-
Mail account	-	* Create email accounts for end-users * Reconfigure an email account * Enable, disable, or remove email accounts	* Activate the email account * Configure the email account

Typical Customer Scenario: Samantha

Onboarding

For the service provider, one of tools used for onboarding customers is the online store.

For Samantha as a new customer joining the platform through the online store, the typical scenario looks as follows.

In the list of various products exposed on the store, Samantha looks for email services. She selects a product with email services that includes a limit on creating 1 email account. In the add-on list, Samantha increases the limit to 5 email accounts.

An email service requires at least one domain for setting email addresses. Samantha notices a list of top level domains (TLD) for domain registration and requires registering a domain name in one of the TLDs.

After Samantha selects the services, the store brings her to the customer sign-up screen. Samantha enters required parameters of her company and of herself as a user. The store registers the new customer account and the new user, and then requests Samantha to confirm the order printed out on the screen. It prompts her to select a payment method. Samantha enters her credit card parameters, completing the process. The system creates a subscription for Samantha for the selected subscribed period, for example, for 3 months. In addition, she gets a 1-year subscription for the registered domain.

Following the above general description, the formal scenario will look as follows.

Title	In the online store, Samantha orders email service along with a domain and registers a new account in the system
Persona’s goal	Get email service for the company
Business goal	Onboard a customer and sell email service along with a domain registration
Persona’s context	Online store
System context	Top level domains (TLD) for registering custom domains Types of payment methods

Story task	Step
Select a product	Select a product category, for example, Mail Services Select the required product Select a subscription period
Select add-on resources	Review the list of add-on resources Request additional resources above the amount included into the product
Request domain registration	Select a TLD Enter a desired domain name Verify that the entered domain name is not registered Repeat the above two operations until you find an unregistered domain Require registration of the selected domain name
Sign up in the system	Enter registration data for creation of the customer account Enter registration data for creation of the user
Confirm the order and payment method	Review the list of ordered resources Select a payment method, for example, a credit card Enter payment method parameters Place the order

Changes	Resources
System changes	New customer account New customer administrator - Samantha New subscription for email service New subscription for domain registration New registered domain New hosted domain with respective DNS records
Application changes	New subscription service in the customer context

Manage Services and Users in UX1

Samantha uses her subscription to manage the application services.

She logs in to UX1 as the customer administrator and can start managing the acquired service. Samantha creates a service user for each of her employees, creates email accounts, and assigns them to the service users.

This is an example of an application UI that allows a customer to manage virtual private servers (VPS).

The above description actually compiles several scenarios. One such formal scenario looks as follows.

Title	In the customer control panel, Samantha creates users and assigns application resources to them
Persona’s goal	Create email accounts along with users who will use the email service
Persona’s context	Customer control panel Subscription with limited resources

Story task	Step
Log in as the customer administrator	In the browser, address to the customer control panel Enter login name and password to access the panel
Get familiar with the application services	When logging in for the first time after acquiring the new service, learn all descriptions displayed by the application in the user panel. Walk through the application custom introduction tour if there is one.
Create new service users and assign application resources to them	Navigate to the system built-in user manager Start creating users Add new users with respective properties Assign the email service using the same template to all new users
View user list	In the user manager dashboard, find the new users and check that the email service is assigned to each of them
View application resource list	In the application service management list, find the new services and their users

Changes	Resources
System changes	New service users, Emily among them New email accounts Resource usage in the subscription increased
Application changes	New email accounts and respective users

Leverage Application Services

Samantha has completed the email service basic management process. Now all her employees enjoy the assigned email accounts. Recently, she hired three more employees, but her subscription allows her to create only one more email account.

Samantha also reads the provider’s ads inviting her to get better services. This concerns adding additional messaging and collaboration services, such as calendar, contacts, and instance messaging. Her employees also need to protect their email boxes from spam and viruses.

Samantha goes to UX1 and follows the upsell and cross-sell processes.

After the system gets a request to increase resource limits or provision other services, it generates a respective order. Samantha confirms the order and the payment method. Once the order is processed, she proceeds with creating resources for her employees.

A formal scenario may look as follows.

Title	In the customer control panel, Samantha follows the upsell process that allows her to increase resource usage
Persona’s goal	Create email accounts above the current limit in the subscription
Persona’s context	Customer control panel Subscription with limited resources At least one payment method stored in the system

Story task	Step
Log in as the customer administrator	In the browser, address to the customer control panel Enter login name and password to access the panel
Create new service users and assign application resources to them	Navigate to the system built-in user manager Start creating users Add new users with respective properties Assign the email service using the same template to all new users Read notification reporting about resource overuse and follow its recommendation to buy more resource amount
Buy qn add-on resource amount	In the custom application view, set new limits on required resources Review the new order Select a payment method Place the order
Proceed with creation of new service users	In the built-in user creation wizard, add new users with respective parameters Assign the email service using the same template to all new users
View user list	In the user manager dashboard, find the new users and check that the email service is assigned to each of them

Changes	Resources
System changes	New service users New email accounts Resource limits in the subscription - increased Resource usage in the subscription - increased
Application changes	New email accounts and respective users

Typical Service User Scenario: Emily

Samantha has created a user account and an email account for Emily.

This allows Emily to log in to UX1 as a service user and find the application UI screen that requires activating the mail account assigned to her. When the resource activation is completed, Emily is able to use the assigned service. She can use UX1 to manage her email account, for example, configure email forwarding and auto-response. The control panel provides her a link to her email account on the cloud email system. This helps Emily start consuming the available services.

This is an example of an application UI that allows another user to manage virtual private servers (VPS) assigned to that user.

A formal scenario may look as follows.

Title	In the user panel (UX1), Emily configures the service assigned to her
Persona’s goal	Configure the email account assigned to her
Persona’s context	Service user control panel Application service assigned to Emily

Story task	Step
Log in as a service user	In the browser, address to the customer control panel Enter the login name and password to access the panel
Get introduced to the application services	When logging in for the first time after getting the new service, read all descriptions displayed by the application on the user panel Walk through the application custom introduction tour if there is such
Activate the assigned service	Navigate to the navigation item presenting the application Enter the user credentials (login name and password) Confirm the service activation
Configure the service	Open the assigned service Activate email forwarding and enter the address to forward all new messages Activate the auto-response and set the auto-response message Save the new configuration

Changes	Resources
System changes	Resource status - changed for active
Application changes	Mail account - activated

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