The Alexa “OOBE” – Out Of Box Experience is the first keystone moment that allows customers to get connected to their devices and to tailor and customize their devices into something uniquely their own. The experience is ephemeral however, ever so vital to get right the first time.

Customer Problem

In the Echo headless setup, customers’ confidence eroded from inconsistent UX & visual patterns. Furthermore, individual “away” engineering teams created redundant pages from scratch, leading to inconsistencies, and lost time. Customer feedback also suggests improvement on clearer instructions, better guidance, and direct ingress for setup. 

“It would be nice to have more guidance for setting up new devices. Sometimes I have to google how to or watch YouTube videos”. Stacy S.

Goals 

1. Setup: Improve first-time setup success from 75% to 85%, +1,000bps

2. Customer Service: Reduce 24% of CS contacts related to EFD device setup YoY

 3. App Store Ratings: Improve from 3.6 star rating to 4.6 star rating

Auditing our current experience allowed our team to identify key areas of discrepancies. Which allowed us to consolidate and recommend a solution.

To build a durable and extensible framework, we had to get the alignment commitment and buy in from the product and engineer team. Our strategy was to “break down” the page template into different stack layers that each “away team” can own. This allowed for a flexible code base that can be compiled together with discrete ownership and intent.

No need to reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to. Rather we leaned into design principles such as the Gutenberg Principle to allow the customers eyes to naturally scan each page with clear and distinct call to actions and information.