Enhancing CX and cyber security for NHS prescription portal

Complex integrations to improve CX and gain deeper customer insights for PillTime

What the client wanted

• Form refresh with focus on UX, usability and accessibility
• Complex API integrations to CRM
• Visibility of data throughout the customer journey
• Maintain gold standard cyber security

PillTime is a free NHS prescription delivery service and online pharmacy, with complex integrations between systems including their Salesforce CRM via their custom API. They came to us for support with their forms and customer portal and forms. 

PillTime wanted to achieve:

• Deeper customer insights by tracking encrypted user journey data
• Visibility of analytics to drive business decisions and future innovation
• Clear and aesthetically pleasing interfaces
• Overcome limitations or inflexibilities of digital platforms
• Integrations with CRM and custom APIs

Refreshing design and enhancing accessibility  

PillTime had a good foundation of design and accessibility of their forms, however they were limited in their ability to make improvements by the Salesforce platform.

When considered in the context of accessibility requirements, forms can become more complex. For instance, visual information must be translated so that a screen reader can understand it. Any field that is required or is invalid needs text to explain this, not just a visual cue, so the screen reader can interpret the information and provide it to the user.

Accessibility is important for all businesses, but even more critical when related to health information. We identified and rolled out enhancements to UX, UI and accessibility across the forms and PillTime’s customer journey. 

And making accessibility improvements was particularly pertinent for this client, given their user-base age demographic.

Preparing system integrations with mock API

PillTime’s systems are connected through APIs, and they needed to provide us with a new API to interact with their user data. 

However, detailed planning against our project roadmap revealed we’d need to make a significant headway with our work before PillTime’s API was available to us in order to keep to agreed timescales.

We started preparing to connect with PillTime’s API before it was available to us by creating our own mock API, which was an exciting challenge for our team.

Data throughout the customer journey

Customers are driven to the forms and customer portal from PillTime’s existing WordPress site, and completing the registration form is a key conversion. The forms are built in Salesforce and therefore there are technical limitations to work within, in particular tracking a user’s progress. 

Without access to data throughout the customer journey, PillTime was not able to monitor and adapt their systems to deliver the very best customer experience, as technology, customer expectations and best practices change.  

Maintaining the highest standards of cyber security

Maintaining gold standard cyber security was a key requirement for this client, particularly as their systems relate to health data. 

Some forms are split across multiple pages, and the data that’s transferred between these pages must be handled securely.

Forms with an even more accessible and intuitive user experience

We identified, designed and developed improvements relating to the UX, UI and accessibility of forms to make them even better. The PillTime system uses various forms and we worked through each to ensure it is accessible, intuitive, shows the correct validation areas, and is visually pleasing.

Tweaks to improve accessibility within the forms included: 

• linking help text to relevant form fields
• linking error messages to relevant form fields

This ensures that a screen reader won’t skip past these messages, and connecting them to the relevant form field provides essential context.

We also looked at:

• improved colour contrast
• improved UX patterns for some input fieldgroups (such as date of birth)
• better input :focus states
• legible typography and font-sizing
• exposing critical information in input notices and only putting supplementary info in tooltips

Connecting digital systems with API integrations 

Creating our own mock API before PillTime’s API was available to us meant our team could continue moving the rest of our project forward at a good pace.

We had key technical information to reference, detailing the user data that would be pulled once launched, so we used this information to build out the own mock API to interact with. 

Strong communication and documentation from PillTime enabled us to make this headway with our work, so we could keep the broader project on track and meet agreed deadlines. And once the PillTime API was completed, we were able to switch the integrations over to this with relative ease.

Deeper customer insights

Solid analytics integration enables PillTime to more deeply understand customer behaviour and resolve possible friction points. This data supports crucial decision-making so they can continuously improve the customer experience.

They have the potential to gather data covering the whole portal, they can see where users are dropping off and how this varies for different types of users and we are on hand to support them with analysis moving forward. 

Secure data transfer and gold standard cyber security

Cyber security is of highest priority, and PillTime’s customer data is transferred securely and appropriately. 

Each page from their multi-page forms is valued and encrypted, and there’s no way to inspect the code to see the value. Page refreshes also reset the forms, as an added layer of security.

This secure encryption ensures PillTime is maintaining gold-standard privacy and security.

End-to-end testing

Automated end-to-end testing gives the client peace of mind that everything is running correctly.

This ensures that updates or code changes don’t cause issues on the site. These tests can also be run at will, which helps with quality assurance, bug fixing and resolving issues, or longevity of the site. 

The entire site is covered by the automated end-to-end testing, which offers an extra layer of reassurance and is a value add for the client.