Transforming Complex Experiences: Pulling the Right Thread

How do you untangle a ball of thread when every pull seems to make the knots tighter? Jehad Affoneh, Chief Design Officer at Toast, faced this exact challenge—not with thread but with the complexities of supporting 100,000+ restaurants during their most chaotic moments. His solution? Find and pull the right thread to unravel the complexity, one layer at a time.

In the fast-paced world of restaurants, chaos often reigns supreme during peak hours. Imagine a bustling kitchen at noon, orders flying in, and then—disaster strikes. The printer stops working. For a restaurant manager, this could mean disaster. Orders stop flowing, customers grow impatient, and the entire operation screeches to a halt. Now, picture this same manager spending valuable minutes on the phone, trying to authenticate themselves, explain the problem, and receive support, all while their restaurant spirals into further disarray.

For Jehad Affoneh and his team at Toast, this wasn’t just a hypothetical situation. It was a recurring reality for thousands of restaurants. As a vertical SaaS company deeply embedded in the restaurant industry, Toast’s mission is to empower restaurants to thrive. But achieving this in such a complex and high-pressure environment meant addressing a daunting challenge: how to transform fragmented and frustrating customer support experiences into seamless, efficient, and effective solutions.

The Problem: Managing Complexity vs. Solving It

Jehad explains the dilemma using a vivid metaphor: a tangled ball of thread. Each knot represents a unique problem, and every pull in the wrong direction creates new tangles. This is the reality for many organizations trying to tackle large, complex challenges. Dividing the issues among different teams often leads to incremental improvements in isolated areas, but the end-to-end experience remains fragmented.

At Toast, this fragmentation was evident in their support system. Customers faced long wait times, cumbersome authentication processes, and inconsistent solutions depending on the channel they used. Agents, meanwhile, were overwhelmed, particularly during peak hours like lunch or dinner rushes. The result was a system that managed complexity without truly solving it.

The Turning Point: Finding the Right Thread

Jehad’s team took a step back to rethink their approach. Instead of dividing and conquering, they asked: What’s the single thread we can pull to start unravelling this complexity?

The answer was async chat support. Unlike traditional phone-based support, async chat allows customers to interact with support agents at their convenience without being tied to a live conversation. This seemingly simple shift had profound implications for both customers and agents.

The Impact of Async Chat Support

Async chat support addressed several pain points directly:

1. Authentication Simplified: By starting the chat through the Toast app, customers were automatically authenticated. The system knew who they were, which location they managed, and even the devices they used. This eliminated the frustrating first few minutes of every call, saving valuable time during critical moments.
2. Stress-Free for Agents: Unlike phone support, where silence can be stressful, async chat allowed agents to focus on crafting thoughtful responses. They no longer had to handle the intensity of live interactions during peak hours, reducing burnout and improving job satisfaction.
3. AI-Driven Assistance: Toast introduced AI answers for common questions, like configuring settings or disabling features. These automated responses resolved many tickets within seconds, allowing agents to focus on more complex issues.
4. Knowledge Base Improvements: Every failed AI response became an opportunity to refine Toast’s knowledge base. Agents and customers alike benefited from these iterative updates, ensuring that knowledge was accessible and accurate.

Intelligent Routing:Async chat made it easier to route tickets to specialized agents, reducing resolution times and improving the quality of support.

The Holistic Approach

The success of async chat wasn’t just about solving individual problems—it was about addressing the end-to-end experience. Jehad emphasizes that each improvement, from authentication to knowledge base updates, contributed to a larger transformation. The focus was no longer on managing complexity but on solving it systematically.

Lessons Learned: Three Key Questions

Reflecting on the process, Jehad highlights three critical questions that guided Toast’s journey:

1. Do You Understand the Pain Points? Deep research and service design were essential in uncovering the true challenges faced by both customers and agents. Without this foundational understanding, it’s impossible to identify the right thread to pull.
2. Do You Have a Primary Channel? For Toast, the app became the central touchpoint for async support. Its accessibility, authentication capabilities, and integration with other tools made it the ideal starting point.
3. Do You Have a Clear Cohort to Start With? Toast began by testing async support with a small group of customers already familiar with chat support. This allowed the team to experiment, refine, and scale the solution without overwhelming the system.

Scaling the Solution

What began as a focused effort to improve support has now expanded into other areas of Toast’s operations. The principles of pulling the right thread and addressing complexity systematically are being applied to onboarding, employee connections, and even guest interactions at restaurants.

Jehad’s team is also leveraging AI to enhance these experiences further. From assisting agents with complex queries to providing real-time insights, AI is becoming a critical tool in Toast’s journey to create seamless, user-centric solutions.

The Results: Customer and Agent Satisfaction

The metrics speak for themselves. Async chat support significantly increased customer satisfaction and reduced agent stress. This dual success is what Jehad calls the "holy grail" of support experiences. By addressing the root causes of frustration and defragmenting the process, Toast has created a model that works for everyone involved.

The Takeaway

Jehad’s story offers a powerful lesson for any organization facing complex challenges: Don’t manage complexity—solve it. This requires a holistic view of the problem, a willingness to rethink traditional approaches, and a commitment to pulling the right thread, even when progress feels slow at first.

For Toast, this mindset has not only transformed their support experience but also set the stage for future innovations. By focusing on the key control points, they’ve proven that even the most tangled problems can be unraveled with the right strategy.

Ready to learn more? Watch Jehad Affoneh’s full talk on transforming complex experiences here: https://uxdx.com/session/transforming-complex-experiences-by-focusing-on-the-key-control-points/ 

This article is based on insights shared by Jehad Affoneh, Chief Design Officer at Toast, during his talk at UXDX USA 2024. His practical and transformative approach to solving complexity offers valuable lessons for any leader navigating similar challenges.