Optimising customer onboarding & reducing friction across healthcare journeys

A strategic UX audit of an Australian NDIS and HCP care platform integrated with Salesforce CRM-based internal tooling.

UX Research · Strategy · Customer-Facing · Funnel Optimisation

~4 hrs/week saved per CS rep through Salesforce portal improvements

Reduced friction across customer and internal workflows

5 workstream roadmap prioritised across customer and internal platforms

Context

Karista connects NDIS and HCP-funded participants with care providers across Australia, a regulated environment where clarity, accessibility, and compliance are non-negotiable.

Users:

Elderly participants, people with disabilities, parents managing care for children, support coordinators juggling multiple clients.

My lens:

Audited two connected experiences across customer and internal workflows, translating research and business needs into prioritised UX opportunities and future-state experiences.

Client

Karista (NDIS & HCP care platform)

Scope

Customer-facing web and mobile +
Internal Salesforce CRM tooling

Role

UX Research & Strategy

Business Problem

Paid acquisition was driving traffic across two surfaces and two very different audiences, but completions weren’t following, and where, why, or who was breaking down remained unclear.

1

Pre-enquiry drop-off

Users leaving before completing an enquiry
2

Poor-quality matching

Incomplete form submissions feeding weak provider matches
3

Channel abandonment

Users exiting the digital journey to call instead
4

Fragmented live support

Staff switching between disconnected portals in mid-call

Research & Strategy Approach

Objective: Diagnose where the customer funnel and internal Salesforce CRM workflows were losing conversions, time and consistency, then build a roadmap to fix both.

My role and activities

As UX Research & Strategy Lead, I drove discovery and experience improvements across both surfaces. This included:

  • Defined UX research strategy across customer and internal Salesforce experiences.
  • Ran end-to-end research: interviews, usability testing, workflow analysis, heuristic evaluation.
  • Mapped customer journeys and internal workflows to surface friction points.
  • Synthesised findings into prioritised, actionable recommendations.
  • Worked with CEO, product and engineering to shape roadmap decisions.
  • Designed accessible, future-state workflows to improve onboarding, conversion and efficiency.

Research Methods

01 · Usability Testing

Moderated usability testing using 7 real-world participant scenarios, each recorded via Loom.

What the testing revealed?

Users with specific needs had no clear entry point. The journey consistently collapsed into a generic form before users had enough context to feel confident proceeding.

Task Completion rate

29%

2 of 7 partial only

Avg. satisfaction

2.1/5

SUS-style rating

Avg. time on task

~9 min

Expected ≤ 3 min

02 · Shadowing  (Behavioural Observation)

Multiple rounds of shadowing to capture behaviour patterns moderated testing alone couldn’t surface.

Behavioural Insights & UX Takeaways:
  1. Design for proxy users: Parents and family members were often the true decision-makers, challenging the participant-first journey.
  2. Reduce conversion barriers: Requiring NDIS plans upfront created unnecessary friction before users were ready to enquire.
  3. Prioritise early engagement: Users not captured in the first moments of the journey rarely returned.

03 · Customer Success Interviews

Structured interviews with the customer success team to capture the gap between what users experienced on the platform and what the team was solving for manually on every call.

Recurring pain points:
  • NDIS plan upload friction
  • No multi-participant support
  • Poor experience for support coordinators
  • Missing provider-side tools

04 · Heuristic/Accessibility Evaluation & Journey Analysis

Assessed the platform across UX heuristics, WCAG 2.1 AA and end-to-end journeys to identify usability, accessibility and navigation friction across desktop and mobile.

a) Heuristic/Accessibility key findings
  1. Visibility of system status: no progress indicators; users didn’t know where they were or how much was left
  2. Match with real world: HCP terminology unfamiliar to elderly users and their families
  3. User control & freedom: no way to go back or edit without losing all progress
  4. Recognition over recall: provider cards had no scannable summary or rating, just long identical text
  5. Accessibility: 6 critical WCAG 2.1 AA violations on mobile, the primary device for elderly users
b) Journey map high-level analysis
  • Journey Simplification: Identified fragmented NDIS and HCP pathways that made next steps unclear
  • Navigation Optimisation: Identified overlapping content and unclear hierarchy that increased effort to find relevant services

Research Synthesis

Customer-Facing Platform
  • Homepage: HCP invisible, no entry point for elderly users and families
  • Navigation: No condition-based search (autism, aged care)
  • Comparison: Missing, every path collapsed into a form too early
  • Forms: Duplicate fields repeated across screens
  • Multi-user: No support for caregivers managing multiple participants
  • Mobile: Not optimised for the primary user device
Internal Karista AI Portal

Scoped within Salesforce constraints, flow consolidation over rebuild.

  • Workflow: Fragmented across four disconnected modules
  • Live-call risk: Module-switching increased handle time and errors
  • Multi-referral: No streamlined path for coordinators managing several participants
  • Portal-call fit: Gap between what reps needed live and what the portal surfaced

From Research to Roadmap

Translated cross-platform research findings into prioritised product opportunities, balancing user impact, business value and implementation effort.

  • High impact · Low effort → Act immediately
  • High impact · Medium effort → Plan next
  • High value · High effort → Scope strategically

Enquiry Form Redesign
Simplified form with progress indicator, reduced fields, and multi-user support for NDIS plan uploads

Homepage & Navigation

  • Equal visibility for NDIS and HCP funding from the first screen.
  • Condition-based entry points (“I have autism,” “I need aged care support”) alongside category search.

Provider Discovery

  • Comparison view before form submission
  • Telehealth vs. in-person as a visible filter upfront
  • Default to 3–5 curated matches, mirroring how the team already works manually

Form Experience

  • Progress indicators plus inline guidance for NDIS plan uploads
  • Multi-participant support in a single journey
  • Removed duplicate fields across screens

Mobile Experience

  • Fixed touch target sizing, navigation complexity, CTA clarity, typography
  • 6 critical WCAG 2.1 AA violations found; delivered as a prioritised remediation checklist

Internal Karista AI Portal

  • Unified call flow: participant details, service matching, availability in one view (within Salesforce constraints)
  • Cut module-switching during live calls

Key Outcome

1

Strategic Improvement Plan

Worked with the product owner to turn research into a plan that worked within platform constraints
2

Portal Efficiency Gains

Salesforce changes saved each CS rep ~4 hrs/week on live regulated care calls
3

Validated Design Direction

Form and service page mockups A/B tested and signed off for implementation
4

Clear Product Prioritisation

Recommendations accepted across both surfaces, giving the org one prioritised view of what to fix and why

Stakeholder Feedback

“What sets Mayuri apart is her ability to quickly assess a business’s current state and deliver comprehensive analysis that cuts straight to what’s working and what isn’t — no fluff, just actionable insights. Her user stories and testing scenarios are particularly strong — she has a gift for pinpointing exactly where gaps exist and translating those findings into concrete next steps that stakeholders can actually act on. Beyond her research chops, Mayuri is also a talented designer. She creates compelling mockups that show teams what’s possible, helping bridge the gap between current reality and future potential.”

Ngaio Parker Customer Success, Strategy, Operations; Product Management, Karista