Morgan Shuler

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (1)
Enterprise Support Experience
CCSQ Support Central
Omni-Channel Support Platform
Modernizing customer support experiences across web, phone, ticketing, chat, and self-service channels supporting CMS quality reporting programs.
Service Design
Omnichannel CX
Customer Research
Analytics
Self-Service
Support Operations
Human-Centered Design

The Challenge

CCSQ Support Central serves as the centralized support experience for healthcare providers, contractors, and program participants using CMS quality reporting systems.

Customers often needed help with account access, program navigation, ticket tracking, and reporting support. Because many reporting activities happen on recurring cycles, users often returned after long periods of inactivity and experienced difficulty accessing accounts or completing key tasks.

The support experience included multiple channels such as phone, email, web ticketing, live chat, and self-service resources, creating opportunities to reduce friction and improve customer success.

Research

Research artifacts: Persona and journey mapping deliverables used to align stakeholders around customer needs, support behaviors, channel preferences, and service pain points.

Research was conducted to better understand customer needs, support behaviors, channel preferences, and opportunities to improve the self-service experience.

Customer interviews and survey sampling.
Ticket and escalation analysis.
Customer journey mapping.
Persona and facility-type research.
Usability testing.
Cross-program collaboration workshops.
Call analysis using NICE CXone.
Digital behavior analysis using Datadog.

The Solution

Designed and enhanced the CCSQ Support Central experience to improve self-service, reduce customer effort, and make it easier for customers to get support across multiple channels.

Desktop prototype: Ticket activity tracking workflow designed to help customers review updates, understand case progress, and reduce reliance on assisted support.
Mobile prototype: Responsive ticket tracking experience designed to support customers checking case activity from smaller screens.
Modernized ticket submission workflows.
Improved ticket tracking experiences.
Enhanced self-service journeys.
Call scheduling capabilities.
Frequently asked questions and knowledge resources.
Customer experience measurement and analytics.

The experience focused on helping customers find answers faster, reduce support effort, and improve access to critical CMS resources.

The Impact

The customer experience program established a continuous feedback loop that informed service improvements across support channels.

93%+ Satisfaction scores across multiple CMS programs.
67K+ Unique Support Central users.
198K+ Annual Support Central site visits.
111K+ Customer surveys completed.
96.8% Phone support satisfaction.
Feedback Loop Survey insights informed ongoing service improvements.
Service Experience Enhancement

Live Chat Experience

Reimagining assisted support by introducing real-time human support, identity proofing, and faster access to subject matter experts within CCSQ Support Central.
Service Design
Customer Experience
Journey Mapping
Identity Proofing
Omnichannel Support
Human-Centered Design

The Challenge

Customers often contacted the CCSQ Service Center during time-sensitive reporting periods and account access issues that disrupted critical workflows.

Traditional ticketing workflows introduced delays in support response times, creating customer frustration and increasing reliance on phone support during high-volume periods.

Identity verification and account access issues required assisted support, which contributed to increased call volumes and longer wait times during reporting deadlines.

Research

Research focused on understanding customer support behaviors, channel preferences, and opportunities to reduce customer effort.

Customer Experience Surveys (CES).
Customer satisfaction analysis.
Call interaction analysis.
Customer interviews.
Journey mapping and personas.
Usability testing and prototypes.
Datadog behavioral analytics.
Heatmaps and bounce analysis.

Research revealed that customers preferred immediate human support for urgent issues and did not want highly automated support experiences for time-sensitive problems.

The Solution

Designed a live chat experience that provided immediate access to support while reducing customer effort during critical workflows.

Interactive prototype: Click inside the message input field to explore the live chat intake and support routing experience.
Guided issue intake.
Customer authentication workflows.
Program-specific routing.
Live support from program specialists.
Account access assistance.
Three-step support experience.

The experience helped customers quickly connect with the appropriate support team while improving response times and reducing dependency on traditional phone channels.

The Impact

The Live Chat experience improved support efficiency, reduced customer effort, and increased satisfaction across multiple support channels.

100% Overall customer satisfaction.
96% Ease of navigation satisfaction.
62% Reduction in phone contact usage.
7m 45s Average chat handle time.
13m 22s Average phone handle time.
Future Investment Positive stakeholder feedback supported additional enhancement initiatives.
Research & Strategy Initiative
Identity Proofing:
Access Modernization
Customer experience research and identity modernization efforts focused on reducing authentication friction, improving account access, and supporting future authentication experiences across CMS quality programs.
CX Research
Identity Experience
Service Design
Journey Mapping
Login.gov
Research Strategy

The Challenge

Customers accessing CMS quality reporting programs often experienced friction before they could complete their actual task. Account access, authentication, and identity verification issues created delays for providers, medical staff, contractors, and other users who depended on these systems.

Many customers only returned to these systems during specific reporting periods, which increased the likelihood of forgotten credentials, access issues, and reliance on assisted support.

Account access friction.
Authentication barriers.
Forgotten credentials.
Increased support dependency.
Delayed access to critical workflows.
Disconnected login experiences.

Research

Research focused on understanding where customers experienced friction during onboarding, authentication, and account access workflows.

Customer interviews and outreach.
CES survey analysis.
Journey mapping.
Government service comparisons.
Login.gov and ID.me research.
Stakeholder presentations.

Research revealed that customers did not view these as separate portals, systems, or authentication experiences. Instead, they experienced the CCSQ ecosystem as one connected digital experience.

Key Insight Customers perceived the CCSQ ecosystem as one connected digital experience and expected authentication to enable access to systems, not become a barrier to them.

Research Findings

The research identified recurring access and authentication friction that impacted customer confidence, task completion, and support demand.

58% Self-service friction related to account access and authentication.
18–20% Feedback themes mentioned time burden and workflow friction.
10m 57s Average assisted support duration for access-related issues.
Customer Insight Users expected a more connected and familiar government digital experience.

Strategic Impact

Research findings were synthesized into leadership-ready insights that helped communicate authentication friction and support future identity modernization efforts.

Leadership Alignment Helped stakeholders understand the customer impact of authentication friction.
Modernization Direction Supported conversations around Login.gov, ID.me, and modern identity proofing approaches.
Customer-Centered Framing Reframed identity proofing as a customer experience issue rather than solely a system access issue.
Future State Contributed to modernization efforts supporting more seamless authentication experiences.
AI Product Design
QPP Resource
Library Assistant
Designed a human-centered AI experience that helped Quality Payment Program customers search, explore, and verify complex healthcare reporting guidance through trusted retrieval, transparent citations, and responsible AI interactions.
AI Product Design
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Human-Centered AI
Trust & Safety
Citation Design
Healthcare UX

The Challenge

Quality Payment Program customers often needed fast, accurate answers about eligibility, reporting requirements, deadlines, scoring, payment, and program participation. The information lived across large PDF resource libraries, technical guides, fact sheets, and annual policy documents. Customers were looking for general information while trying to make confident reporting decisions and avoid financial penalties.

High cognitive load across technical QPP documentation.
Customers struggled to locate deadlines, dates, and reporting requirements.
Support tickets and calls increased when information was difficult to find.
Static FAQs and traditional search created limited self-service options.

Research

Research combined customer feedback, support trends, AI trust and safety activities, and QPP stakeholder collaboration to understand how customers searched for information and made reporting decisions.

QPP Customer Experience Survey feedback.
Top QPP search and article inquiry analysis.
Call interaction and support inquiry analysis.
Chat transcript and agent response review.
AI trust and safety workshops.
Contextual inquiry around critical customer workflows.
Key Insight Customers needed confidence that the answers were current, accurate, and tied to the correct performance year.

The Solution

Designed an AI-powered Resource Library Assistant that transformed how Quality Payment Program customers searched, explored, and verified complex reporting guidance.

Working alongside product and engineering teams, I designed the end-to-end experience, translating customer research and AI trust principles into an interface that balanced usability, transparency, and confidence.

Interactive prototype showing the beta Resource Library Assistant experience.
Natural Language Search Designed a question-based search experience for QPP guidance.
Guided Topic Exploration Created suggested topic pathways for common reporting questions.
Performance-Year Filtering Supported answer relevance across changing annual program rules.
Citation & Source Verification Designed patterns that helped customers validate AI-generated responses.
Feedback Mechanisms Introduced feedback loops for continuous improvement and beta evaluation.
Responsible AI Messaging Added trust messaging reminding customers to verify answers with provided references.
Project Status The Resource Library Assistant is currently in beta. Ongoing customer feedback, usability findings, and stakeholder input continue to shape future enhancements as the experience evolves.