MTM - Optimizing the Ride Booking Experience

Using research to identify workflow bottlenecks and redesign a medical transportation service scheduling application.

Project Overview

MTM, Inc. is a healthcare transportation management company that coordinates non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT), helping members schedule rides to medical appointments through a nationwide contact center and digital booking platform. As a UX Designer on the Intake Team, I worked on the internal application used by customer care representatives to book rides over the phone. This project focused on optimizing the ride booking experience by identifying workflow bottlenecks, reducing manual effort, and designing solutions that improved efficiency while maintaining a high-quality member experience.

Problem statment

MTM's contact center processed thousands of ride requests every day, yet average handle time consistently exceeded the company's goal of 5 minutes and 55 seconds. The challenge wasn't simply reducing call duration, it was improving efficiency without sacrificing customer service or HIPAA compliance.

Rather than redesigning the entire application, our team set out to identify the specific moments where representatives were losing time and develop targeted improvements that streamlined the booking experience.

My Role

My responsibilities included:

• Collaborating with Product team steak holders and Development leads to validate technical feasibility

• Designing wireframes and interactive prototypes

• Conducting contextual workflow analysis

• Analyzing qualitative and quantitative research findings

• Writing interview scripts and interviewing call center representatives

• Reviewing recorded customer service calls

• Creating and managing WalkMe survey campaigns

Understanding the Problem

Instead of relying solely on analytics, we observed representatives using the product in real customer conversations. Over several weeks we gathered insights through multiple research methods.

Call Observation
We reviewed 100 recorded customer calls using Verint, analyzing approximately in a little over one week. The average call lasted 17 minutes, giving us an opportunity to identify workflow inefficiencies that weren't visible through quantitative data alone.

Representative Feedback
To validate what we observed, I created recurring WalkMe surveys that were embedded directly into the application. Every three weeks for six months we collected 40–100+ responses, allowing us to understand how frequently certain issues occurred and how representatives felt about existing workflows.

User Interviews
My teammate and I interviewed approximately 10 call center representatives to better understand their day-to-day challenges. After the first round of interviews, I developed the discussion guide for a second round that focused on validating themes emerging from our observations. Together, these research activities uncovered several recurring sources of friction throughout the ride booking experience.

Research Insights

Although the issues appeared unrelated at first, they all pointed to the same underlying problem:

Representatives were spending significant time performing repetitive manual work that the system could automate or simplify.

Instead of addressing these problems individually, we prioritized improvements based on their frequency, business impact, and potential reduction in handle time.

Opportunity 1: Capture Members’ Preferred provider

Research
Approximately 18% of calls involved members requesting a preferred transportation provider. Representatives frequently called another department or relied on notes that weren't visible during booking. These interactions increased call duration by approximately seven minutes.

Design Response
We introduced the ability for representatives to capture provider preferences directly within the ride booking workflow, eliminating the need for providers to call supervisors or stop the ride booking process to access the member’s settings.

Opportunity 2: Eliminate manual address searches

Research
Many members knew only the name of a medical office or facility. Representatives routinely navigated away from the ride booking application to open a Google tab to manually search for addresses and phone numbers during the booking process. For many calls this increased the call time by 1–2 minutes. This impacted all calls where a member was requesting a stop at a new location.

Design Response
We designed a location search field powered by the Google Places API, allowing representatives to search by facility name while automatically populating address and phone information.

Opportunity 3: Allow trip rebooking

Research
Many members regularly traveled to the same medical appointments, making repeat bookings a common task for call center representatives. Despite this, the booking platform required representatives to complete the entire intake process each time, even when only minor details had changed. Approximately 14% of observed calls involved recreating a ride that was nearly identical to a previous request, revealing an opportunity to reduce repetitive work and improve efficiency.

Design Response
Instead of making Representatives recreated nearly identical services we introduced a Rebook button on the Service summary page that would allow them to duplicate entire itineraries for future dates.

Opportunity 4: Allow trip editing

Research
Call center representatives couldn't make small edits to an existing trip. If a member called in wanting to making adjustments the representative would be forced to cancel the trip and recreated it from scratch. If new trip was made 48-24 hours before the trip’s pick up time, the trip could be denied due to short notice rule breaks from the member’s health plan or the trip may not be assigned to a transportation provider in time. This occurred in roughly 14% of calls.

Opportunity 5: Improve visibility of member information

Research
Representatives frequently started the booking process before completing member verification because HIPAA information was not on the ride booking flow screens. This forced them to backtrack through the workflow, adding an average of 5 seconds to each call.

Design Response
We added member HIPAA information to the top of the screens so it remained visible throughout the trip booking experience, reducing unnecessary navigation while supporting compliance.

Opportunity 6: Encourage self-service adoption

Research
During our observations, representatives never promoted the organization's self-service platform despite it being available. This represented a missed opportunity to reduce future call volume.

Design Process

Instead of immediately redesigning interfaces, I first synthesized findings across call observations, surveys, and interviews. We grouped pain points by workflow stage, prioritized opportunities based on frequency and business impact, and collaborated with Product team stakeholders and Development team leads to ensure proposed solutions aligned with technical constraints.

Once priorities were established, I created wireframes and interactive prototypes in Figma to validate each concept with stakeholders before moving into high-fidelity designs.

Reflection

This project fundamentally changed how I think about product optimization. Rather than relying on assumptions or analytics alone, we combined observational research, user interviews, and in-product surveys to uncover the root causes of inefficiency. That approach allowed us to identify high-impact improvements that reduced manual work, supported compliance, and created a more efficient experience for both representatives and members.