Case Management System for Consumer Complaints
An enterprise UX research engagement evaluating the case management system used by Consumer Protection Ontario — surfacing critical gaps across technology, workflows, and service delivery through dual-track internal and external research.
The Brief
Consumer Protection Ontario manages consumer complaints through an aging enterprise case management system shared across five distinct internal units — each with different workflows, compliance requirements, and handoff protocols. The brief was to evaluate that system end-to-end: not just the interface, but the full service ecosystem underneath it.
How might we understand and bridge the disconnect between internal and external users — to map their pain points, surface unmet needs, and inform a CPO product roadmap?
The engagement required genuine dual-track research: speaking with the staff who operate the system daily and with the businesses and consumers who interact with CPO from the outside. Neither perspective alone would tell the full story.
Research Objectives
With two distinct user populations, we set separate research goals that would later converge in synthesis. Each track was designed to generate findings that were comparable, not siloed.
Internal Objectives
- Understand the context, behaviours and needs of internal staff across all five units
- Map the relationship between CPO stakeholders and the businesses and consumers they serve
- Establish a clear picture of what the organization needs from a UX standpoint to enable future success
External Objectives
- Understand how businesses and consumers interact with CPO and its digital properties
- Surface pain points in the complaint submission and case tracking experience
- Map information-seeking behaviours and how external users navigate the current system
Who We Talked To
Participants were selected to represent the full range of CPO interactions: staff from regulated and enforcement contexts on the internal side, and businesses across industry types alongside direct consumers on the external side.
Internal — 5 Units
- Marketplace Intelligence & Consumer Services
- Licensing Unit
- Inspections Unit
- Investigations Unit
- Burials Unit
External — 12 Participants
- 7 Businesses (6 regulated, 1 unregulated)
- 5 Consumers
- Varied by industry: collection agencies, fencing, and others
- Recruited for age, location, and technology proficiency
Research Methodology
Internal Research
We prepared tailored discussion guides for all five units by workshopping questions collaboratively as a team. Sessions ran as facilitated workshops in Miro — structured for note-taking, real-time synthesis, and cross-unit comparison from the start.
External Research
External sessions were 45-minute, one-on-one interviews. Opening and closing questions bracketed each session to capture participants' prior experience with CPO and their overall relationship to the system — creating a before/after arc for each participant's narrative.
A note on limitations
We recruited for diversity across business types, but had only one unregulated business represented. Findings for that context should be treated as directional rather than representative.
Synthesis & Analysis
All research feedback was consolidated and scored using a consistent severity framework — enabling the team to triage findings objectively across both research tracks. The same scoring system was applied to internal and external data to allow direct comparison.
Critical
Interruptions that prevent task completion
Moderate
Pain points requiring higher cognitive load
Neutral
General notes and observations
Suggestions
Ideas for future exploration
Positive
Elements to preserve and build on
Data was then consolidated into three distinct complaint and regulatory flows — complaint management, licensing, and burials — enabling flow-specific analysis before cross-flow synthesis.
Deliverables
The engagement produced two primary design artifacts — a service design blueprint mapping the end-to-end complaint journey across all units, and process maps documenting the specific workflows within each.
Service Design Blueprint
End-to-end mapping of the complaint lifecycle — frontstage interactions, backstage processes, and support systems
Process Maps
Unit-by-unit workflow documentation covering complaint management, licensing, and burials flows
Blueprint Detail Views
Zoomed sections of the blueprint showing critical handoff points and system dependencies
Also produced
- → Research synthesis decks
- → Per-unit discussion guides
- → Miro workshop boards
- → CPO product roadmap inputs
Key Findings
Findings were organized across three dimensions: current pain points within systems and units, user needs and feature requests, and UI-specific requests. Four themes emerged with particular clarity across both research tracks.
Workflows need separation by unit
Staff across units struggled to track what happens to a case as it moves between teams. The system did not distinguish between unit-specific states, making handoffs opaque and accountability unclear.
Case progress is difficult to monitor
Both internal staff and external users found it hard to track where a case stood and follow up on outstanding actions. No reliable mechanism existed for proactive status communication in either direction.
System fragmentation creates duplication
Staff were maintaining multiple systems simultaneously to manage a single case. The desire for consolidation — one system to maintain — was the most consistently expressed operational need across all five units.
Document export is a persistent friction point
Exporting documentation from the system was unreliable and time-consuming. Staff frequently worked around the system rather than through it when producing external-facing outputs.