Bringing order to a fragmented admin experience
Speakeasy Admin gives Google's internal contact-center teams the tools to configure, monitor, and manage support operations — but the people using it were stitching together seven different tools just to do their jobs. This is the research and design work behind making it one coherent system.
An omnichannel platform for the whole conversation lifecycle
Speakeasy is an omnichannel conversation platform that enables intelligent, assisted, and automated customer conversations, and provides actionable insights to power the product, sales, support, and service desk lifecycle. It sits in the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) space.
Omnichannel Conversations
Multiple channels — IVR, Voice, Video, Messaging, Email, Social Media — with seamless context across history.
Automation and Assistance
Automation and assist capabilities for customers and agents, plus a self-service portal.
Analytics and Insights
Tracking the health of contact center operations with data democratization and business insights.
Business Agility
Easy-to-use tooling across bots, flows, and configurations, with issue diagnosis and support.
Extensibility and Integrations
First-class Salesforce integration, full UI/API integration, and CIMS or 1P Google integrations.
Understanding who Admin actually is
This study set out to understand Configuration Admin personas under the CCP Suite — the tools they use, how they interact across regions and personas, and where CCP Support could build more efficient self-serve configuration.
6 FTE Googlers, each with at least a year of Speakeasy Admin use, performing responsibilities like user management, configuration changes, queue management, and monitoring agent and queue performance.
Literature review of existing research, stakeholder syncs with POCs across different CCBs, and 1-hour remote interviews with admins fitting the participant profile — run between 12/12 and 12/19, 2022.
No separate identity for Speakeasy Admin
All participants spoke about Speakeasy Admin interchangeably with Realtime Dashboard, switching between Salesforce CRM, Dashi 2.0, Buganizer, Cases1, Pulse, and Verint.
Make all tasks and data available in one place — a Speakeasy Admin Suite aggregating user management, configuration, and insights.
No admin role maps to a Google FTE designation
Admin access goes to Program Managers, Product Support Managers, Team Leads, Vendor Supervisors, and Business Stakeholders — each with other roles alongside it.
There are broadly 3 types of Speakeasy Admin usage. Give users the right amount of access based on actual requirement.
Absence of guidance or a knowledge bank
Participants wanted visibility into how other teams use Speakeasy Admin, and new teams faced longer onboarding with unclear expectations.
Create a product demo that sets the right expectations, plus a forum for troubleshooting and shared learning.
Mixed reactions to self-serve configuration
1 of 6 was eager for self-serve; 2 were skeptical, citing technical know-how and approval requirements — "there is a cost involved and business impact."
Evaluate which configurations are genuinely feasible for self-serve, and ease users in gradually with training.
Google Chat is the primary mode of communication
All participants communicate primarily through Google Chat — performance issues, news, and announcements all happen there.
Integrate Speakeasy with Google Chat so the transition between the two feels seamless.
Seven usability gaps, found and fixed
Alongside the research, a full heuristic evaluation of the existing Admin Central interface surfaced concrete, fixable inconsistencies — each logged with a direct design recommendation.
Inconsistent component usage
The "Users" tab used a card view while "Agent Group" used a grid/table view.
→ Align both to the grid layout already in the Figma designs.
Inconsistent filter dropdowns
Dropdowns varied in value count display, search field presence, and close button placement.
→ Standardize per the ACX Library — search box, top-right close, value counts.
Inconsistent button labels
"Add users" for new users vs. "New group" for new agent groups.
→ Rename to "Add group" for consistency.
Filter chips hide their own parameter
Once selected, a chip failed to show which parameter it belonged to.
→ Display the parameter name alongside the filter value.
Page title shifts position
When filter chips wrapped to 2+ rows, the title visually jumped.
→ Top-align the page title with the first row of chips.
A broken task flow
"Manage agent groups" interrupted the filtering CUJ, jumping to another tab.
→ Remove the link from the filter dropdown.
No empty state design
No designed state existed for when there was nothing to show yet.
→ Build a proper empty state — later applied to Queue Management.
Letting admins manage IVR audio without an engineering ticket
Call flows control what a customer hears and where they're routed the moment they call in. Before this, changing any of it meant filing a request and waiting. This feature gives admins direct, visual control — searchable by locale, channel, and source, with each flow's audio settings and routing diagram editable in place, including a highlighted node view.
A guided path from empty state to a live queue
Queue Management gives admins full control over how calls get routed and prioritized — queue priority, attributes, agent selection criteria, overflow rules, and virtual queue thresholds. Directly addressing heuristic finding #7, it ships with a proper empty state rather than a blank screen.
"Admins weren't asking for a prettier tool — they were asking to stop switching between seven of them. Research told us exactly where that friction lived, and the heuristic work gave us a punch list to actually fix it."