SalesMate

Problem Statement

"I am generally quite busy, and as a result, I tend to forget to keep up and reach out to all the people I want to stay in touch with."

CRM tools help businesses make efficient use of their information and human resources to provide an excellent customer experience and maximize profits. However, not every organization has the budget to afford CRM software. For individuals, CRM software can be either too expensive or too complicated for personal use. They only need a system that periodically and intelligently reminds them to connect with their customers whenever required.

Further discussions with users have revealed that many individuals struggle to retain their existing customers because they solely focus on acquiring new customers. In the pursuit of acquiring new customers, they often miss out on connecting with their existing customers.

Our high-level goals for the application are as follows:

• Improve customer engagement by reminding users to engage with their customers in a timely manner.

• Provide daily reminders to users about the customers they need to talk to.

• Allow users to capture notes about what was discussed in meetings with their customers.

• Enable users to keep track of orders placed by customers.

• Help users identify which customers have not placed an order within a specified period of time.

Users and Audience

Individuals and small organizations who cannot afford or do not require a full-fledged CRM system.

Roles and Responsibilities

As a User Experience designer, I was responsible for ideating, researching, and designing the interactions and visuals of the Zip Sales app.

Early insights from the field

I conducted interviews with potential users to understand how they manage their relationships with customers and the challenges they face in doing so.

The goal of these interviews was to gain insight into the challenges that individuals and organizations face in keeping up with their existing customers, acquiring new customers, and keeping track of customer-related information.

Low visibility of activities

Some people rely on outdated methods such as spreadsheets, notebooks, or to-do lists, while others have already looked for modern solutions such as mobile apps or desktop applications. However, the biggest problem with these existing systems is that users often forget when to contact their clients for follow-up, and there is no easy way to access this information when the user is planning to call or meet with the customer.

Inability to keep track of activities

The other major issue with existing systems is that users are not able to efficiently keep track of the information shared in previous meetings with customers.

Business falling through the cracks

In some cases, users may be able to stay in touch with their existing clients who are giving them constant business, but they may struggle to push their clients who have the potential to give more business. This may happen because they are not focusing on those clients in the right way.

No standardized sales process

Small organizations often lack a standardized sales process, which makes it harder for them to keep track of deals. Having a standardized sales process adds structure and accountability to sales activities, leading to a higher win rate and shorter sales cycles.

Customer Journey Map

To better understand the user journey, my focus is on individuals who are manually updating spreadsheets and have not yet transitioned to using relationship management apps.

The discovery and challenge

During my initial user interviews, I found out that customers are usually categorized by users according to their business needs. The criteria for such categorization may vary depending on the user or organization and the business sector they operate in.

Another insight I gathered from the interviews was that not all customers in a specific segment are treated equally in terms of their business value, and their communication frequency may differ depending on the individual customer.

Based on these findings, the following features were deemed important:

• Ability to segment customers based on their business potential.

• Option to receive feedback on previous activities and adjust future activities accordingly.

Challenges and roadblocks

Several design challenges emerged during the exploration phase, including the following:

• Not all contacts have the same level of importance for a user, so the system needs to enable prioritization.

• A customer's level of importance may change over time, depending on the results of previous interactions.

• The system needs to be useful both for individual users and for organizations as a whole.

In addition to conducting user interviews, we engaged with a larger audience to gather more insights. This led us to the conclusion that simply segregating customers into different segments would not be enough to meet users' needs. Some of the reasons for this are as follows:

• Users often have a large number of contacts in their phonebook, so manually categorizing each one would be impractical.

• When importing contacts into the app, users may not know the optimal frequency for interacting with each customer.

• Users may not want to contact all the customers in a particular segment at the same time.

These findings informed our decision to focus on developing a more flexible and dynamic system that could adapt to users' changing needs and preferences.

Based on the insights gathered from user interviews and research, I proposed the following solutions:

Auto Reminders

• Although users can manually schedule reminders by creating activities, I decided to build a system that would intelligently remind users to connect with their customers:

• Every time a user calls a contact that is also present in the SalesMate app, the system will ask the user if they want to schedule a meeting with that contact.

• Based on the expected closure date selected in the deal, the system will automatically schedule an activity.

• Based on the contact frequency selected by a user, the system will schedule an activity with the contact.

• As soon as the user marks an activity as completed, the system will ask the user about its outcome and, if required, schedule a follow-up activity based on the outcome.

• Since not all customers are equally important, the system will periodically ask the user to specify how often they want to stay in touch with their customers. It will automatically remind them to contact those who matter the most.

• Instead of planning activities for the whole year, I decided to schedule only the next follow-up activity. The next follow-up activity will be decided based on the outcome of the current activity.

Communication Timeline

• Record all communications, including meetings, calls, and emails. Add notes against each activity and schedule follow-up calls. Users can review the timeline before the next communication and be prepared by getting an idea of where they are in the sales process.

• Having easy access to all the communications done with a client in one place not only saves time but also improves customer satisfaction.

After getting some clarity on what needed to be built, I created a flow of a typical user's process from activity creation to the conversion of an activity into a deal. I created this user flow to make it easier for the team to understand the process.

Sketching and Prototyping the Flow

Once the flow was defined I started creating the low-fidelity prototype to bring the idea to life with more detail around layout and structure which we could use to test the ideas with users.

In order to ensure the success of our app, it is crucial that it is user-friendly and valuable for users from all segments. To achieve this goal, I shared the prototype of our app, SalesMate, with a range of individuals, from junior level sales executives to CxOs. Through their feedback, I analyzed their perspectives on the app, noted their pain points, and evaluated the usability and desirability of the product.

To optimize the usability testing process, I divided the tests into smaller rounds and a few larger rounds. This approach allowed users to explore the app without feeling overwhelmed or lost in the process.

Scenario 1

User goal: To understand how to create an activity.

Scenario: I asked users to create a new activity in the app to evaluate their ability to schedule activities with customers. Managing activities is the main feature of the app, so it was crucial to ensure that users could use this feature effectively.

Scenario 2

User goal: To understand how to mark an activity as completed and create a follow-up activity.

Scenario: In this scenario, I asked users to mark an activity as completed and complete the review process. The purpose of this scenario was to determine whether users could easily complete important follow-up tasks after scheduling activities.

Scenario 3

User goal: To understand how to create a deal.

Scenario: I asked users to create deals in the app to evaluate their ability to use this key feature of the app. It was important to ensure that users could create deals effectively, as this is a critical aspect of the app's functionality.

Based on the insights gathered from the usability testing, I divided the feedback into two categories: high priority and low priority.

High priority feedback

• Users may have a large list of contacts, making it difficult to assess the health of their connections. To address this issue, I decided to add filters to allow users to check the status of their connections whenever they need to.

• Users expressed a desire to create deals through the review process of activities. This feedback was valuable, as deals can often be the result of an activity.

• Initially, I added the 'Create Activity' button to individual contacts, assuming it would be convenient for users to create activities for specific contacts without navigating to the contact detail screen or activities module. However, this caused confusion for users, as there was already a main 'Add' button on the same screen.

• During the testing sessions, I observed that it would be more helpful to simply open the create activity/contact/deal screen depending on the module from which the user tapped on the 'Add' button, rather than giving all the options.

Low priority feedback

• The add button has the same color as the selected module, which can be confusing for users.

• Some users suggested showing overdue activities in red to encourage them to review them.

Final Prototype

After incorporating feedback from the usability testing and refining the flow of the app, I created the final prototype, which the development team can use to build the final version of the app.

Conclusion

During the research process, I have identified some areas for design flow improvement that can be further refined. However, the feedback from users regarding the usability and desirability of the app has been positive. This is a significant milestone as users were able to complete all the scenarios effortlessly.