The Customer

Experience App

Promo

SaaS Consulting Group set out to fix a problem. In their consulting engagements, they noticed similar needs among many Customer Success teams: visibility, reporting, interaction tracking, and planning. After building a custom solution and refining it in action with operative teams, The Customer Experience App is ready to share with the world. They asked me to work with internal stakeholders to develop product summary and marketing materials.

PROCESS

My approach to this project was structured with a 4-step design thinking process, shown below. I followed this procedure because it maximizes information sharing by making the user and business goals central. The final deliverables of this project are promotional materials for SaaS Consulting Group's Customer Experience App.

1. Discover

Stakeholder Interview
Objective + Solution
Competitive Analysis
Style Discovery

2. Define

User Journey Map
Persona
User Stories

3. Ideate

Low-Fidelity Sketches
Content Strategy
Style Direction

4. Prototype / Refine

High Fidelity Mock Up
Refine
Final Comps

1. DISCOVER

Explore the business problem and objectives. Investigate the end user's identity and goals.

The Problem

SaaS Consulting Group's Customer Experience app will be listed on the Salesforce App Exchange so SaaSCG needs prospective buyers to understand what their product is, and how it will make their jobs easier.

App Exchange Example Screen

Business Objectives

The Team: Company stake holders including the product manager with occasional input from VP and CEO. I lead the design efforts.

Objective: Develop and create materials to: 1) highlight the key features 2) explain the app's value-add to organizations.

Success: For the project to be successful, prospective buyers will be quickly and directly informed of how the Customer Success App will make their Customer Success teams more effective.

Solution

Create 1) a video and 2) a digital brochure to explain the product to potential buyers. The two-page brochure and 2-3 minute video will both include an introduction to the app, an explanation of its benefit to Customer Experience teams, and brief explanations of each key feature.

Competitive Analysis

To gain an understanding of the competitive landscape and identify opportunities, I conducted a competitive analysis of similar applications.

It became clear that competitors seemed to overvalue engaging content at the expense of professionalism, or overvalue professionalism at the expense of engagement and clear content. This project, then, should avoid both traps by taking a minimalist approach: only including essential information, presented in manner that is equal parts professional and engaging.

Style Discovery

I conducted a workshop with the product manager to explore the visual language the company uses. Through studying examples provided by stakeholders, and talking over style specifics, we established the following:

► The brochure should include: prominent photos, bold typography, the colors blue and orange, featured icons.

► The video should include: a level of energy that is engaging while maintaining professionalism, visual that complement the relevant messaging, logo colors, stock footage and pictures of people to boost visual interest.

2. DEFINE

Consolidate business, audience, competition, and style insights.

User Stories

To uncover gaps in the process, as well as show the opportunities available to the organization, I leveraged user stories. This helped clarify the role and necessary function of the brochure and video.

► As a director-level user, when I review this app's details page, I want to view the informational video and brochure so that I can assess whether this app has the functionality my customer success team needs to improve efficiency.

► As a director-level user, when I review this app's details page, I want to view the informational video and brochure so that I can assess whether this app is professional enough to warrant the price.

Journey Map

To define more facets of the user's experience as well as identify existing opportunities, I created a journey map. This map shows initial contact through process of engagement, and into long term relationship with the organization. As you can see in the map below, I identified key interactions, as well as users feelings and motivations at each touch point. The map design is based on an original version by Carolyn Li-Madeo.

Persona

To consider the user's experience holistically, I created a customer journey map. This map shows the customer's initial contact through process of engagement, and into long term relationship with the organization. As you can see in the map below, I identified key interactions, as well as the user's feelings and goals at each touch point. The map design is based on an original version by Carolyn Li-Madeo.

To show the opportunities available to the organization, I leveraged user stories. This helped clarify the role and necessary function of the brochure and video, as they relate to Andrew's experience specifically.

► As a director-level user, when I review this app's details page, I want to view the informational video and brochure so that I can assess whether this app has the functionality my customer success team needs to improve efficiency.

► As a director-level user, when I review this app's details page, I want to view the informational video and brochure so that I can assess whether this app is professional enough to warrant the price.

3. IDEATE

Use divergent and convergent thinking to establish ways to meet organization and user goals.

Low-Fidelity Sketches

To establish the hierarchy between content as I considered the information architecture of the designs, I sketched low-fidelity ideas for the brochure and the video.

One of my take-aways from this exercise is that a large hero image at the top of the brochure with information segmented into columns below is a very promising layout to accomplish the solution objectives.

Content Strategy

I translated the information we gathered up to this point into style decisions. This was done in the following areas through the identified deliverable, shown earlier:

➤ Goals: Business as well as functional and emotional user goals. Insight found in the Persona.
➤ Competition: Consider the content treatment portion of our Competitive Analysis.
➤ Context: Design for objections, questions, length of stay v. task to be accomplished, and how the user is approaching the site. Insight found in Journey Map.
➤ Motivations: What drives our audience? What are the motivations of our stakeholders? Each User Story covers a motivation for our users.

Stlye Direction: Typography and Color

Using insights from the Discovery and Definition phases, including business objectives and stakeholder interviews, I made style decisions.

► For the brochure, I chose versatile, professional typography, and colors that complemented the company logo.

► For the video, I chose more stylized primary font in order to catch the viewer's attention while not being distracting. As with the brochure, I drew color inspiration from the company logo and limited the color palette to a greater extent to add boldness.

Style Direction: Images and Iconography

As seen in the persona and customer journey map, establishing credibility quickly is essential to meet the user's discovery goals. With that in mind, I gathered images and iconography that would communicate professionalism and expertise while complementing the surrounding style elements.

4. PROTOTYPE + REFINE

Seek feedback, make revisions, render final version.

High-Fidelity Review and Revisions

With the product manager, I reviewed the high-fidelity designs. He responded that, "Visually - I like the layout/feel." He suggested a number of copy changes, which we worked out together.

The product manager suggested changes to how product demonstrations were presented in the video, and I incorporated the feedback.

Final Brochure

After three rounds of revisions to fine tune the design and copy, the product manager sought internal review of the brochure and video. I was very glad to hear positive feedback on both items.

"We love the final product" - Product Manager

Final Video

CONCLUSION

Personal Take-Away

I learned several important lessons in the project. First, taking the time to finish copy writing early in the project can prevent delays later in the process. Second, testing with users outside the organization takes more time to plan than I expected, so this should be accommodated in the timeline-planning stage of the project to ensure it happens. This would be even more vital for UX-specific projects.

Measuring Success

To determine the success of this project, insights should be studied. Usage data, subscriber statistics, customer feedback, and how many users view the app page compared to those who make a decision to purchase, are each valuable in assessing whether the brochure and video effectively communicated the value and functionality of the Customer Experience App to customers.

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