Increase sales agent productivity with CRM Platform
Increase 2000+ sales agent productivity and the integrity of customer data with CRM WhatsApp Blaster
Introduction
Ruangguru is currently the largest tech-enabled education provider in Indonesia. Ruangguru has 2000+ forefront sales teams who are offering various learning solutions to students throughout Indonesia, they are called Field Educational Consultants (FEC) and Outbound Educational Consultants (OEC).
In this project, I designed the UX and the UI of one of the modules in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, which is WhatsApp Blaster, which OEC uses in their daily work.
My Role
I led the design and research of this project from end to end. I collaborated with 1 product designer intern (Ega) during the early stage and the product manager (Yosef) throughout this project.
Problems
Previously, the OECs were still using the third-party WhatsApp Blaster application which still had many cons and was difficult to be tolerated. These cons are as follows:
Not effective and efficient built-in features
Many built-in features are not used and there are also features that are still not available.
Synchronization Problem
The process of importing data in third-party applications still has to be done manually (Using standalone data files) and any changes to data on the CRM platform are not immediately synchronized in third-party applications.
Security Issues
Third-party applications are vulnerable to leakage of customer data owned by Ruangguru
Vulnerable to fraud
Customer data files owned by agents, although not the most up-to-date data, are still likely to be misused when the agent leaves the company.
Goals
Provides effective and efficient features
Collaborating with the sales, product, and engineering team to define and build the most relevant features based on the sales team’s needs, business objectives, and feasibility from the tech side.
Latest Data Synchronization
To ensure that the most up-to-date data stored in the CRM data center is also available for WhatsApp blaster operations.
Safer Data Storage
To optimize data security so that sensitive information from customers is not easily leaked to irresponsible parties.
Impact
For confidentiality reasons, I have omitted the actual values for these metrics.
Almost 0% risk of data loss: due to leaks or fraud, because it uses Ruangguru’s own internal ecosystem of tools that synchronize seamlessly through a central data center.
Message blasting activity is 2–3x faster than before (Before 6–10 mins, After: < 3 mins). Because data transfer using standalone files such as .xls and .csv is no longer needed in the customer data import process
Empathizing
Before starting the design process, I tried to deep dive into the existing flow and behavior of our sales agents.
Conducted a series of in-depth interviews by inviting 2 top performers agents, 2 lower-performance agents (Mostly new hires), and 1 agent coordinator. Even though the agent coordinator does not execute any operational work such as message blasting, I am trying to explore her experience in handling message blasting problems that arise from agents under her supervision.
I focused on identifying what is the problems they face and the solutions they currently use. I also asked if there are any needs that are currently not supported by the existing 3rd party app and how the needs can add value in their works.
Online In-depth interviews with sales agent
Synthesize
Obtained insights are collected into notes so that it is easier to classify whether they are problems (yellow notes), current temporary solutions (blue notes), or any needs that are currently not supported by the existing 3rd party app(green notes).
Each word is written exactly like what the sales agent said, to reduce bias from notetakers and keep the verbatim original.
Some gathered verbatims
From the insights, first, I tried to find out whether these problems could be solved with a more appropriate third-party application.
Initially WBS Pro was an alternative because this application is more stable than the one used by the agent, the possibility of the agent number getting banned is very low, and the data import process is faster (faster +- 3 minutes), but after some discussions, this alternative was not taken due to not being scalable enough if there are special features needed and the operational costs (licenses, etc) of the application are quite big if we calculated with the number of agents who are going to use it.
User Flow
We mapped the current agent user flow as a benchmark to find at which points could be improved and become a priority in the initial development process.
Current agent WA blasting flow
From the flow above, we see that the preparation of the data takes up a portion of up to half of the total flow. So that we prioritize faster data preparation.
Besides, we also decided to develop the following features in the initial development process:
Contact filter and search, to make it easier for agents to blast messages based on certain scenarios/campaigns
Multi-user login, so that one Ruangguru blasting account can be used by several agents.
Message templates
So, the new flow that we developed is as follows:
New proposed WA blasting flow
User Flow cont’d (Technical Side)
The product and design teams decided data integration to be as seamless as possible, and some mentioned features to be developed first. That’s why we discussed this with the data and engineer team. The following findings were obtained:
Data integration can be done, using the same approach as other modules in CRM,
However, the multi-user login feature requires special treatment, because the current tech stack cannot support it, so the WA blaster application is made into 2 sides, the web-based side for contact data management and the native desktop side for multi-user login. The principle is like opening several Whatsapp Desktop applications but with different identifiers and this cannot be done on the web-based side.
So the new user flow becomes as follows:
Final proposed WA blasting flow (after tech discussion)
Although it requires 1 additional step, it can still be tolerated, because apart from this is mandatory, the additional step does not take longer than the initial flow using a third-party application.
Design
A sneak peek into the design, I created it using components that were already used by other modules in CRM, apart from being faster and design can be more visible to non-product design team members, the consistency of the user experience was also a factor why early design did not start with wireframes or even pencil sketches.
PM also helps to prepare what data columns that are relevant and most agents needed, to be displayed in WA Blaster.
Contact List Page
I showed the list of contacts retrieved from the CRM data center and the agent could immediately use it to filter/search needed contact for the ongoing campaign/scenario.
Contact List — Pop-ups
Once the blast button is clicked in the previous floating box, it will trigger a pop-up to continue the blasting process. Consists of further blasting setting, summary, and guide to bridge web-based WA Blaster with the Native Desktop App
Native Desktop App
We know that having additional applications makes the process seem longer, therefore at this stage, we make the required activities as efficient as possible.
Agents only need to log in using the available Ruangguru blasting account and immediately start the blasting activity that was previously set on the web-based side.
Test
Unfortunately, because the time allocation is quite tight, the design testing didn’t use the ideal method. The designs that have been made are only shown in the UAT session with the agent (coordinator not included) and they immediately asked for feedback.
Below is the brief conclusion from our UAT:
Likes :
- It is quite easy to use because the UI is not much different from other modules in CRM
- The blasting flow is faster because customer data is directly available in WA Blaster without additional import-export process
Dislikes :
- Modification of the template is not as complete as third-party applications
- Agents are still unsure whether after developing this application, can be free from being banned from WhatsApp. Because this application is still in its early stages
Usefulness :
All participating agents see this application will be useful for them, which needs to be considered, in the development process should be careful so that their doubts will not occur
Experiences:
All participating agents can use this design well and understood that feature improvements that were not available at the initial release will be added over time
Conclusion
Result
The design is simple and straightforward to understand, according to our users. To utilize it, they don’t need to learn much.
I also discovered that developing a new tool is not always creating a new thing that should be learned by any involved party, as long as the expectations of the parties involved are maintained, whether they’re from the design team, product, engineer, data, and also the user.
Every idea also should be told, even after further discussion the idea can be rejected or changed to be more achievable.
Hopefully, this project will continue to be developed considering that Ruangguru continues to expand its business to reach customers other than school students, so that, cases that are not identified here can be catered earlier and prevent a decrease in agents’ productivity.
What Did I Learn?
Type of projects like an internal tool or dashboard does not have a precise user flow like a consumer-facing app, because the workflow itself is always in contact with a lot of data that is also always changing. So instead of focusing on solving a certain flow, it’s better to think about how all the functions in it can be integrated with each other and easy to use in as many scenarios and types of users as possible.
This project has taught me that every project should be regarded as a masterpiece because every task, no matter how small, is equally significant.
I learned that documentation is very important no matter how fast the pace of a project goes. The impact will be felt in the long term when there is a point where a project needs to be revisited.
Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear from you if you enjoyed this case study or have any feedback.
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Posted Jan 14, 2024
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