Pre-Sales Digital Engagment Platform
MY ROLE:
Lead UI/UX Designer
MY TEAM:
Product Owner (x1)
Product Manager (x2)
Project Manager (x1)
Solutions Architect (x1)
Full Stack Developer (x2)
UI Developers (x4)
Problem Statement
As a NetApp partner/reseller, how can I scale my go-to-market margins with commercial customers, especially now that the COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for me to pursue traditional means of engagement and trust-building activities?
In simpler words, how can I increase more commercial sales leads for the NetApp portfolio that I am selling, and manage my lead-catcher to purchase workflow entirely digitally?
Early work
When I joined the Explore team, there was no product. However, there were these rudimentary elements that were sketched out a Deloitte customer experience workshop, which the team had used for at least 1 fiscal quarter, before deciding that they need further User Experience guidance.
Single web-page questionnaire
-
6 questions laid out in succession in a single web page with only the NetApp logo to indicate ownership.
-
Submitting responses led to a simple results page with an optional method to sign up through a contact form and talk to a Sales Rep.
-
No further communication or action encouraged to ensure or track a returning or purchasing customer
Usage analysis
90% of customers dropped off after viewing results. Only 2 users had actually signed up after completing the assessment.
0 leads in 4 months.
Partner administration database
-
An internal-facing database website that simply allowed the Explore team members to add reseller names, types, contact details and logos (for identification purposes only)
-
Option to create "vanity URLs" from a partner name; the web-page URL would have a suffix of the partner name, to increase partner brand awareness, as well as mark the lead ownership if the customer does submit responses.
Low-touch CRM
The Explore team product owners met with partners individually to offer them the concept of Vanity URLs with a promise to assign leads directly if a customer form was submitted through a vanity URL.
28 partners onboarded in 6 months.
Objectives
Uplevel the customer experience in discovering NetApp portfolio
The questionnaire had a high rate of drop-offs when I joined the team. There was no way to understand why customers were dropping off, what questions were blocking them from completion, and if the form was engaging and informative enough.
Help partners scale their go-to-market margins
The biggest margin of revenue in new businesses came from NetApp resellers running GTM campaigns in their local geos. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, the campaigns had to become 100% digital, and scale past the consequent market dips.
Deliver a consistent sales enablement workflow for partners, distributors and NetApp sales
Resellers/partners needed a way to see the benefits of getting direct leads through vanity URLs, to be able to see all leads and manage their various statuses. I needed to make them co-administrators of the lead generation process.
Plan for UX
Understand the problem
Talk to the users about their current disposition towards NetApp Pre-sales conversations. Map their behavior, and identify interaction gaps. Review historical data from analog pre-sales engagements.
Conceptualize opportunities and dangers
Visualize the users and their problems. Categorize the design opportunities by feasibility and outline the ideal design deliverables to address user needs. Identify red flag UX behaviors early and coach the team to actively avoid them during planning, designing and developing.
Create and test
Build wireframes and prototypes. Test every major release 2 sprints before development begins. Incorporate user feedback and review with stakeholders 1 sprint before development begins. Monitor user behavior after release. Include NPS and simple surveys for beta releases.
Reiterate and document
Consume usage metrics, feedback and behavioral study results to inform design improvements. Iterate for upcoming sprint and plan for phased development based on UX impact. Document UX need, solution and impact of the release.
Agile Design Process
Every 2 weeks, we released iterative improvements, so it fell upon me to identify the most crucial improvements based on my observation of user feedback and metrics. Every 4 weeks, I would phase the improvements as minor and major releases.
Most of our users trusted that their experience will improve every 2 weeks, so sticking to a rigid deadline and planning for releases 6 weeks ahead proved vital.
Just the process...
Observe
Define
Learn
Ideate
Prototype
Test/Feedback
Iterate
Introductory User Studies
I conducted 10 interviews with customers and resellers to understand the current business model of selling NetApp products and services to new customers in the commercial market sector.
Then, in a brainstorming session with stakeholders and NetApp customer experience (CXO) leaders, using a mix of card sorting and mind-mapping exercises, we arrived at the most common purchase journey that over 70% of the commercial customers follow.
Brand Awareness
Customers become aware of "NetApp" through various ad campaigns and through word of mouth from their industry peers.
Personas
After the introductory studies, I was able to distinguish the major user personas who would be able to accomplish a successful pre-sales digital engagement.
Unique Features & Functionalities
to address user needs
FOR CUSTOMERS
-
Identification of business needs through a simple assessment.
-
Connections to with collaborators, experts, and partners for guided decision-making.
-
Access to customized product recommendations, POCs, and information.
-
A seamless way to discover opportunities to renew, refresh, and add capacity
FOR PARTNERS
-
Digital marketing campaign kits to scale go-to-market efforts.
-
Consistent sales training and enablement for sales reps.
-
Manage leads, sales conversations and purchase requests in a single platform.
-
Monitor installed base for post-purchase opportunities.
The Consolidated User Journey
A NetApp reseller uses their Digital Marketing Campaign kit items (banner ads, emails, social media packages, etc.) to initiate awareness in their customer base.
A customer lands on the assessment site "NetApp Explore" from any of the above marketing components. Once they are fully sold on the benefits of taking a free, 3-minute assessment, they fill out the simple questionnaire and are encouraged to view results in a personalized dashboard, which also has features like "test drive", "knowledge center" and "connect with a sales expert".
At the same time, the customer details and results from the form submission are shared with the NetApp reseller who initiated the process. If the customer completed the assessment from the generic URL, a NetApp distributor stepped in to assign leads by location to an appropriate reseller. The reseller leadcatcher then assigns leads to individual sales reps in their organization.
A reseller sales rep is a technical expert — or will be, because they can not only manage leads, but also add new ones, configure product packages and craft an initial pricing sheet/quotation for the customer. They can also chat with the customer through their "portal" and trigger email communication when necessary.
The customer then receives additional options in their dashboard to view pricing and customized product packages, which they can share with their organization decision-makers. They can either approve the quote, or request further customization, and finally, purchase when all their needs have been met by the sales rep communication within NetApp Explore.
The sales rep can then book the purchase as a converted lead and move it to installed-base candidate from their dashboard. Few months or years down the lane, the customer and reseller are notified if post-purchase actions are required, in the same NetApp Explore dashboards, where they can re-engage in a similar process.
UX Roadmap
To get more stakeholder buy-in, we needed to generate more leads. For more leads, we needed to improve the customer-facing assessment. Then, we needed to improve the stakeholder experience in lead management, distribution and opportunity conversions.
During a second product strategy check-in, we arrived at a strategy to enable more customer-reseller knowledge transfer by building a customization feature in the reseller dashboard, based on reseller experience feedback.
Click on the icon beside this paragraph to glance at the high-level UX roadmap of deliverables over 2 years.
Ship-It version
Within Explore, we worked in a "Ship it and iterate" philosophy. This was a good practice because of the consistent campaigns and robust digital engagements made it easier for our users to rely on improvements to the experience every 2 weeks.
This was the first draft that I designed of the customer and partner experience as released in July 2020, shortly after I defined and ideated the cohesive, platform-ed experience.
Design Testing for Iterative Improvements
To fit with the Agile Scrum Methodology of development, UX tasks were also timed for creation and completion in 2-week sprints. By planning design tests 4 weeks (or 2 sprints) ahead of development, I was able to execute a variety of unmoderated UX tests through surveys, A-B testing and some moderated, through user interviews.
Results / Stats
Dated July, 2021
The result of updating the customer experience and adding an E2E lead management dashboard for resellers helped in increasing lead generation, helped onboard more sales representatives and in shipping out product and service recommendations faster.
As can be seen in the graphs beside (created from actual data — not a simulation), commercial segment lead generation bumped up nearly 75% across the globe, and more NetApp leads were generated by resellers through Explore than the in-house sales teams.
Of these leads, almost 30% purchased from NetApp — a significant increase from the 6% that was the norm before Explore came into existence.
Dated October, 2021
"It's easier (with Explore) to manage my sales team, their NetApp lead statuses and offer guidance based on current campaigns completely remotely."
— reseller feedback from NetApp Marketo survey
Redesigned into a responsive site
In mid-2021, we learnt from Adobe Analytics that nearly 30% of the assessment site traffic came from mobile users.
Hence, we began to concentrate on the mobile optimization of the assessment site and customer portal, while keeping the partner and administrator dashboards more compatible with larger devices.
