PLACE/Brivity
In-App Dialer
Optimized for Real Estate Sales Calls
Overview
How can we help real estate agents generate more business by making more calls to the right people with less effort?
Project Goals
Increase the volume of calls made by real estate agents to boost the number of appointments set.
Align the dialer workflow with agents' training for easier adoption of best practices. Encourage in-app calling to ensure activities are logged, aiding in interaction history tracking and goal setting.
Roles
My role was Research, Product Definition, UX Flows, UI design, Prototyping, User Testing.
I collaborated on this project with other departments in our company to better understand our business needs and user data.
Project Background
Starting with a Business Mindset
This dialer project came out of a larger study I conducted to identify productivity blockers in Brivity. Because our parent company’s revenue depends on agents closing transactions, we are highly invested in agent success. We started with the question: Which features do agents use most for revenue-generating activities, and how can we improve these features?
Understanding Productivity Data
I collaborated with Customer Success to understand the account “score cards” and why those metrics are used to determine database health. We know that calling, more than any other interaction type, results in more business.
The ability to turn over your database (call everyone) relies on two main factors:
1. Making a lot of calls
2. Recording the right data so you are calling the right people systematically.
Field Studies
I identified teams based on scorecard values—light, medium, and power users— to get a range of experiences. My team and I then conducted in-office field studies to watch them at work and follow-up interviews to uncover pain points and mental barriers.
You can learn more about the takeaways from the productivity research here.
The Shape of the Problem
I identified teams based on scorecard values—light, medium, and power users— to get a range of experiences. My team and I then conducted in-office field studies to watch them at work and follow-up interviews to uncover pain points and mental barriers.
You can learn more about the takeaways from the productivity research here.
Summarizing feedback
Relationship Diagraming
Redesigning the Dialer
Now that we had a clear picture of why the dialer would be an impactful feature to update, I refocused my research on the dialer experience.
Dialer Research: Key Insights
Manually logging calls is time-consuming and often not done.
Call Audience: Needs vary based on whether agents are calling known contacts, qualified leads, or unqualified leads.
Distractions: Agents often get interrupted; it's essential to make it easy to resume or pause a session.
No Answer Optimization: Most calls go unanswered, so optimizing for follow-up steps is crucial.
Complex Workflows: Key workflows, like viewing contact details and setting follow-up tasks, are click-intensive and easy to miss.
Abandoning a dialer session: Identified reasons agents will leave a dialer session before it is finished.
Technical Limitations
Navigation restrictions during calls - Can’t leave the page without hanging up
Lack of built-in VoIP, requiring a call to the agent’s phone before connecting.
Accumulated user feedback
Competitive Analysis
We considered other features from competitors such as call lists, hold music, auto advance, and voicemail drop.
The biggest strength our competitors had was the ability to see the full contact detail record while on the call with a lead.
User Stories and Flows
Figuring out what to prioritize
In order to make more calls agents need to do the most frequent actions faster. I analyzed the frequency of call outcomes and how it relates to the frequency of follow up actions.
This diagram looks like spaghetti, but it only needed to make sense to me. 🍝
Flow diagrams and User stories. Because the design system for this product is relatively well developed and quick to build with, I tend to translate flow diagrams and user stories directly into the actual UI more often than generating wireframes.
Design Iterations
Efficient Workflows
I focused on reducing number of clicks for highly repetitive actions, like setting up a task and updating the stage and status. Previously it took 12-18 clicks to set up a follow up call reminder. Now, users can set up a task in 1 - 8 clicks and quickly select time frames.
Making a task the old way involved opening a separate modal during the dialer session.
Big, Dumb, Buttons: It’s hard to interact with an interface when you’re on the phone! I opted for bigger click targets and clear labels to reduce cognitive load and make the dialer interface appear higher in the visual hierarchy.
Updated version allows users to make a task inline with their flow in the dialer session as per the recommended best practices.
Prototyping and User Testing
A challenge for this project was mimicking the mental stress of being on a real sales call.
I built high-fidelity prototypes using Figma - I included audio queues in the prototype to feel more like a real call. This helped testers understand when the call was connected or ended.
User testing was in-person due to the complexity of potential paths a user can take. Because there is no way to test this interface with a real call I tried using a role-play scenario (which is something agents use to practice scripts), but it didn’t quite feel like an accurate test. I plan to do another round of testing with a beta version to get a better read on how the new workflows perform under mental stress.
I built prototypes for three main scenarios where agents would be interacting with different audiences:
People they know
More important to review details, and send a text or voicemail
New leads or “Hot Leads”
More aggressive follow up scheduling
Unqualified leads
More important to call a high volume as fast as possible
In user testing, I learned about redialing a contact and the impact of seeing your progress after a dialer session.
Redial Flow: I addressed nuances in redialing scenarios, including reconnections and calling multiple numbers for a contact. Here I opted for a google-inspired split button that has a primary default action and a dropdown for secondary actions. I tested this a lot to get it right!
Post Call Session Report: I learned agents like to see their progress to feel motivated. They can see how their call session activity is contributing to their long-term goals understand if they are on track to hit their goals. It also allows an opportunity to revisit any skipped contacts.
Design Outcomes
More Efficient Workflows
The most common actions take less time, less cognitive load, and are easier to remember.
Alignment with Training
It is easier to remember to track important data points because they are highlighted on the page.
More Dialer Session Control
Features like “skip” and “preview” give users more control over how fast their dialer session progresses.
Launch and Success Metrics
This feature is still in the first stages of development, but I'm excited for its potential. We already track key metrics like the number of calls made versus appointments set. The scorecards measure how well teams follow up with leads based on their last interaction. However, this data isn't entirely accurate since agents often don't log all their activities. I hope to see an initial increase in calls made through Brivity, followed by a rise in appointments.
Agents currently using the Brivity dialer will likely make more calls because it's more efficient. However, those not using Brivity for calls may not change their habits just because of improvements to the dialer. Changing ingrained workflows is challenging. To encourage adoption, we can coordinate with our training and event teams to create excitement around this release. Company-wide competitions, like our successful "30 open houses in 30 days" event, could also boost engagement. Given this is a major rebuild of a core feature, stress testing the product before the launch is crucial to restore trust damaged by past dialer bugs.