REFERRAL CENTER
I was responsible for the end-to-end design of the Find an Agent initiative, a tool that allows agents to find and assess other agents by location or name, using informative agent profiles to make referrals.
Platform
Web
iOS
Android
Stakeholders
Design Lead [Myself],
Product Manager
Web and Mobile Engineers
Design Lead [Myself],
Product Manager
Web and Mobile Engineers
Duration
2021 (10 weeks)
The Design Process
I engaged in product brainstorming and strategy. Post research, the entire project was broken down into smaller pieces, designed the user flows for each scenario, and evaluated with the product partners and the overlapping teams. I presented my concepts and viewpoints to stakeholders to ensure that the best user experience was created while keeping the overall business goals in mind.
Agent & their problems
Compass (real estate) agents aim to expand their business through referrals as it offers a good return on investment with less effort compared to traditional methods. However, currently, they lack easy access to personal and business-relevant information of other agents on the platform. Without complete information, it becomes difficult for them to evaluate potential referrals, forcing them to use workarounds to verify.
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Understanding Agent behaviour
In the absence of a referral system, Agents are using a Facebook workplace group to find and refer the agents based on their needs. I analyzed hundreds of posts to understand their needs and how they would behave in this group.
Insights:
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~90% of the queries with location
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Mostly looking for agents who can help them on buy-side
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Call mutual friends/agents
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Reach out to the agent who recommended
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Call sales manager
Major use cases
Found via moderated research
1. A user wants to search for John, who’s serving in Florida.
When agents are getting recommendations and verifying the location to agent service area.
2. A user wants to search for agents across multiple locations.
Agents want to search for other agents when their client is looking for a property in A, B, C locations.
3. A user wants to see both personal and business level information to vet them.
Agent wants to verify other agents before they connect with them for business needs.
Customers want to take the following actions:
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Search for agents/teams/sales managers in one or many locations
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Search for agents with a name when they have a recommendation
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Filter down the search results with particular criteria to narrow down the results
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Sort the results with particular criteria to find the best agent
Competitive Analysis
Design principles
In order to understand how agents collaborate with their clients, I started auditing the user flows of all our different features. I identified 14 different touchpoints! This exercise helped us determine the design elements that fit in all these cases and provide a consistent experience across the Compass web, iOS, and Android platforms.
Design goals
Help Agents
Easily invite clients and track their activity.
Help Clients
Easily contact and collaborate with their agent.
Help Compass
Increase the agent and client retention > Better business
💯 Virtual
It was fun and good learning by collaborating with people from cross-functional teams
It was a massive collaborative project that spread across different parts of the platform. I'm the only person working from India, all my counterparts were located in New York and Washington.
Approach
1. Temporary branding
Invite a client to Compass via any of the following methods:
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Share a Listing
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Share a Public Collection
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Invite to a Saved Search
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Share your branded Bridge Loans, Concierge, or Private Exclusive URLs
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Paid social media ad
When a user accesses Compass via one of the five options above, only the agent’s branding and contact information will appear on Compass for 8 hours. All forms will be branded on behalf of the agent and routed directly to them. When a form is submitted, if the contact did not previously exist in the agent CRM, a new contact will be created.
2. Permanent branding & Activity tracking
Agents will have the ability to create permanent connections and track the client's activity by:
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Sending a Welcome Invite from the CRM
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Invite to a Private Collection
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Mobile invite
Once the client has signed up/in after receiving any of the above invites, the agent will be permanently connected to the client. The client will only see the agent’s branding from device to device.
Once a client is connected to an agent, the agent will have the ability to view client activity on any device, including viewed listings and searches queried.
User interviews insights
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Clients: I don't want to bound with only one agent when I just started searching for homes. I will be talking to multiple agents before I commit working with one.
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Agents: I want my clients to be in my branded experience. But, I don't want to spend time much time with the non-serious clients.
Design principles
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Be nuanced on nomenclature for prospective and active clients
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Offer frictionless mechanisms to opt-in and out of agent branding
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Take advantage of mobile native patterns
Visual design
Agent problem 1:
Agents want their clients to see only them as the only agent to prevent loss of business to their competition. We figured out the significant touchpoints for clients. The critical elements in the agent branding are the agent's avatar, agent name, and contact info.
Agent flow: while sharing a listing with the client
Client experience
Agent problem 2:
Easy ways to invite and connect with clients
Apart from collections invite, two more invitation mechanisms exist in the system. Instead of introducing a new way, we leveraged these methods to establish a connection between agent-client.
1. CRM invite: An agent can add a contact on the Compass CRM and send an invitation email.
2. Mobile invite: An agent can share a mobile app download link with clients to invite them to the Compass platform via mobile app.
Agent experience
Client experience
Tracking Client Activity & Communications
We enabled agents to track the client's activity once connected with them via the above invitation mechanisms. The agent will be notified when a client takes any actions on the platform. For example, agents will receive notifications and activity feed when a client saves a listing or searches for properties in a location.
Agents' feedback via NPS
Agents - Results
Clients - Results
Based on the retention numbers below, connected clients are 57% more likely to continue using Compass than non-branded consumers. Connected clients are 68% more likely to keep using Compass than non-connected clients by the fourth month.
