A Bit About Charan

Client Console

Project overview

Developed a self-service Client Console that automated customer onboarding and streamlined internal workflows, significantly enhancing efficiency, reducing errors, and enabling scalability for the company.

Background

The company’s initial customer onboarding process was entirely manual and had evolved organically over time. The steps included:

Customer Inquiry: Potential customers filled out a form on the website.
Sales Team Engagement: The Sales team contacted the customer to initiate the onboarding process.
Handover to Customer Success: The Customer Success team collected additional required information from the customer.
Resource Provisioning: The Engineering team manually provisioned resources based on the collected information.

This process was:

Time-Consuming: Onboarding took days to complete.
Prone to Errors: Manual data entry led to inconsistencies and mistakes.
Inefficient and Costly: Required significant effort from multiple teams.
Disappointing to Customers: Fell short of customer expectations for quick service provisioning, especially when compared to platforms like Amazon Web Services.

Challenges addressed

The project aimed to overcome several significant challenges that impeded the company’s efficiency, customer satisfaction, and ability to scale:

Manual Customer Onboarding: Customers were required to interact with the Sales and Customer Success teams before they could create an account. This dependency on manual interactions caused delays and made the onboarding process inefficient.
Inefficient Lead Management: The Sales team relied on shared Google Sheets and manual notifications to inform the Customer Success team about new leads. This method was error-prone, difficult to track, and created operational bottlenecks due to the high dependency on inter-departmental coordination.
Resource-Intensive Follow-Ups: The Customer Success team spent significant time manually guiding clients through the sign-up process. This consumed valuable resources and prevented the team from focusing on higher-value tasks, contributing to overall inefficiency.
Manual Service Provisioning: The Provisioning team manually executed APIs to set up services based on customer progress and choices. This manual process was time-consuming, increased the risk of configuration errors, and was not sustainable as the customer base grew.
Customer Dissatisfaction: Delays and complexities in the onboarding process negatively impacted the customer experience. Customers expected quick and seamless service setup—similar to industry standards like Amazon Web Services—but were met with slow and cumbersome procedures.
Lack of Scalability: The existing manual processes could not handle increasing customer demand without proportionally increasing resources. This lack of scalability hindered the company’s ability to grow and compete effectively in the market.

By identifying and addressing these challenges, the project sought to streamline the onboarding process, eliminate operational inefficiencies, enhance customer satisfaction, and create a scalable system to support the company’s growth objectives.

Solution

After conducting comprehensive interviews with the Sales, Customer Success, Engineering, and Infrastructure teams to understand their workflows and pain points, I designed and implemented a holistic solution:

Self-Service Onboarding Platform: Developed the Client Console, allowing customers to sign up and set up services independently.
Automated Workflows: Integrated backend systems to automate resource provisioning without manual intervention.
User-Centric Design: Created an intuitive and consistent user interface to enhance the customer experience.
Real-Time Communication: Implemented automated notifications to keep customers and internal teams updated on the onboarding progress.

Design Process

Initial Conceptualization: Created mockups using Apple Keynote and gathered feedback from key stakeholders, including the technical founder, head of development, and head of Customer Success.
Wireframing: Developed mobile wireframes in Figma, focusing on user-friendly navigation and intuitive design elements.
User Experience Considerations: Ensured consistency with common web application behaviors to provide a seamless experience for new users.

Key Features

Website

The design single-mindedly focussed on making it easy for a potential customer to sign up. The design featured a prominent "Sign up" button "above the fold".

Log in and sign up screens

The log in and sign up screens were designed with user familiarity and simplicity in mind. Key features include:

Adherence to Established UX Norms: When users are unfamiliar with the software, following established UX conventions is often the most effective approach. Labels are positioned above the input fields, the password visibility icon follows standard design practices, and familiar features such as "Forgot password?" are readily available, ensuring a predictable and comfortable experience.
Minimal Information Requirements: The sign-up process requests only the essential information needed, reducing friction and making it quick and easy for users to get started.
Social Login Options: Users have the convenience of logging in or signing up using social media accounts, simplifying the process.
Seamless Screen Switching: Users who accidentally navigate to the wrong screen can switch between the log in and sign up screens effortlessly, with any previously entered information automatically transferred to the corresponding fields.

Dashboard

The onboarding process required users to input license numbers and upload relevant certifications. For users who did not already possess these certifications, they had to apply for them and upload them once obtained, which could be a time-consuming process. The goal of the Client Console was to guide customers seamlessly through onboarding. While the "Set up" section in the menu provided an overview of all the steps involved in getting started, the Dashboard focused on presenting users with their immediate next step, simplifying the process and keeping them engaged. (Note: Detailed workings of the menu are explained in a separate section below.)

Set up menu

Unlike the other straightforward menu options, the "Set Up" option was more complex and required careful consideration in its design.

Section Expansion and Collapsing: The "Set Up" menu contained multiple sections, necessitating a mechanism for expanding or collapsing each section to allow users to navigate efficiently.
Step Progress Indicators: It was essential to visually guide users by indicating the status of each step—showing which step was next, which one was in progress, and which steps were already completed.
Visual Hierarchy: To ensure clarity given the potentially large number of elements within each section, a vertical line was used to represent the hierarchy, making it easier for users to follow their progress within the setup process.

Outcome

The implementation of the Client Console would have led to:

Reduced Onboarding Time: The onboarding process was streamlined, reducing the time from several days to mere minutes, greatly enhancing the speed at which customers could begin using the service.
Improved Accuracy and Operational Efficiency: Automation minimized errors and allowed internal teams to reallocate their time to higher-value activities, significantly reducing operational burden and associated costs.
Reduced Manpower Requirements: Automation reduced the need for manpower, allowing teams to focus on handling exceptions rather than every onboarding case, leading to a more effective use of resources.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: The rapid and efficient setup process exceeded customer expectations, bringing the experience closer to industry standards like Amazon Web Services.
Better Sales Conversion: By eliminating the need for the sales team to manually call the customer success team for onboarding, the process became more efficient, leading to improved sales conversion rates.
Scalability: The new solution enabled the company to handle increased customer demand effortlessly, ensuring sustainable growth without requiring proportional increases in manual resources.

Conclusion

Collaborated with multiple departments to understand the customer onboarding process, identified opportunities for automation, and designed a holistic and scalable solution that addressed both the customers' pain points and the unvoiced challenges faced by internal teams.