CRM: customer profile

CRM: customer profile

Overview

The company decided to update and merge several internal systems related to customer service into one CRM platform. The project aimed to improve and automate the business processes of the customer service department while laying the groundwork for future system scalability.

Key features

  • Customer and lead profiles with data on orders, transactions, communications, and incidents.

  • Dashboards to manage the bonus system: balance, accruals, redemptions, and other metrics.

  • NPS and CLV statistics for analyzing customer loyalty and value.

  • Automatic creation and updating of customer profiles when data changes.

  • The ability to block customers with an indication of the reason for the block.

  • Support for customer statuses (Silver, Gold, Platinum) and customer categories (A, B, C, D, F).

  • A scalable system for future extensions (e.g., adding roles, integrating with marketing services).

My Role

My primary goal was to design a solution that would unify several legacy systems into a single CRM while optimizing the department's business processes. I communicated with stakeholders, users, and the development team, collected and analyzed requirements, conducted research and testing, and designed the interface.

Process

In addition to conducting interviews, observations and studies of old services and testing, during the process I left detailed comments in the layouts, describing their relation to the technical specifications for developers. I also prepared schematics describing user flow and the structure of the service.

We worked in iterations, which allowed us to quickly get feedback from the team and users throughout the project and then make changes. This allowed us to quickly adapt to new requirements arising against the background of updating business processes in the department.

In addition to conducting interviews, observations and studies of old services and testing, during the process I left detailed comments in the layouts, describing their relation to the technical specifications for developers. I also prepared schematics describing user flow and the structure of the service.

We worked in iterations, which allowed us to quickly get feedback from the team and users throughout the project and then make changes. This allowed us to quickly adapt to new requirements arising against the background of updating business processes in the department.

In addition to conducting interviews, observations and studies of old services and testing, during the process I left detailed comments in the layouts, describing their relation to the technical specifications for developers. I also prepared schematics describing user flow and the structure of the service.

We worked in iterations, which allowed us to quickly get feedback from the team and users throughout the project and then make changes. This allowed us to quickly adapt to new requirements arising against the background of updating business processes in the department.

Challenges and Solutions

⚡The difficulty of onboarding new employees on a legacy platform

After interviewing employees of the customer service department, I found out that only one CRM manager was familiar with the legacy services. He had been working with them for quite a long time, and he was used to them and found them convenient, but it was difficult for new employees to get oriented. Later, I discovered that the services had been created a long time ago by a single developer without any documentation, based only on the manager's instructions, which explained the decision.

🤓 Solution

I observed how the CRM manager performed his tasks in order to dive deeper into the context and processes that users encounter. Next, I tried performing his tasks using legacy services on my own.

I also researched the market for existing CRM systems that included the functionality we needed to find out what best practices could be used in the project, and discussed the option of purchasing an off-the-shelf solution. However, due to the tight binding of the old services to the company's business processes, a step-by-step transition to a custom solution was necessary.

The decision was eventually made to work with the existing components, but to implement best practices to improve usability.

⚡ New roles

As there were plans to scale the platform and integrate some marketing tools in the future, there was a need to implement new roles and separate access rights for different levels of employees.

🤓 Solution

In the new system, additional roles were provided to enable delegation of tasks and differentiation of access rights. These roles were developed taking into account different responsibilities of employees, such as bonus calculation, user management, etc.

Outcome

The project was successfully implemented: response processing times decreased, costs were reduced, and reports became more reliable. Users received a convenient and flexible platform for managing clients and the bonus program. The system also laid the groundwork for future development, including the integration of marketing tools like audience segmentation and trigger scenarios.

2024