CINC: Agent Launchpad

The Company

CINC is a real estate online lead generation and CRM conversion platform

CINC is a real estate CRM and lead generation platform used by agents to grow and manage their businesses. Features include lead capture, automated outreach, and a robust client relationship management system.

Context

Too few agents were capitalizing on high-intent leads reaching out

A key focus over 2023 and into 2024 for the consumer team was on increasing high quality lead actions indicating a lead is ready to transact. Systems and UX updates were put in place leading to more home buyer and sellers engaging with the agents' sites.

However, despite the influx of leads raising their hands, agents were not capitalizing on these opportunities as well as they could. This, paired with the increasingly challenging housing market posed a big risk of churn.

Role

Taking a UI refresh and new feature and applying it to the web CRM

I led the end-to-end design process from identifying user pain points through research, to prototyping and testing a scalable solution on the web CRM based on an early discovery sprint by the mobile team.

The Approach

Utilizing the mobile team’s discovery as a research launching point

The mobile team ran a discovery sprint with stakeholders landing on utilizing their plans to refresh the agent launchpad page as a home for highlighting leads reaching out to agents.

I took their initial designs and ran research on the web CRM to examine current pain points for non-power user agents working within the system, establish current usage metrics, generated mocks to concept test different approaches, refined concepts to conduct further testing, and created iterations and refinement post launch.

Research

Talking with users to understand usability and workflow issues within the system

I utilized exploratory research to investigate how were agents using the system to work and prospect their system, specifically for leads high in the funnel. When talking with users the main theme that came up revolved around being overwhelmed with all the features and knowing how to structure their day. While the CRM offers flexibility for experienced users, newer users found it overwhelming and difficult to structure their day.

The core page that agents work out of is the leads dashboard which is a data table of all their leads. This requires agents to find the default filter views or build out their own system to wade through the long list of leads within their system.

In contrast the agent launchpad was originally designed as a daily hub for starting their day but less than 35% of agents used the page. Of the agents that did, the vast majority only used it for the reminders feature. Many of the supporting modules were broken and displayed incorrect data leading to little to no usage.

The Idea

Transforming the launchpad to be the new hub for the day to day activities

After talking with users to understand their day to day process I landed on transforming the agent launchpad into a day to day activity hub. I wanted to have an easy flow of daily activities to minimize the amount of CRM pages an agent would have to flip through. Simply adding a callout for leads raising their hands to an underused page wouldn’t be effective.

I was able to test the concept of a “Today Inbox” to guide agents through a structured, tab-based workflow. Both users and stakeholders showed great interest in having an easy to use one stop shop for their repetitive activities that they do every day.

Testing

Refining features and interactions once the core page focus was established

Once I established the core focus for how the page should act I was able to further test concepts around supporting data and content to encourage and help agents complete their daily tasks.

I defined key design principles to keep user goals front and center. This allowed me to refine and focus each individual piece to serve the right goals.

Feature 1

Prospecting new and recently active leads not yet contacted

Ultimately online leads are a number game. Keeping up with newly registered and recently active leads are key to making contact with home buyers and sellers. This is the primary area agents work throughout the week as they make calls between their other activities.

Feature 2

Following up with previously contacted leads

Timelines for when a lead is ready to buy and sell are all different and often in the future. Setting and keeping up with reminders for leads previously contacted ensure an agent can keep up with all the different leads in their system as they near when they’re ready to transact.

Feature 3

Highlighting high value leads reaching out to agents

The consumer team worked to implement new flows and call outs to help home buyers and sellers reach out to agents when they were ready. We wanted to ensure agents could easily see when leads were reaching out for more information or agent contact.

Additionally we wanted to help agents gain confidence in the leads to ultimately keep calling and following up with those reaching out.

Feature 4

Catching any other active leads on the system

Trending Leads consists of recently active, medium value activity. They aren’t actively reaching out but they are showing signs of activity that agents deem as valuable.

This offers a place to check throughout the day to ensure you are keeping up with all those who are finding value on your site that you may have missed earlier.

Conclusion

The Impact

I set up a FullStory dashboard to track Launchpad usage and adoption as we rolled out the refresh and features. Over time the overall usage and amount of high quality leads being called have increased. The training team now primarily introduces the Launchpad as the central hub for agent workflows.