Whiteboarding a new sales lead process

Background

A financial services company recently migrated to Salesforce which requires the following improvements:

• It is difficult to input new sales leads into the system, causing many new opportunities to remain undocumented and understating the overall sales pipeline.
• There are too many data fields, which results in poor data reliability and wasted time for advisors and assistants.
• The system is heavily predicated on regulatory compliance and internal departments’ extensive requirements for personal client data which severely limits the advisors’ ability to understand and track their clients’ financial preferences, goals and status.
• Salesforce is poorly integrated with other existing tools resulting in confusing workflows that required extensive training.

Analyzing forms for new clients

Over the past decade, the company relied upon multiple forms for its sales lead generation process. I initially tasked the group with analyzing current processes before considering how the data could be more intuitively visualized.

Organizing requirements

We consolidated information from previous forms and removed elements that were not required by regulations or generally not used across the company. Historically, the policy was to document as much client information as possible, which resulted in poor data quality and onerous data requirements for new prospects.

Paper prototyping

I segmented the teams into smaller groups that redesigned different sections of the client profile. Afterwards we received feedback from internal stakeholders to help us polish our recommendations.

After receiving feedback, I worked with another UX researcher to consolidate our findings and update the product manager on our progress. Our recommendations emphasized making the system less overwhelming and aligning client information with the new financial planning process.

Recommended lead page

The current version of Salesforce was only used to store discrete data points, but previous research concluded advisors prefer systems to display clear next steps.

Recommended client page

We learned from internal system and process SMEs there were a number of capabilities and integrations the company was not leveraging in the system so we added those integrations into our plans to make client information more personable and actionable.

Reflection

This project helped me learn a lot about managing complex requests from multiple stakeholders and departments. This effort stemmed from a product manager tasked by leadership to improve a small component of Salesforce that home office employees found difficult to use that relied upon frequent by advisors. While the initial request was to create a small 'quick fix,' the system needed a more holistic update.

Due to the complexity of the tool and a change in personnel at the time, I regret not being able to more quickly summarize and synthesize the problem and push harder to change the priority and scope of work. Unfortunately, the loudest and most urgent voices came from the home office to specifically address their requirements and frustrations. I wanted to better balance between their priorities with the adverse impacts on advisors who bore the brunt of the tedious and time consuming tasks.

One additional learning came from future research was how work is delineated between advisors and assistants. I would have liked to further investigate using the system and tools to integrate discrete workflows and reduce time on task. There is also a large divide between senior and junior advisors’ preferences; the junior advisors wish to have clearer guidance using their tools which often annoys senior advisors and results in disparate levels of support requirements. Coincidentally, both of those enhancements would align with the company's goal for advisors to have less time managing software and more face time with clients.