Who is HomeSphere Hub for?
HomeSphere’s Customer Success teams who strive to provide the best possible customer experience for both of HomeSphere’s customer bases. One group being manufacturers using the application HomeSphere-IQ and the other being home builders using the application My HomeSphere.
FEATURED PROJECT
What’s HomeSphere Hub
HomeSphere Hub is an internal application designed to give the HomeSphere’s customer success team a way to help customers using HomeSphere’s enterprise applications. HomeSphere Hub allows the user to access the various product types like My HomeSphere and HomeSphere-IQ to view a customers specific account and provide one-on-one customer service. This app gives them a true view of what the customer sees so they can help them faster and more effectively.
Why Design It?
We designed two new applications for our customers, HomeSphere-IQ for building product manufacturers and My HomeSphere for new home builders.
HomeSphere’s internal team members that focused on customer care needed a way to see a true view of what customers see when using the applications designed for specifically for them.
In order for HomeSphere to provide the best possible customer service, the teams need for visibility had to be addressed as quickly as possible. Having a true view of a customers account gave them the ability to assist the customer over the phone step by step so they can be more skilled with the applications it’s complete set of features.
How was it designed?
User Research
We interviewed team members who work directly with customers on a regular basis, and asked them what their needs were when helping our customers. We took time to learn how much they really knew about the new technology we’ve developed and the benefits it had for our customers.
We focused on learning what the biggest challenges were for them when assisting our two types of customer groups. One being building product manufacturers and the other being home builders.
Learning more about the specific questions they were asked and how it influenced their workflow was important. As we created features for them, we tested the usability and asked them how they would utilize this tool when on their customer support calls.
Validating it’s Need
This was one of the most important things we wanted to address as a product team. We knew that there would be challenges for the customer service teams but knowing how to address the most important ones as quickly as possible was of chief concern. When interviewing how the customer service team we asked questions to understand how we could help them. We soon realized that our design and production speed had moved so quickly that the customer service team had to play catch up and understand how the other products worked. This also took some internal training and creating some guidelines for the internal team.
Wire-Framing and Prototyping
Wire-framing and prototyping for this internal product was addressed very early in the process. We knew the need would arise so we worked on preemptively doing research, interviews and getting the internal team involved in the process. We learned that there would always be some disconnect since the team had other important jobs to focus on for their day to day work.
However by keeping them involved we did incorporate some features like personal profiles, team groups and other features specific to the marketing teams needs.
Iconography
For this tool the iconography work was a bit limited since the need had to be addressed quickly. Some design elements had to be postponed due to an immediate need for the tool to support the fast growing customer base.
Branding the product
The product needed branding that fit the naming convention we had for it. It is a tool that the team can internally use to access all of our current applications and future ones. It essentially is the HomeSphere Hub. The sole place that the internal team goes when they need to access any existing application for customer service.
See More of My Work
Featured Project
HomeSphere-IQ
Awarded Constructech Top Product of 2019. This innovative app helps manufacturers find new builder business and tracks product usage of their current customers.
Featured Project
My HomeSphere
I worked on the redesign of this award winning app. This app was designed to innovate the way home builders discover products and manage their businesses rebate program.