Initiating CRM solutions
Date: 2018-2020
Role: Design Director, Motorola Mobility
Work Partners: PM, ENG, Research, Marketing, Sales
Challenge
In 2016, the Brazil marketing team set out to create a customer relationship management effort geared at retaining customers and understanding the Brazil market more deeply. As Design Director of the local studio, I was invited to the marketing team’s kickoff workshop and quickly realized that the team did not understand the careful balance they would need to achieve in order not to annoy users with direct communication and a push towards monetization.
Strategy & solutions
I worked closely with the CRM lead to manage the expectations of the marketing team, educating them on the legal responsibilities of dealing directly with users, negotiated with the legal team to include an opt-in screen to our setup flow and identified a partnership opportunity with the cloud team to support the development of an app that would provide the team with the channel to create a direct relationship with consumers.
Based on my input, the marketing team developed a coordinated communication strategy and created a much more nuanced approach to interacting with consumers. I then worked with my design team to have them facilitate product discovery and generate hypotheses for new concepts in an app. The team then conducted validation with users through a wide variety of methods (surveys, interviews, user testing, and data analysis of app usage). Incorporating both quantitative and qualitative research into the product process, and using this data for decision-making, prioritization, and product portfolio growth, the CRM project evolved from direct messages via notification to a fully-fledged app that provided engagement and more value to users. The latest content strategy provides enriched news, videos, podcasts, social media, and gaming delivered via a preloaded app and widget on the second panel of the homescreen.
Outcome
HelloU, the resulting app, was launched in late 2019 and is well on its way to achieving the marketing team’s goals of:
Developing a closer, direct, and collaborative relationship with customers
Creating stories through the journeys that are relevant to users' experience
Being present and ready when its time for users to renew their device
Measuring and tracking the efficiency of app engagement
Creating customer segmentation based on behavior and scorecards
Throughout the process, I communicated the value of a user-centered approach, developed processes and protections for users, created gatekeepers of communication, and oversaw the development of improvements to the initial product concept. Since its release, HelloU has earned 90% positive feedback and gained usage of 10-15% by daily active users, 50% by weekly average users, and 80% by monthly active users. The app was piloted in Brazil, then launched in Argentina; since I left Motorola, I am unable to track usage but believe the app did expand across Latin America with an additional wallet functionality designed by the local Brazilian team.
