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CSV Import for Brivity CRM

BACKGROUND

About Brivity CRM

Brivity CRM is an all-in-one customer relationship management for real estate professionals. With Brivity CRM, real estate agents and admins get easily keep track of their leads and transactions to close more deals.

YOU MAY WANT TO KNOW

What Is CSV Import

Why Have CSV Import?

Leads are the main components in a real estate business. When users get started with Brivity CRM, we want them to bring in information about their existing leads to create the most comprehensive database possible to run their business successfully. 


While Brivity CRM allows users to connect with other apps like Zillow, Boomtown, Salesforce and etc to sync data seamlessly, we cannot pull datas from all the apps in the market. That’s why we introduce CSV. import, a common way that's supported by most applications,  to bring more convenience in migrating data.

Who Is Using It?

Generally in a real estate team, the admin is responsible to migrate lead's data from one system to another. Therefore, admins would be the key user for the CSV Import feature in Brivity. See below to further understand how the system works.

A CSV is a comma separated values file which allows data to be exported in a table structured format. Brivity allows user to upload a list of existing lead's info in a .csv spreadsheet. 

WHAT WE DID IN THIS PROJECT

Making CSV Import Intuitive, Streamlined & Accurate

Importing CSV files is not always a difficult task, but certain challenges (like unclear about how to match the csv fields with Brivity fields,  storing the data in wrong field and the risk to lose data) can be very frustrating and require a lot of time and effort. Therefore, i redesigned the CSV import experience, making it more intuitive, streamlined accurate

My Role

As the solo designer, I worked end to end for this feature, including user research,  wireframe, user testing, high-fi mockups and drive execution of the design to implement with the help of PM, Creative Director, Client Success specialist and developer,.

Discover The Problem

THE START

#1 Concern In Terms Of Brivity Onboarding  Usability

For individual agents or real estate teams that have made the decision to implement Brivity CRM, one of the first and most common thing to do is migrating data from their previous data storage system. This is because real estate is all about relationships. Agents would use the lead's info they captured (eg. lead's intent, interest and etc.)  to build strong relationship with current and future leads in order to close more deals. Additionally, it is essential to have rich lead's data to fully use Brivity features like calling, texting, auto plans and etc.

​However, we received a lot of complaints on the inefficient workflow of importing data via CSV from both our users and support team.

That is to say, current CSV import  failed to build a comprehensive lead database, making users hard to build strong relationships with leads as the way they used to and it doesn't help users make most use of Brivity CRM features to enhance their business.

USER RESEARCH

Understanding The User & Problem

Interview:

4 users & 2 customer support specialist

Analyze:

100+ Zendesk Ticket

Test:

current design

KEY FINDINGS

What We Found From The Research

Current Experience

Finding 1: The process to put users data in corresponding Brivity field is non-streamlined and time-consuming.

Users wants to put their records in the Brivity fields correctly so that they can use Brivity smoothly, but re-formatting their existing CSV file to match Brivity Fields is time-consuming

Finding 2: Users want to keep all existing data but Brivity does not have existing fields for all data type and not allow any customization.

Different teams works differently, so the way they stores data various. While Brivity field are common fields that fit most teams need, there is no guarantee that we can provide all fields that fits all our users' needs. Furthermore, current Brivity design does not allow users to create new data fields, which result in the risk of losing data or putting datas in a wrong field.

As a result:

Finding 3: Current design lack for transparency in showing import results

Currently, Brivity will automatically processes the uploaded file as soon as the admin clicks the upload button, making them hard to know whether the Brivity processes the fields correctly before wrong leads data is generated.

When the import is finished, admin will get an email notification with import result and error message. However, the error message is very vague, only saying a certain amount of leads are failed to import because of formatting issue. Not saying which lead was not imported and why, making it difficult for admins to handle the failure.

“ I tried to import 482 people. The email only said 13 contacts couldn’t be imported due to formatting, but i don’t see who are them and how should i reformat it.“

Research Summary

DEFINING WHO

Stakeholder Goals

I turned what we’ve learned from the user research into 3 stakeholder goals to help me keep specific stakeholders in mind to avoid ending up with an experience that doesn’t satisfy anyone. Here's their key info:

DEFINING THE VISION

An intuitive, streamlined and accurate import experience

As the first and most common thing to do for every new users, migrating data from previous system to Brivity CRM is not only a key to establishing a good first impression among our users, but also the premise for user to make most use of Brivity Products. Therefore, the import experience should be intuitive, streamlined and accurate, and it should not affect how the team works currently.

I also defined following design principle to help me justify my design decision:

 

FROM ABSTRACT TO CONCRETE

Every Detail Matters

Early Explorations

Having figured out the design goal, i started to branched out new experience of CSV Import. Some of my initial ideas were:

1. Provide as much field as possible, so that users can always find related field to store data

2. Have one place for storing all non-Brivity Data 

3. Allow user to create and custom related fields as needed.

4. More option for integration

5. ...

Then I shared these Ideas with PM, Creative Director and Developers and had a meeting to evaluate these ideas. While we were evaluating these ideas, we tried to balance the impact and feasibilities of each ideas since we tried to find a solution that can achieve our design goal without requiring too much dev effort.

Evaluation Matrix

Our Decision

After balancing the user need and technical constraint, we had an agreement on the key features of our new design:

1. The new design will allow user to match the fields directly within Brivity so that users can make control and understand how Brivity would handle the fields.

 

2. The design will also allow user to custom fields to minimize the effort in re-formatting csv files and keeping the data stored as the way they want

3. The new design will also provide our users with an Import result report to communicate the success and failure

The New Experience

Define The Success

Brainstorm Detail Features

We will know the design is successful when:

  • The UI clearly communicates its affordance in Usability Testing section 

  • Observed reduction in support tickets for CSV file review and customization

  • User can import CSV successfully and independently 

  • User can handle the import error independently

When the goal and approach was getting clear, the next thing I did was to brainstorm detail features that help delivering a delightful user experience. 

​Job stories & Idea Board (Partial)

Define the information architecture 

Polish The Interactions

Example: Design Iteration for mapping fields.

V1

V2

V3

V2

Design Explorations

​The Final Design

A refreshed import home page

Upload your CSV file easily

Custom your field and make it the way you want

Preview and save current mapping for future use

Get notified about the result and error

The Result

FROM OUR LOVELY USERS

FROM OUR SUPPORT TEAM

​" We did receive less inquiries about Import after this feature was launched. THANK YOU! "

Thanks for watching!

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