Buildertrend
New User Setup Experience
CHALLENGE
Provide a “setup as a service” to new users of Buildertrend so that it feels like home when a new builder logs in for the first time.
SOLUTION
Provide a gated setup experience for new builders to land on when they first sign up. Our customer support team will set up and import existing data for new accounts, reviewing with the user that their data is accurate and allowing the user to log in once their account is setup.
Methodology
• Observational Research
• Secondary and Evaluative Research
• Prototyping
• Wireframing
• Customer Journey Map
• Usability Testing
Tools
• Sketchpad & Pen
• Figma
• Mixpanel
• Data Dog
• Hotjar
Client Deliverables
• New setup experience for new builders
• Updated cost code feature experience
Results:
+12% increase in new account retention
86% completion rate of the setup process for new accounts
Overview
The Vision: A setup process that immersively and rapidly sets up the customer account to take full advantage of Buildertrend.
Quite simply, our goal is to make a setup account feel like home for new Buildertrend users.
The Why: ~25% of our churn comes from new customers failing to adopt Buildertrend.
This means we are missing a major opportunity to address this churn risk early in the experience.
Providing a “setup as a service” is a form of service design used in other enterprise software and is the approach that Buildertrend aims to take with this initiative.
Our hypothesis is that by providing this service to new users we will see an increase in logo retention from 68% to 70% in 2024, while simultaneously not decreasing NPS. Additionally we aim to get the initial setup time to under 5 business days from signup.
Buildertrend
Buildertrend is the leading residential construction management platform. Since 2006, we’ve empowered contractors to take control of projects and bring efficiency, organization and seamless communication to every aspect of their businesses. Builders can stay on top of costs, supplies, staff and more in one convenient place – and take on more projects without adding paperwork and stress. For over 1 million users across 100 countries, Buildertrend has made it easy to run successful projects and deliver a five-star experience to homeowners.
User
Primary user:
New Buildertrend customers in the established general contractor segment
Secondary user:
Buildertrend customer service representatives
Current experience
As we started this initiative there was no setup experience that existed for new customers.
Once a customer signed up and began training with their rep, they were also expected to import their own data into their account, configure it, and learn the product all at the same time.
It was overwhelming, confusing, and quite simply a poor experience when customers began onboarding and using Buildertrend.
Strategy & research
Main objective
A setup process that immersively and rapidly sets up the customer account to take full advantage of Buildertrend. Our goal is to make a setup account feel like home before the builder and other invited users begin using Buildertrend.
How do we get there?
The first step we took was for our team to follow a customer in real-time as they began setting up their account, without any specific setup experience existing. The goal of this was to understand the major pain points and areas that caused friction for customers during their time onboarding and setting up their account.
We began following a new customer, True Way Homes, and shadowed their training calls over the course of around two months. We shadowed their calls, evaluated the training and topics they covered, as well as observed the pain points with their import experience like trying to import their current cost codes, financial data and more.
Taking notes from these calls and observations, we compiled a list of notes that was then organized and synthesized to identify themes. On top of this, we had a takeaway call with True Way Homes to understand their experience and to ensure that what we documented as pain points were aligned with what they felt were pain points.
Once we had our notes organized and synthesized, in addition to the takeaway call with True Way Homes to hear their experience firsthand, we created a customer journey map of their experience in setup.
Key takeaways with customers
Takeaway conversation with True Way Homes
“If we were told this initially, like step one, get your cost codes together and here's how those will look to the end user or to the client and here's how it'll look to us. We would've made those decisions I think earlier and not have been so confused about some of the cost codes…
I felt like we just kept trying to figure out the next thing to do instead of having a map of just do cost codes first and then try your estimates and oh, if you're gonna make a bid, click on those three dots from your estimate to make a bid.”
- Shari Swonger (True Way Homes)
Cost codes are a shared pain point that needs to be improved - cost codes surfaced as causing a large amount of friction for customers during the setup experience, evident from the experience with True Way Homes. Additionally, we spoke with other customer service reps, trainers, and onboarding consultants who mainly work with new customers and we received the same sentiment about cost codes as a shared pain point all around.
A true setup experience focusing on just setup is missing and needs to be created - we had a general sense that we needed to create a setup experience that focused on just setup before the customer even logged into their account the first time, but our time following True Way Homes and all of our additional research pointed to this same conclusion.
Work and deliverables
Creating a setup experience
The other half of our focus during this work was to create a setup experience for customers to be directed to after they signed up with Buildertrend.
In order to gain customer empathy and understand what customers will need during this setup experience, our team worked with a new customer, Taproot Studio, to actually set up their account as a way to test run this new strategy and utilize our findings to make sure we are creating value for customers.
Workshopping and identifying milestones
Our team ran a workshop to identify the core milestones to reach as we started this setup work. After aligning on four main milestones, we were able to identify how to structure our work and focus our efforts on reaching at least two of these milestones in the timeline provided by the business.
Our goal for this experience after our milestone planning is to provide customers with an overview of what to expect during setup, show the steps that will be taken during setup, as well as provide them with a way to upload their files and data directly to their rep who will then download their files, format them and clean them up, and import them into their account.
Our team prioritized Milestones 1 and 3 for our work to ensure that we provide the two most critical parts of this experience: a true setup experience and the ability to upload files to their rep.
Milestone 1 - create a gated experience and welcome content
The first milestone we worked on achieving was simply around creating a landing page for this setup experience where the builder would land before they get into their account and begin training. After some additional team workshops, we came away with a first simple iteration.
Goal of this first release: provide a basic welcome message to tell customers they’re in setup, set base-level expectations, and provide a way to contact the setup team via email.
First iteration
After our team workshopped with folks from marketing a couple of weeks later, we wanted to align this setup landing page with the updates that marketing and sales were going to provide to new prospective customers.
We updated the landing page you see above to indicate more of a ‘journey’ and show the steps the customers would be taking, reducing the amount of data we initially were suggesting they provide us.
Second iteration
Once we received feedback from customers and our internal team about the need to create more ‘discoverability’ for the upload data step as well as aiming to clean up the UI a bit, we revamped the setup page to have more prominence on the upload data CTA and a cleaner format of the page overall.
Third iteration
Milestone 3 - allow builders to provide data and submit/upload files to their rep
Once we finished the second iteration of the landing page, we aligned with leadership that with the time allocated for the rest of this work the next most crucial milestone to reach is the ability for builders to be able to actually provide their files and data to their rep so that their rep can actually set up their account with customers existing data, allowing it to feel like home when the customer finally logs in after setup and begins training on using the product.
Our solution allows builders to click the ‘Upload your data’ step, opening up a drawer that will provide a space for them to upload their files we suggest as shown on the landing page and in the drawer (e.g. internal team members, subs and vendors, etc.). Once builders upload their files here it will be provided to their rep through our internal tool BTAdmin so that the rep can download the provided files from builders, format them correctly, and then import this into the builders account. Additionally we are providing the ability for builders to remove files they have uploaded in case they uploaded an old file or incorrect file.
Goal of this second release: provide a way for new builders to upload and provide their data and files to their reps to have them imported into their account
As we wrapped up this functionality, our next steps are to operationalize this and begin rolling this setup experience out to customer service reps so that they can begin to use it for new customers who sign up.
Once we have given the customer service team adequate time to operationalize this experience, we will circle back after they have utilized this for a while and we will continue to make improvements and updates as necessary. There is a lot more that can be done here, but this is just the start to creating a dedicated setup experience for new builders so that Buildertrend ‘feels like home’ when they first log into their account after it’s been set up by their rep.
Improving the cost code setup experience
One half of our focus during this work was centered around how we could improve the cost code setup experience for new builders who are setting up their account, but to also make it easier to manage these cost codes in general as customers begin using Buildertrend.
Generative and secondary research
Our team spoke with multiple customers around their pain points with cost codes, combed through existing user feedback from a shared repository where we collect feedback from customers sent via the product support chat, as well as compiling data reports and metrics on current cost code interactions and usage.
Organizing our work
We split our proposed solutions into two buckets: ‘quick wins’ on the current cost code experience that we could address immediately, and a long term vision as to how an ‘exceptional' cost code experience could be created.
Quick wins
Save and close button
Introduced a ‘Save & Close’ button for customers when editing a cost code and cleaned up copy on the cost code edit modal
Roughly 67% of modal opens are cost code related (on average over the last 30 days) from the company settings page
When users open Cost Codes (across any feature), 98.5% of the time, they are opening it to edit! We are doing them a disservice by not providing a Save & Close button to save time and clicks.
An example here shows a customer editing their cost codes before this update, having to continuously click save and then close the modal, over and over...
(P.S. in this brief scenario shown, our changes saved at least 8 clicks)
Simplified UI and cost code page header updates
Long term improvements
Move cost codes to a page instead of a modal
Introduce a new cost code grid view that matches customers mental model and is consistent with interaction patterns on features that use cost codes
Video showing a Buildertrend user editing cost codes, saving and closing each time with unnecessary clicks
Prototype and usability testing
After grouping our efforts into these two buckets of work, we created a prototype with a completely redesigned cost code grid view that would allow customers to understand how to set it up easier.
Additionally, we wanted to match similar interaction patterns that customers will use on other features which use cost codes (e.g. Estimates, Lead Proposals) so that these experiences are aligned from the start of a customer’s experience.
Once an ideal cost code prototype was finished, we began testing it with users to validate the proposed changes to this experience. We received a large amount of positive feedback and insights from customers as they used this prototype during interviews which validated our plans to move ahead with this work.
EVP Prototype: Container Prototypes
Usability interviews on cost code prototype
“This, I love”
- Cheri McAdow (Upland South Construction Inc.)
“I think this is very clear”
- David Caputo (G&L and Sons Renovations, LLC)
Releasing the new cost codes experience
After validating with this prototype, and after a couple months of work and identifying what would be an MVP release, we finally released the update to cost codes to customers!
You can see below some recordings of the old cost code experience vs. the new cost code experience to see the breadth of the changes.
Old + new cost codes experience
Old experience brief interaction overview:
New experience brief interaction overview:
Results and customer feedback
After both the new cost code experience and new setup experience were released, our team followed up with True Way Homes to hear their feedback and thoughts on these updates. It was really rewarding to connect with them a few months after we followed their setup experience because they were able to see the solutions we built that were largely inspired by their experience and the friction points they encountered.
Melissa Ossman from True Way Homes provided some great feedback you can see below, with quotes highlighted.
Setup experience feedback
Andrew: “Okay. So what are your thoughts if you get in here, just before I kind of ask you other questions, what are your initial thoughts with this?”
Melissa: “That this is a big improvement from what I logged into. I mean, I didn't have any of that data ready, you know, logging in. So to have a list of like, okay, cool, before I get into this, here's what I need to have prepared, I think it'd be really neat.”
Cost code experience feedback
Melissa: “I like it better that I can't see the cost code and variances at the same time. I remember logging in and it was confusing.”
Melissa: “But I like the layout better. It looks more updated. I mean, I was just in the cost codes this morning and so I know this looks different than what I was just in. And so I also like that it resembles the proposal.”