Discovering key deficiencies within the SIM purchasing experience

Team

Year

2022

Sr. Product Designer

Julien Nguyen

Sr. Product Manager

Kayla McDermott

Duration

3 Months

Director of Product Design

Sean Nelson

Researcher

Evangeline Garreau

Overview

Hologram is a SaaS telecom startup based in Chicago, IL that provides hardware (SIM cards), software, and IoT cellular data services tailored for small to medium-sized businesses.

As part of the Growth team, our aim was to gain a deeper insight into the existing customer behavior regarding SIM purchases and identify potential opportunities to enhance the process from a product standpoint. Unfortunately, the details related to SIM acquisition were not adequately documented, prompting us to initiate a research project to define a comprehensive and detailed overview of the entire SIM purchasing experience.

The research project proved to be highly successful, prompting an immediate shift in our organization's priorities as we reevaluated and adjusted the focus of the corresponding product roadmap.


Background

One of the biggest themes in 2022 was the organization’s re-focus on conversion and growth.

Customers at Hologram were divided into two segments: self-service and contracted customers. Not much is known about self-service customers however they do tend to follow these characteristics: preferred limited or simple data plan, typically within their located region; activated between 1-30 SIMs; and were typically in their business stage of primarily testing or validating their product.

In contrast, we had much more insights on contracted customers due our direct dialogue with them: they typically seeked a customized data plan tailored to their specific needs; they typically activated > 50 SIMs; and they were either at the tailend of testing, scaling their product for launch, or seeking expansion into a new region.

One of the main challenges with self-service customers was that we had know real way of knowing who they were and why they were creating accounts (besides needing service). In addition to streamlining the sign-up page, there was enthusiasm for us to proactively solicit insights from our self-service users during the onboarding phase so that our sales team could better position our product based on their current needs.

1. Sign Up & Qualification Flow Wireframes2. Sign Up & Qualification Flow Handoffs3. Sign Up Page - Before & After4. Qualification Flow Part 15. Qualification Flow Part 2

As we were collecting insights from our self-service customers, we also needed to understand the SIM purchasing process in a more holistic way that we've previously understood so that we when we were able to successfully transition self-service customers into contracts, our organization could confidently support the increased sales.


Goals

Working alongside my Product Manager we pitched to our leadership that we wanted to set some time within the roadmap to conduct a research project to help uncover alot of SIM purchasing details that were not properly documented within our organization.

After separate collaborative workshop sessions with both design and product leadership, we were able to establish the following goals for this project:

We also wanted to factor in time within this research endeavor to better understand the motives and intent for self-service customers and when/why they decided to contract with us however due to recruitment challenges this objective was postponed until later in the year.


Contributions

Research

All work was divided between myself and my product manager. Although we did have a dedicated research team, they were focused on a high-level project so we used them only as a supporting resource to make sure we were on the right track.

In our qualitative interviews, we conducted sessions with a diverse range of internal teams over Zoom, including Customer Success, Logistics, Sales/Solution Engineers, and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). As we couldn't conduct moderated interviews with the Sales team, we opted for asynchronous feedback, gathering insights through a TypeForm survey with BDRs, Account Executives, and other members of the Sales team.

1. Moderated Interviews-Conducted through Zoom and documented through Dovetail;2. Unmoderated Survey3. Documenting Existing SIM Purchase Flow4. Validating Research Findings-Revising prelimary service blueprints with SMEs

Service Blueprints

Once we collected all feedback we went back and synthesized our findings in a service blueprint format, making sure to check back in with SMEs to confirm that our documentation was correct and that we were not missing any steps.

1. Delivered Service Blueprint-Self-Service;2. Delivered Service Blueprint -AE (Contracted Customer)


Results

We unearthed significant key findings that led to the following conclusions:

  • Online store was untenable

    Users could purchase SIMs from two locations however the Online Store was poorly built and lacked polished features compared to our current product (Dashboard). Next steps could include initiate design discovery in bringing our ‘external’ store into Dashboard while also factoring SEO and sunsetting options

  • Onboarding emails were inconsistently sent

    Onboarding emails are automatically sent based on date of account creation (ex: 48 hours after account signup SIM activation email is sent) vs a specific milestone/response from a user’s product journey. Next steps could include collaborating between marketing and engineering to determine what steps are needed to coorrelate emails to milestones.

  • Logistics process was unscalable

    Current logistics process has too many manual touch points with major risks for human error. Potential next steps could include fostering dialogue between logistics and leadership to determine biggest investment opportunities to streamline and/or automate.

  • Lack of key product knowledge

    Most customers do not know or care about technical details as much as what it can provide them (i.e. more coverage, cheaper, speed). A potential opportunity down the road would be to re-evalulate how to more effectively market our products.


Reflections

Although seemingly straightforward in process, this research project provided me an opportunity to exercise some qualitative research skills that I wasn't able to consistently practice since my time at Dell.

I was also thrilled that the research project I delivered was not only encouraged by leadership but also had a profound organizational impact that revised several key roadmap strategies moving forward.