Video calling app- UX case study
Introduction
Metromeets is a video conferencing solution developed by Metroguild a Saas company. The primary product of the company is a sales and marketing tool. One might wonder what’s a saas company with a sales tool doing with video calls.
Well, it all started with when pandemic hit, and everything was forced shut down. Most of our customers had never worked remotely and half the workforce was on-site selling. While everyone was forced to work from home, people were struggling to communicate within the team and nurture the relationship with clients. Video calling app like zoom had taken the market by storm but was an expensive solution for most. Other video calling apps like WhatsApp or Google meets were not ideal for work scenarios.
( Note: Video conferencing apps have vastly improved over the last 8 + months)
We saw an opportunity to provide a much-needed solution for salespeople to work from home during the quarantine period and much beyond.
My Role
PM/ Research / UX / Visual design/ Branding
My role in the project was from the beginning to opportunity discovery, project planning, user research. I planned the project deliverables, involved in product strategy with the company and sales stakeholders. App branding was done in line with the core product- Metroleads. The entire project was done remotely.
Ideas and Exploration
How are businesses and organizations dealing with forced work from home, a hurried shutdown of working space, and complete home isolation?
We began interviewing with all our existing and potential customers. From the real estate, travel and education sector in India to high-value retail, legal teams in the US. We talked to a wide spectrum of clients.
I mapped all the observations and assumptions from telephonic interviews and collated insights from other customer-facing teams Presales, Account managers, and Support.
- Observation mapping to verticals: Certain concerns and expectations were similar across the verticals. Vertical wise assumption segmentation gave us a better understanding of the pain areas, motivations, and plan of action of existing and potential clients across the verticals.
- Opportunity mapping: We brainstormed a few solutions and prioratised based on market need, technical feasibility, time allocation, and the business outcome we wanted to achieve.
- Reviewing the competition: After finalizing on the video communication, we reviewed other video calling services along with team management software and CRM
Goals and Challenges
Business goal
Minimum customer churn in the coming months in any case the lockdown extends. (Lockdown period in India was very uncertain, with ever-changing rules about the COVID-19 precautions.
Product Goal
- Provide customers the tools to engage with employees and their clients.
- A non-expensive tool for the customer with unlimited meeting minutes
- Secure connectivity
- Works across devices
- Align the visual design with our core product.
(I used a lot more visual elements to keep the UI conversational yet functionalThe product team’s goal was to release MVP in 3 weeks. The release window was crucial for the business to gain any traction for the video app as people were still experimenting with various tools.)
We kept the service free keeping in mind the pandemic situation, as everyone was running a tight ship. That also meant we had to be very resource-sensitive as well for this project to run efficiently for a longer duration. ( Number of servers across the world, Uptime of servers, video recording space, etc)
Key features
We listed out key features that could be built in the given timeframe and help achieve the goals of our customers. The rest of the features were distributed in different phases.
- Secure meeting rooms
- Easy meeting creation
- Sharable meeting links
- Internal chat
- Mobile support
- Private meeting rooms
- Screen sharing
Ancillary Features
- Create Video calls through CRM, our core product
- Sign up form gets submitted in the CRM, so the sales team can follow up easily if its a high value lead
- Video recording
User Journey/Task Flow
Creating a user task flow helps to collaborate with the developers way before any mock screens are created. The overall scope is cleared with both front end and backend teams. As time was of the essence it was empirical that all teams were working almost parallelly.
Branding
The branding and visual design of the app were created in line with our core product Metroleads.
The overall visual design was created to feel friendly, energetic and followed the design principles of the core product.
Website
The goal of the website was 2 fold
- Convert visitors to users via signing up or request a demo
- And create the ‘aha moment’ of the app in few moments after the user has landed on the page without boring them to death about all the details
Showcasing the product directly on the homepage cuts out a lot of fluff. Main value proposition- loud and clear
Giving a person the ability to choose or create something on their own gives them a sense of ownership. When a person creates a room, they tend to name it with intention or something whacky or funny. People always seem to be either amused or want to be surprised.
Sign up form was kept minimal as possible. Sign up with work email was encouraged.
Team size and industry information give us demographic information for untested market
- Video quality would be auto-adjusted according to the user’s bandwidth
- Rooms could be password protected for select entry of the users
Responsive Screens
We soon launched a mobile app for android to support the web browser app. 90% of our customer base uses android.
Outcome
We were successful in launching the product in 3 weeks. Building a video calling app ourselves gave us a great opening point in presales discussion with a lot of companies. Coming up with our own video calling solution opened other opportunities for us as we had more control over the functionality of the app.
Learnings Summary
- Customer’s stories are abundant with gaps of what they expect and how the world actually works. Each gap is a potential opportunity to serve your customer. Being in continuous touch with the customers, opportunities are ever-evolving. The desire to please the customer might be very high, but taking on every problem space is detrimental to the product. Doing an opportunity tree mapping help to critically evaluate each one with underlying constraints.
- It’s much easier to turn a customer into a repeat customer than a non-customer into a customer.
- Treat a freemium app as an acquisition tool than a revenue tool.
