Ask Buddy: Your AI-powered Sales Assistant
Ask Buddy serves as the central hub for sales professionals, providing real-time insights, follow-up suggestions, and seamless access to relevant client information. By delivering AI-powered guidance, Ask Buddy helps sales reps engage meaningfully with prospects and streamline their workflows.
Project Brief
Role: Product Designer
Team Size: 1 Product Designer, 1 Product Manager, 1 Front-End Engineer
Platform: Web
Tool Stack: Figma, Notion, Amplitude
Project Duration: 8 weeks and On Going
Context
Ask Buddy is an AI-powered sales assistant designed to help sales teams make data-driven decisions and personalize their outreach. By integrating with existing CRM and communication tools, Ask Buddy provides actionable insights and contextual prompts to optimize sales interactions, centralizing key tasks into one user-friendly interface.
Problem Identification
• Fragmented Content Access: Content was spread across multiple platforms, making it difficult for reps to locate relevant materials quickly and often leading to the use of outdated resources.
• Lack of Buyer Engagement Insights: Without analytics on buyer interactions, it was challenging to gauge content effectiveness or refine strategies based on what resonated with prospects.
• Generic Messaging: Reps found it difficult to tailor messaging to specific buyer personas, relying on generic communication that failed to engage diverse audiences
• Limited Access to Social Proof: Reps had trouble accessing testimonials or case studies quickly, impacting their ability to build credibility with prospects.
Research & Competitor Analysis
I conducted an analysis of popular CRM and AI-driven sales platforms, examining industry standards for information hierarchy and accessibility. This helped us identify best practices for balancing in-depth data presentation with a simplified, intuitive user experience. Accessibility considerations were also prioritized, ensuring that key information was easy to find without overwhelming the user.
To address our unique requirements, I collaborated closely with the Front-End Engineering Lead to avoid any limitations with AI integration and ensure optimal load times for complex data.
Designing the MVP for Ask Buddy
Drawing from user research and feedback, I designed the MVP for Ask Buddy to prioritize core features that would deliver immediate value and efficiency for sales professionals. The MVP focused on three essential areas:
• Centralized Access to Sales Content: Consolidated all key resources in one interface, allowing reps to find the information they need without navigating multiple platforms.
• Personalized, AI-driven Insights: Integrated relevant prompts and content suggestions tailored to buyer personas and prior interactions, enabling reps to engage more effectively.
• Streamlined User Experience: Crafted an intuitive, easy-to-navigate interface to minimize cognitive load, helping reps take swift actions and stay focused on core tasks.
Through several iterations of wireframes and prototypes, I tested and refined each version with sales reps and managers. Their feedback informed adjustments in layout, navigation, and feature placement, ensuring the MVP was highly intuitive and aligned with user needs. This iterative process helped create a solution that provided immediate productivity gains from day one.
The Launch
The launch of Ask Buddy was driven by a focus on delivering immediate value to sales teams through a user-centered, data-driven approach. Key objectives for the launch included:
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Focused on delivering immediate value to sales teams through a streamlined, user-centered interface
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Core features like engagement history, and AI-driven insights made easily accessible to support efficient workflows
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Designed for scalability, allowing for future enhancements based on user feedback
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Quickly became a valuable tool, enhancing productivity and engagement for sales professionals after launch
Key Design Solutions
1. Streamline Information Layout 📈
To reduce cognitive load, I redesigned the layout to focus on essential features, prioritizing real-time follow-up suggestions and recent engagement history. Drawing inspiration from dashboard interfaces, I created a simplified yet powerful design that allows users to quickly identify actionable insights without being overwhelmed.
2. Prioritize Accessibility to Key Features 🔍
I repositioned the follow-up suggestion panel and recent activity feed to ensure they were easily accessible from the main interface. Additionally, a quick-access tray was introduced, enabling users to retrieve the most recent client insights and actions with minimal effort, even on smaller screens.
3. Encourage Engagement through Prompt Library 💬
The Prompt Library within Ask Buddy enables sales reps to manage and access various AI-generated prompts for personalized outreach. I designed this library to support easy categorization and retrieval of prompts, promoting frequent use and seamless engagement with leads.
4. Advanced Configuration Options in Prompt Library 💬
The Prompt Library includes a configuration interface that allows administrators to set parameters for each prompt, ensuring they align with specific sales contexts. Users can filter prompts by criteria such as domain, opportunity stage, CRM activity, and customer type, providing targeted messaging options that fit varied sales scenarios. This flexible setup helps sales reps find the most relevant prompts based on their needs, enhancing the personalization and impact of their interactions. The user-friendly configuration screen, featuring drop-down selectors and preview options, supports both efficiency and customization for the sales teams.
Impact
After launching Ask Buddy, we observed a significant increase in engagement with follow-up suggestions and prompt utilization. User surveys indicated that the interface helped sales reps quickly access essential information, with new users particularly appreciative of the clear navigation. Chat interactions and prompt usage saw growth, driven by the streamlined, user-friendly design of the Prompt Library, which made relevant information readily available.
Learnings
One key takeaway from this project was the importance of prioritization. With so many possible features, it was essential to focus on core user needs and business objectives. By prioritizing the most impactful elements, I ensured that the redesigned Ask Buddy interface was both effective and aligned with the primary jobs-to-be-done, rather than being cluttered with low-value additions.
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