Applying end-to-end UX expertise to turn Camping World’s conceptual sales app into a real, usable product.
The RV enthusiast outlet Camping World is a forward-thinking company. I worked on the IT team as a lead UX designer and was asked to help define and design a Salesforce and AI-backed mobile app for internal the sales team.
The RV Sales team across the country used Salesforce to manage, track and log all sales activity. While the CRM is an incredible tool in many respects, it slowed down the staff who had to wade through a lot of screens and customer information to complete basic sales tasks.
"The idea was to take the Salesforce data and AI-infused functionality and simplify it into a simple, modern app. It would allow Sales Associates to track sales numbers, RV inventory and send communications to customers."
Camping World sent me to conduct in-person user research in 5 onsite locations. The resulting 20 or so in-depth interviews were extremely valuable. They allowed me to understand the friction-filled Salesforce issues as well as the Sales Associates giving the feedback.
For Sales Associates, nothing was worse than using Salesforce to manage their work. It was slow, clunky and duplicative. In a word, the Sales Associates I worked with felt it was the bane of their existence which was being forced upon them. The examples below discuss the specific issues experienced by these folks who wanted nothing more than a simple, unified experience.
In research, I learned that Salesforce was not optimized for Sales Associates. They were clear that digging for and adding Customer information was a timesuck and they often were unclear how to follow up.
In research, I learned that Salesforce was a great CRM for trained users, but it was very challenging for a busy and uninterested Sales team.
In research, I learned that there are too many different types of Salesforce 'objects' and this made searching difficult due to duplicate information and information types.
In research, I learned that users did not trust the system because it would never be 'in-sync' with the backend system. As a result, they did not trust the data and felt their pen and paper was more effective.
The design strategy was to streamline Salesforce into a simple and usable package for Sales Associates. The focus was to design a reductive and simplified interface that reduced the fragmentation of Salesforce and instead offered easy-to-understand RV and customer information paired with simple tasks. In practice, this meant designing lots of interactive prototypes and conducting ad-hoc research to refine the interactions and designs.
After research and design, I set out to simplify the experience. While Salesforce is incredibly powerful, it actively worked against the Sales Associates' mental model. To rectify this, I designed an iOS app with simple navigation for Home, Showroom, Chat and Profile. Each screen used the rich information from Salesforce but simply presented it into a much easier to use package.
Salesforce is a powerful platform but lacks a traditional eCommerce' experience. The RV Detail page was designed to reinforce RV benefits so the Sales Associate could easily explore and educate themselves and their customers on the ever-evolving line of RVs that Camping World sells without needing to dig deep into Salesforce.
Salesforce fragments information so the approach was to consolidate it into holistic and usable information. The Home section allowed easy, high-level understanding of sales information, RVs and new customer communications. The Sales Associates loved having all of this information in one handy spot without having to search for it.
RV models were always changing at every Camping World location around the country. Sales Associates had a hard time keeping up with inventory. The Showroom page gave a listing of each new model, pricing and features in a searchable interface. It also allowed the Sales Associate to share the information with a potential customer tp expedite the sales process.
Good communication is imperative to Sales Associates and the sales process overall. The chat and messaging functionality allowed them to maintain contact with customers. This was a flagship feature request that reinforced their way of managing customer interactions with modern technology.
The Sales Associates at Camping World were over the moon to use the new iOS application. According to them, it matched their needs incredibly well and reduced the friction of using Salesforce to manage the sales process. The stats below were recorded during the pilot sessions of the app.
