I'm a Customer Conversion Support Designer

We're in an interesting time at LessAccounting. We're having growing pains. It's a good pain to have. The app certainly is growing faster than ever. It's overwhelming and exciting at the same time. People pay for it. People use it. People praise it. People complain about it.

Our New Focus

This year, we've heavily pushed our own personal engagement with our user-base.

• We have a 1-800 number.
• We've hired bookkeepers to handle our tech support. Who knows bookkeeping better than bookkeepers?
• We've introduced a few interesting automated emails.
• I call random users on the phone and talk to them.

We're pushing the envelope of service within our software as a SERVICE applications. We'll even setup your books in LessAccounting for free (accountants typically charge $200 for this service).

"Hello, My Name is Allan. I'm a Customer Conversion Support Designer."

Our user base is growing rapidly, and my role in the company is changing. I'm doing less design work and more customer service, business development, support and working on making the brochure of the app convert better. I suspect my role will constantly evolve, but the current tasks I do are all about increasing conversions. I increase conversions. Ewww, that sounds like sales, but in reality, I'm focused on small tweaks that make the application as helpful as possible. My job is helping our customers see the value of the app. This iterative process comes from talking to users, using our product everyday for our books and making small changes while looking for improvement. I'm constantly asking users and myself: "Is there a better way to explain that?"

My Goal is to...

• Make visitors curious enough to sign up.
• Show new customers the value of our app + service in hopes that they will pay us.
• Keep the paid customers very happy, and make sure we're answering their questions.
• Turn these paid customers into power users and product evangelists.

My Typical Daily Tasks Include...

• Initiating contact with users by both phone and email.
• Talking to 3-10 users per day. Right now, I call every user that signs up, and I talk to every user that calls our 1-800 number.
• Talking to the development team--making sure we're focused on the right things.
• Talking to the support team; watching the tickets, making sure there isn't a simpler way to answer a question.
• Tweaking the site's verbiage, the help tips and instructions as well as the sales brochure of the app. I alter automated emails to make them as helpful as possible in the shortest amount of time.
• A/B testing pieces of the sign-up form and pricing page.
• Making decisions (according to this feedback) on what pieces of the interface we need to further work on. These UI tasks might eventually be delegated to another person, but right now, I handle that, as well.

I think you'll start to see this trend growing within web applications offering more service and better support. We (developers) are so focused on automation and turning our users into cogs in a factory that we've forgotten that a personal touch can go a long way. This new focus for our industry will be one reason the position of Community Leader, COO, etc. will become even more important in the future.

1 Comment

Becki D. said on February 07, 2011

Lovely! So nice to see a design/code guy who actually cares about user/client input and customer service! Kudos to you for being able to work in more than one role – Hooray!