How might we iMPROVE THE SHOPPING AND LEASING JOURNEY for PROSPECTS?
Greystar is the biggest property management company in the US. Our focus was improving their shopping and leasing journey. The design research process took 3 months. At the end of the seventh month, we finalized the first prototypes and started to test them.
Company: GREYSTAR
Role: CX Researcher & Service Designer
Scope: Service Design, Design Research, Prototyping
Year: 2020-2021
First, I redefined their design problem for them. What they offered to their prospects was not a single product or just a service anymore. What they offered was a connected ecosystem including multiple internal stakeholders, new technologies, several devices and spatial experiences.
As a holistic ecosystem, it should be analyzed at different levels, macro to micro. Further, we had to understand how the various components connect with each other.
At the macro level, we looked at market offerings and market trends, best practices, technology trends, and solutions from other sectors.
At the organizational level, we had to understand their work culture, organizational structure and their internal workflows.
In terms of research, we conducted ethnographic visits as prospects at Greystar properties and communities run buy competitors, interviews with team members from different departments and prospects, and surveys.
In addition, we did user testing and heuristic evaluations of their current digital products to optimize the user experience.
At the end of the research process, we created a service blueprint to display the overall structure of the company’s services to map out both the prospect’s and the on-site team’s perspective.
We also created personas and journey maps for the internal teams designed from the prospect’s perspective. The journeys mapped out the online research, initial contact, tour experience, follow-up, application and lease.
Each phase includes 3 to 4 touch points representing the prospect’s potential interaction moments where they might feel the need for services and potentially interact with staff. In addition to the touch points, there are positive and negative aspects of their experience and emotions laid out. The journey maps also include a graph to illustrate the level of satisfaction ranging from perfect to terrible.
Further, there is also a report outlining statistical data and survey results.
Ideation Workshop
Synthesis
The journey maps were used during feedback and ideation sessions. Six remote ideation sessions were conducted with different departments and also stakeholders.
There were also several prioritizing workshops to decide what experience/ feature to design first
in light of COVID.
The future state map forecasted future scenarios and necessary features to adapt to changing environments and needs.
To make projections more accessible to leasing professionals, we created a future state scenario to show how their services will be evolving and to position them as an integral part of this new process.
Key here was the personalization of their service experience.
At the end of the collaborative decision making process we decided to redesign their self-guided tour experience. As part of this effort we conducted additional research and created a digital platform as our first prototype where the leasing professionals can design their own self-guided tour experience for their prospects.