IXACT Contact
Challenge
IXACT Contact Solutions Inc first launched its customer relationship management (CRM) solution more than 10 years ago, offering real estate professionals a cloud-based and feature-rich system to manage customers, marketing and their business. Whitecap Canada helped IXACT Contact build the original software and continues to manage the infrastructure and work closely with IXACT Contact to add new functions and features. “The original interface had simply become dated from a design and a user experience standpoint” says CTO Jonathan Kay. “It still delivered all the features our customers wanted but it wasn’t responsive, and we were starting to get feedback that the system looked dated.” IXACT Contact was also expanding beyond individual agents to target real estate brokerages and corporate real estate offices. With that expansion came heightened expectations for a modern interface and application. Rich Gaasenbeek, IXACT Contact’s Co-Founder and EVP says they could tell during sales calls that the user interface wasn’t wowing people, even if they had the rich functionality they’d want. “The user interface was something we had to sell around,” he admits. “Our competitors’ products looked fresher and more modern.” They once again turned to Whitecap to give their user interface a major renovation.
Solution
Priorities for the redesign included a modern interface, intuitive clean design and responsive to the wide range of screen sizes being used today. IXACT Contact also took the opportunity to add several important new features. A COMPLETE OVERHAUL Whitecap designed the new UI in Angular 4 to create the modern responsive environment, using a platform widely recognized for delivering fast applications and webpages. The new UI allowed IXACT Contact to incorporate a completely configurable dashboard (which was not possible with the old UI). Agents can now choose which features they want front and centre when they log into the system, and they can move the widgets around so that their most important data is at the top. The redesign let Whitecap designers incorporate a collapsible navigation panel so users can maximize screen space when they’re working in the system, and it’s responsive to take advantage of the different devices screen sizes from tablets to large screen monitors. In addition, Whitecap designed simple, custom icons to provide a clean, consistent look for all aspects of the application while giving users simple visual cues so they can easily see what part of the application they’re in; making it even more intuitive and easy for users to move around seamlessly. With the redesign, users aren’t constantly waiting for the system to pull data from the servers which could slow response time. The new system refreshes screens much more quickly and is more visually pleasing with consistent design elements and colours. FEATURES ADDED – FUNCTIONALITY IMPROVED Some of the most popular new features launched with the new UI are “Goal Setting”, “Business Pipeline” and “Keep in Touch Coach”, configurable features that help agents set business goals, build their pipeline and keep connected with the customers and prospects so they can meet their business goals. It’s not a simple pop-up reminder but a more sophisticated contact engine that updates reminders and touchpoints based on specific criteria and a customers’ status. The new business intelligence features help agents set annual goals and then sets out the daily weekly and monthly activities they need to reach those goals based on personalized data points about their performance (such as target commission, number of presentations to win listings, or number of listing they sell). Through the redesign, IXACT Contact and Whitecap decided to take the opportunity to reconfigure the contact page, which is the heart of any CRM system. Leveraging some functionality available in the mobile app, users opening the contact page are in a “read only” mode. They can’t enter data by mistake and empty fields are hidden saving space on the screen. When they want to add information, they go into edit mode, which displays more fields for agents to capture more detailed information. ROCK SOLID SOLUTION IXACT Contact notes Whitecap’s team was instrumental in helping make sure their software, even after 10 years of growth and new features, remained robust and reliable. When it came down to making sure the new UI would meet high expectations, Whitecap and IXACT Contact handled the extensive QA testing of the new features and regression testing of the main application to make sure all elements of the CRM system performed perfectly.
Results
Business Growth Exploding Customer Retention Rates Up Customers Love New User Experience Software Becomes More Intuitive Infrastructure and Solution Designed for Scalable Growth Recognizing that their real estate agent customers use a wide array of devices, IXACT Contact is now looking at updating its mobile application platform and are talking with Whitecap about the right strategy for that application.
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