Connexus
Project Overview
Connexus was created to propel a real estate office's position as the #1 Market Center in the Southeast Region, to the #1 Market Center in the world. To do this, I focused on strengthening community, reducing the friction of accessing their training, and providing timely and relevant content.
Status
Complete
Role
Leader Designer & Developer
Skills
Visual Language | UI/UX Design | No-Code Tools | Design Systems
Year
2022
Problem Statement
Real estate agents tend to rely on tried-and-true tools rather than new apps or services. As well, they lead busy lives with appointments, inspections, and training, so any easy-to-use system that would immediately solve their pain-points was necessary.
Challenges
An easy-to-use application that would be available for all agents, supporting iOS, Android, and web use.
Reducing friction between agents and training resources. Which are mainly restricted by the schedule of the training and agents other engagements.
Requires a quick spin-up, painless release, and easy continued maintenance.
Discover Phase
During the discover phase, I consulted with other members of the Leadership team to determine what their personal goals were, as well as what they see throughout the office and their agents. 3 things became apparent from this research:
Leadership had a shared goal of doing everything in their power to provide their agents a path to a successful real estate career and making them millionaires.
Most agents claimed they were missing training sessions due to the session only being held once a month, and scheduled at an inconvenient time for them.
They were preoccupied with their own position and duties to properly take substantial action to rectify the concerns they had.
After speaking with Leadership, I then opened a dialogue among their agents. I worked closely with hundreds of their agents and from my interactions and questions I found out that:
Agents shared their Leadership team's statement that the primary reason for not attending training was due to their frequency and timing.
New agents were becoming confused after joining as they were introduced to a myriad of new and unfamiliar systems that were antiquated and difficult to use.
Many stated that they would love to be more involved, but they were unsure of what exactly was happening and didn't know where to start.
Defining
This led me to narrow down the focus of the app to resolve 3 main problems:
Provide easier access to training materials that works with their agents busy schedule.
Create an onboarding flow for new agents to help them better acclimate to the brokerage and find focus as a real estate agent.
Build a sense of community so new agents could feel like part of it and begin building connections with more experienced agents as mentors.
Design Phase
During the design phase, I knew I had to create an app that was going to be familiar to their agents. Something that would be natural for both an experienced 70yo career agent and a just-licensed 19yo agent.
So I decided to build the app around 5 core features.
Home: Providing quick access to top-desired features.
Quick access to Communities
Recent activity within the community
Latest news
Calendar: Quickly seeing what training sessions are occurring today and in the future. With the ability to join in virtually, or mark yourself as attending to add the event to your calendar on-device.
Onboarding: A quick and easy checklist instructing newly-joined agents on exactly what Leadership recommends they do in their first 30, 60, and 90 days.
Groups: Strengthening their community and allowing agents to connect with experienced mentors, share their success, and creating lasting friendships.
Directory: So agents know who's who in Leadership, and providing quick access to emails and phone numbers.
1: The Home tab of Connexus. 2: The view of a Group, allowing for new comments, viewing Group members, and interacting with other users comments. 3: A detail of a training session, with links to register for the class, add to calendar, and view virtually over Zoom.
1: The First 30 Days onboarding checklist, with red circles for due tasks, and Green circles for completed tasks. 2: The Menu showing additional services available within the app. 3: ConnexMLS connected 3 Market Centers and allowed them to post their properties (both Active and Coming Soon) to drive interest among their coworkers.
1: A Pay-at-Close request form, allowing agents to quickly and easily request their commission to be available at the closing table, rather than waiting a week for their commission checks. 2: A catalog of previous training sessions and new from their brokerage's corporate office. 3: Viewing a specific Recording gave agents access to attend their training sessions 24/7, 365.
1: I implemented a chatbot within the app to give agents the ability to get assistance with their issues anytime and anywhere, and connecting them with the correct person for their problem. 2: An easy bug reporting form to maintain an open dialogue with agents as the app evolved and improved.
Post-Release
Connexus saw immediate success after release, achieving a 10% adoption rate among all 623 agents (62 signups) within 30 minutes of release, and reaching 100 signups within 24 hours. During my remaining time assisting the Market Center, we saw not just incredible results, but record-breaking milestones the likes any sister Market Center has never seen.
173% increase in training attendance
Attendance increased from an average of 109 attendees every month, to 303 attendees.
$81,522,015 Pay-at-Close requests processed
Putting around $2,200,000 in commissions into the agents pocket right at the closing table.
70% adoption rate throughout the Market Center
In total, we onboarded 436 agents to Connexus. With 100% of them using the app on a monthly basis, and 62% of them using it on a weekly basis.
Takeaways
Connexus was my first foray into building an application to be used internally to assist a business with achieving their goals. The success we saw was monumental, and unheard of within the company. Even though my time working on this project for them ended in September 2022, the application is still in use to this day. I hear from agents that the app has truly changed the way they interact with the Market Center and has truly helped them build their businesses.