Sales Teams, Brands, Warehouse, Supply Chain
Closing deals 29% faster with self-service and personalization.
Sendoso's infamous story of the Sales rep who won over his client with a Grateful Dead lunchbox illustrated how a personalized, thoughtful gift can cut through the digital noise and leave a lasting impression.
Problem
Many of the gifts being sent were generic and failed to truly engage recipients. How could we make every send a (figurative) Grateful Dead lunchbox?
Solution
Sendoso was at a fortunate stage of being the leader in the space and being profitable, so it was imperative that we prepared for growth by getting the fundamentals right. I started my discovery by going right to the heart of the company and visiting the warehouse.
Impact
The reason for generic gifts was simple - they were easy, and our tech was too clunky to do custom without losing time. Starting with information architecture, I introduced practices learned from Amazon Seller Central: categories, variants, and bulk uploads, giving our support staff 8 hours back per week, and saving the business ~$200k per year
We needed to streamline fulfillment by bridging the gap between Sendoso users, and warehouse staff. I found unique perspectives in the warehouse from shipping rejections to frequent workarounds due to difficult UX that prevented self-service.
Problem
My problem to solve was defined simply as "fix fulfillment", and joining a company well on their way to success meant I could focus on optimizations for growth. It also afforded me the luxury of being able to run my full end to end design process I'd honed over my years at AmEx.
Solution
I read G2 reviews, ticket logs, did competitive analysis, ran card sorts, became an amazon seller so I could mine Seller Central for ideas. Mind maps, mental models, heuristic evals… all great stuff to do over the holidays, but the real work started when I went to the warehouse. It was clear we that users needed self-service, and supply chain needed to mitigate shipping obstacles.
Impact
By designing self-service Inventory management, and mapping the processes for API integrations, we were able to get shipping rejections down from 20% to %5. Through the Order Management System I co-designed, we decreased order fulfillment errors by 30% with built-in checks and real-time notifications.
Injecting play - our inaugural SPRINT.
At Amex, I learned that collaborative creativity could generate lots of innovative solutions very quickly, and our cross-functional team was eager to put pen to paper - with stationary delivered to their homes courtesy of Sendoso.
Problem
Our cross-functional sprints produced a wealth of ideas, but a planned migration from Vue to React meant we lacked engineering resources to implement them. This threatened to halt development of important features.
Solution
We built a React-based prototype overlay and presented it at the company all-hands meeting. By demonstrating its value, we gained buy-in from leadership, and the CTO allocated engineers to our project.
Impact
We generated 6 months worth of backlog ideas, and overcoming our resource hurdle allowed us to implement key features that enhanced the product.
The success of the self-serve UX, with inventory adds reduced from 30 mins (or not at all) to under 5 mins, allowed us to go on to our next endeavors for which we had planned to re-use the UI. My PM's idea to pre-make custom boxes had gained traction.
Problem
Clients were finding it difficult to engage their targets with generic gifts, leading to lower response rates and missed opportunities.
Solution
We developed pre-made custom gift kits that reduced shipping time from 10 to 3 days, and worked with another pod to introduce a customer research feature where human researchers helped clients choose winning gifts at scale.
Impact
Users began to see engagement and conversion rates trend upwards, and personalized gifting became a competitive advantage for Sendoso (eventually leading to their acquisition of Alyce).
As a revenue target, we were also tasked with selling more licenses. Another idea from our workshop was to gamify sales with a leaderboard and rewards - using sendoso internally for rewarding employees.
Problem
We needed to boost license sales and encourage broader adoption of the platform. User engagement was stagnating, and there was little incentive for users to fully utilize our services.
Solution
We implemented gamification features like leaderboards and rewards, and encouraged clients to use Sendoso internally for employee recognition. This made the platform more engaging.
Impact
This approach led to increased platform usage and 9% additional license sales. Clients valued the gamification features, and relied less on CSMs for education when incentivized by rewards.
The winning formula for Sales appeared to be: self-service + transparency + social + personalization. We also foresaw that integrating AI could transform personalized gifting by providing intelligent recommendations.
Problem
Our new personalization methods were effective but competitors (like Alyce) were beginning to explore AI solutions for much more tailored, personal sends.
Solution
After launching the pre-made custom gift kits and user research services, we began to collect data necessary for a future smart sending initiative.
Impact
This strategic planning allowed us to develop features iteratively, and positioned Sendoso to adopt AI technologies, ensuring we stayed ahead in the market. Our long range thinking and foundations laid by my team, contributed to the current 29% faster closes Sendoso users now experience.