Background

Compass is a technology-driven real estate platform dedicated to creating a seamless and intelligent home buying, selling, and renting experience. Combining the country’s top agents, proprietary market insights, and integrated mobile and web technologies, Compass is developing the future of real estate decision-making. Compass has locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, Malibu, Santa Barbara and the Hamptons, and has raised $125 million in investor capital with a valuation of more than $800 million. For information on Compass and to peruse more than $1 billion in exclusive Compass listings, visit www.compass.com.

Project Background

Compass focuses around cross-functional product and communication design was critical to the future of the business. In order to provide design and marketing services that exceed agents expectations and build products focused on adding value to their day-to-day, it was important to align the design teams while still giving autonomy to each. In real estate world, agents use email more than any other tool to manage their business, but email was not designed to be a CRM and information could easily get lost and hard to manage. They need a method of managing data from users, so that they can more efficiently help the user find the perfect home.

Understanding Business Objective

Compass is dedicated to addressing this issue through user-driven design and incremental innovation. Our goal is to develop an efficient data management system that can systematically manage client information, reducing the risk of information loss, thereby significantly improving agents’ work efficiency. By continuously gathering feedback from agents, we ensure that every feature addresses real work pain points, enhancing user experience. We believe in incremental improvements that better serve users; therefore, we optimize based on existing workflows rather than completely changing how agents work, gradually introducing new features to lower the learning curve and facilitate smooth adoption of the system.

Compass highly values its agents, viewing their success as the cornerstone of the company’s success. By providing a powerful and user-friendly system, we not only enhance agents’ work efficiency but also increase their job satisfaction and loyalty. Through interdisciplinary team collaboration, combining the expertise of real estate professionals and technical personnel, we ensure the system’s innovation and practicality. The system will seamlessly integrate with existing Compass products, forming a complementary product ecosystem that increases user engagement and work efficiency.

We emphasize high-quality product experience, ensuring the system is both powerful and user-friendly, with an attractive visual appeal. Through continuous support and optimization, we ensure the system can consistently meet agents’ needs, helping them achieve their personal career goals. The success of agents directly drives the overall strategic value of the company, enhancing market competitiveness and brand reputation, further solidifying Compass’s leading position in the market. The realization of these business objectives will help Compass further strengthen its market leadership and provide superior services to agents and clients

Product Objectives Break Down

Optimize Existing Workflows
- Optimize based on existing workflows rather than completely changing how agents work. Gradually introduce new features to lower the learning curve and facilitate smooth adoption of the system.
Systematize and Automate Information
- Develop features to extract and systematize important information from emails, automatically categorizing and organizing client data to reduce manual management time and errors, thus improving the efficiency of the CRM system.
Enhance User Interface and Experience
- Design an intuitive user interface that allows agents to quickly get started and efficiently use the CRM system, while ensuring it has an attractive visual appeal.
Integrate with Existing Tools and Data Sources
- Ensure the system supports seamless integration with existing email clients, CRM systems, and other related tools, ensuring data consistency and smooth transitions between different tools.
Strengthen Agents' Personal Brand
- Provide tools and features to help agents better showcase and promote their personal brand, such as personalized marketing materials, social media integration features, and client review systems, enhancing their competitiveness in the market.

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Before Agreement Contract

Clients come from diverse channels, such as workplace, social media, and referal. Thus, communication channels can be hard to manage, which include phone call, face-to-face meeting, social media platforms, and emails.
When meeting clients for the first time, agents need to build rapport and display personal branding to win trust and sign the contract. Thus, getting everything prepared is important to save the time interviewing.
Agents need to track the communication frequency and the current stage with their clients, ensuring prospects receive the help they need.

After Agreement Contract

Agents have to be familiar with the procedures and contracts. When signing agreement contracts with clients, agents have to explain terms and their services clearly. Then, agents have to walk through the purchasing or selling procedures with their clients, which could be challenging for beginners.
Buyer agents face difficulty of finding the fit efficiently. They have to figure out clients’ requirements and they may even help out by asking the right questions. Then, they have to search through the listings to find the match. How the listings are categorized and searched affects efficiency.
Sharing and communicating listings is troublesome for the both ends. When sharing listings through email, agents have to find and zip the photos. After clients unzip the photos and review, agents face a hard time refering when receiving feedback from clients.
Seller agents face difficulty of displaying the houses in an aesthetic manner. High quality photos, videos, flyers can affect how clients feel about properties, making people more insterested in vising the site. In contrast, bad lighting or words selection can prevent people from going the next step.

Property Transaction

After clients have found the perfect fit and signed the contract, agents have to go through the procedures. Agents face the challenge of communication and coordination between different parties. Since different steps involve different parties, such as seller and buyer agents, sellers and buyers, appraisers, inspectors, etc., agents need to coordinate time and schedules. They also need to keep everyone in the loop to ensure smooth transactions.
Agents face the challenge of time management and tasks management. Since certain tasks need to be completed within deadlines, they need to track progress and solve emerging problems to carry on the transaction.

Background

Related Reading

Project Background

Understanding Business Objective

Product Objectives Break Down

Optimize Existing Workflows

Optimize based on existing workflows rather than completely changing how agents work. Gradually introduce new features to lower the learning curve and facilitate smooth adoption of the system.

Systematize and Automate Information

Develop features to extract and systematize important information from emails, automatically categorizing and organizing client data to reduce manual management time and errors, thus improving the efficiency of the CRM system.

Enhance User Interface and Experience

Design an intuitive user interface that allows agents to quickly get started and efficiently use the CRM system, while ensuring it has an attractive visual appeal.

Integrate with Existing Tools and Data Sources

Ensure the system supports seamless integration with existing email clients, CRM systems, and other related tools, ensuring data consistency and smooth transitions between different tools.

Strengthen Agents' Personal Brand

Provide tools and features to help agents better showcase and promote their personal brand, such as personalized marketing materials, social media integration features, and client review systems, enhancing their competitiveness in the market.

Before Agreement Contract

Clients come from diverse channels, such as workplace, social media, and referal. Thus, communication channels can be hard to manage, which include phone call, face-to-face meeting, social media platforms, and emails.

When meeting clients for the first time, agents need to build rapport and display personal branding to win trust and sign the contract. Thus, getting everything prepared is important to save the time interviewing.

Agents need to track the communication frequency and the current stage with their clients, ensuring prospects receive the help they need.

After Agreement Contract

Agents have to be familiar with the procedures and contracts. When signing agreement contracts with clients, agents have to explain terms and their services clearly. Then, agents have to walk through the purchasing or selling procedures with their clients, which could be challenging for beginners.

Buyer agents face difficulty of finding the fit efficiently. They have to figure out clients’ requirements and they may even help out by asking the right questions. Then, they have to search through the listings to find the match. How the listings are categorized and searched affects efficiency.

Sharing and communicating listings is troublesome for the both ends. When sharing listings through email, agents have to find and zip the photos. After clients unzip the photos and review, agents face a hard time refering when receiving feedback from clients.

Property Transaction

Agents face the challenge of time management and tasks management. Since certain tasks need to be completed within deadlines, they need to track progress and solve emerging problems to carry on the transaction.