Podium Phones
Building calls into a historically textable platform
Since its start in 2014, Podium has positioned itself as a modern texting platform. Now, after listening to customer requests for years, we needed to build in a complete phone system, and make it seem like it always belonged. Sounds like a fun challenge, right?
Here’s a quick run-down of our journey from zero to an MVP.
At the beginning of Q4, we were thrown a huge curveball. Drop everything we were doing on our current teams and build an MVP for a full-fledged calling feature in Podium—and have it ready for a December launch. This is a quick presentation of how we managed to pull that off!
Product Background
The team started as just one product manager and one designer for a whole year. They were meant to learn a little bit about the phone space and report back to the C-suite. When the execs heard about all the possibilities, they staffed the rest of the team immediately.
The objective was, and still is, to “power 100% of communications for local businesses,” so our challenge ahead was to make it seem like calling/phones were always meant to be a part of the software.
V1 KEY DECISION
Employing a pop-up window
Mirrors familiar phone call interaction patterns (i.e. an incoming call pops up, clicks “answer” to see the whole window of call options)
Enables the entire call experience to be stored in the UI without having a dedicated static page in the navigation.
Enables mobility within the desktop experience because the window is draggable and minimizable.
V1 KEY DECISION
Incorporating call actions within conversation histories
Treats texts and calls equally by storing them in the same place where users are accustomed to communicating with their customers
Provides a full timeline and history of individual customer-business interactions
Provides visibility across a business’s entire team into who makes, receives, and answers calls
V1 KEY DECISION
Crafting a clear onboarding experience
Replaces our traditionally hand-held experience of Customer Success Managers having one-on-one zoom meetings.
Ensures we’re extra clear about permissions and making the product feel accessible and safe.
Educates how users can expect to interact and trigger critical flows.
V2 FEATURES
AI-powered Summaries & Transcripts
Inspired by Grain and other comms software, we recruited the power of AI to automatically generate accurate transcripts and a bulleted summary of talking points for each phone call. From years of customer interviews, we know the one thing customers want more of is time.
These summaries allow users to quickly skim the content of calls in order to better serve their customers by always having the full context of entire conversations.
“The AI-powered transcripts and call summaries have been invaluable for coaching my front desk team and reviewing consultation calls. It’s transformed how I do business.”
Courtney Hall | COO, Imago Medical Spa
Future Iterations
Looking back, what would I want to change or improve? How could we continue to push the experience forward?
Add a free trial version of the product, so we can learn faster and with more users. (And, of course, to get folks hooked on having all their texts and calls consolidated in one easy inbox.)
Prioritize and tackle a list of the most requested post-release features, including a hold queue, warm transferring, and custom hold music.
Update and improve the Podium desk phone experience by crafting a custom UI using components from our design system.
What We Learned
There’s always a ton of lessons, big and small, in every project. Here’s just a few top of mind.
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Especially when it comes to certain permissions, like microphone input and notifications, users may meet you with an instinct of hesitation. It underscores the importance of transparent, accessible onboarding flows, including approachable language and clear expectations, to help educate and ease users into new product experiences.
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Because we were hustling so fast in Q4, it was imperative that we coordinated and (over)communciated bandwidth, timelines, and resourcing with the full-stack team. The engineers were superstars, as they helped us shirt-size, prioritize, and plan feature milestones, even under the C-suite pressure. The designer, PM, and I built the roadmap with engineers as equal and key partners in our marathon, and I believe this incredible team effort and unity is what got us to the finish line.
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I’ve always known this as a principle, but this project put it into practice. We were moving so fast that we knew it wasn’t possible to get our ideal product from the get-go. Our Figma files and roadmap spreadsheet were staying up-to-date with our hopes for V2, V3, and beyond, on both the design and engineering fronts. This was a crash course in how to deliver on deadlines while preserving the best possible UX for each version.