b.bby Design | Sunrun

Overview

The objective of this project was to improve the sales team’s ability to manage customer accounts post-signature, reducing cancellations and increasing transparency in the installation process. Through user research, iterative design, and a strong feedback loop between sales representatives and the product team, we developed a structured account management pipeline. This feature provided sales reps with a clear, real-time view of their customers’ status, outlining necessary next steps to move installations forward efficiently.

The impact of this tool was so significant that, during a transition to a new sales platform following an acquisition, sales representatives refused to adopt the new system until the account management feature was rebuilt into the new tool.

The Problem

One of the biggest issues facing the company was a high rate of cancellations after contract signing. Customers were excited to move forward initially, but many canceled before installation due to:

High costs of necessary home repairs (such as roofing updates or electrical work).
Cold feet—a reluctance to commit to a long-term agreement.
Long wait times for installation, leading to frustration and second-guessing.
Lack of visibility into the process, leaving customers unsure of what was happening next.

Sales representatives were the main point of contact for these customers, but they faced their own set of challenges:

Limited visibility into customer progress after the contract was signed.
Inefficient workflows—when customers had questions, reps had to reach out to corporate support teams, then relay information back to customers, creating long delays.
Unawareness of required actions, such as missing paperwork or scheduling requirements, which slowed the installation process.

The result was an exhausting loop of back-and-forth communication, frustrated customers, and a disjointed workflow that led to increased cancellations.

The Approach

Understanding the Two Stakeholders

Our research identified two primary groups that could benefit from an improved system:

Customers – Initial discussions explored a customer-facing journey tracker that would provide visibility into the installation process within the customer portal. However, less than 20% of customers engaged with the portal before installation, making this a less effective approach.
Sales Representatives – Since reps were already the main point of contact for customers, we decided to empower them with the right tools instead of expecting customers to seek out information on their own.

The Solution

Account Management Dashboard

We designed an internal-facing dashboard that would:

Give sales reps a real-time view of their customers’ post-signature progress.
Highlight pending actions that could move an installation forward.
Reduce the number of calls to the corporate sales concierge team by providing reps with instant access to necessary information.
Improve overall efficiency by streamlining communication between sales reps, customers, and corporate teams.

Iteration & Feedback Loop

Our design process followed a continuous feedback loop that allowed us to refine the concept over multiple iterations.

Initial Concept

The first prototype was designed as a simple, read-only interface that displayed key information about customer progress. Consisting of a sidebar with the ability to drill down in to specific stages and filter based on criteria to narrow down from the list of customers. It listed missing documents, incomplete approvals, and pending actions, helping sales reps understand roadblocks in the process.

This initial version had to be limited to read-only because the underlying data structures were not fully in place, therefore no actions could be taken on the issues displayed.

Pilot Testing

After running through a handful of usability experiments and learning that the effort required to create a working version was low, we decided to pilot this version with a small group of sales leaders to validate the usefulness of this concept. This allowed us to see how the sales reps would respond to the feature and give feedback in a low risk environment.

Findings from Pilot

Sales reps were highly people oriented, especially the good ones. A good sales rep could look at a customer's name and instantly associate that with the person and their situation.
Sales reps didn't need tasks -- they needed context. Instead of just seeing which customers were in a specific stage, reps wanted to know how those issues affected the installation timeline and what they were supposed to do about it.
Reps wanted a high level overview. Instead of detailed account info, they preferred a big-picture view showing as many customers as possible and where they were in the process. Many of the reps had used tools like Trello in the past to keep organized, but ultimately failed to maintain them due to the manual process of updating each customer when something changed.

Iteration: Rethinking Visualization

Based on pilot feedback, we redesigned the interface using a Kanban style visualization. This allowed reps to:

Quickly see where each of their customers were in the process, and kept things updated automatically when changes happened.
Identify next steps and their responsibilities. Reps could see exactly which actions were required to move an account forward and whether they were responsible for completing these activities.
Reduce unnecessary information overload. Instead of listing all accounts equally, the interface emphasized those requiring immediate attention and limited visibility to just the pertinent data points.

Iteration: Adding Functionality

Based on the feedback from the sales reps that participated in the pilot, we also introduced:

Sorting rules to organize accounts
Progressive disclosure of account details--keeping the intreface clean while allowing reps to access more details when needed.
Progress tracker to visually indicate the entire process that the customer has taken and still needs to complete.

Results

After vetting the updated design with sales leadership, we put the project into motion and launched to the remaining sales team. The impact we saw was almost immediate:

Sales reps quickly adopted the tool, as it provided immediate value to their daily workflow.
Sales support call volume dropped, as reps could now answer customer questions independently.
Reps soon requested additional functionality, indicating that they were actively using the new feature and it had become an integral part of their workflow.

Long Term Impact

The success of the account management tool extended beyond it's initial launch. It became so vital to the sales team that when the company was purchased by Sunrun, and all tools and processes were being replaced by Sunrun's systems, sales reps refused to transition until the account management feature had been rebuilt into the new platform.

This highlighted how critical this solution had become to their process--without it, their workflow would be significantly disrupted.

Unfortunately, we did not get a chance to measure exactly how much the change impacted cancellations, but the impact that was made to the sales reps confidence and efficiency was significant

A point of emphasis as we decided what to improve was that we always sought to understand the reason behind the behavior we were seeing. We accomplished this by listening to feedback from users, looking at demonstrated behaviors, and comparing them with user goals. This allowed us to determine if what we were hearing/seeing was a problem we needed to resolve, or a symptom of a deeper issue.

As we iterated through versions of the design, we focused on clarity and standardizing across our multiple platforms, ensuring that users would have a consistent experience when switching between web and mobile. In the process, we made sure to include the fun and edgy brand personality that we were trying to achieve in our marketing efforts. This allowed us to create a design language that was familiar, but also felt unique to our brand.