Empowering Customers with Self-Service Pricing Benchmarks

Overview

In February 2024, Tropic tasked our team with creating a self-service tool for customers to generate pricing benchmark reports for SaaS products. This project aimed to reduce manual workload for staff and improve customer experience.

As Senior Product Designer, I led UX design efforts, collaborating closely with the product manager and development team.

The Problem

Tropic's customer success managers were overwhelmed with manually creating pricing benchmark reports. Customers faced 1-2 day waits, sometimes longer, for crucial information.

Our primary goal was to reduce manual labor for Tropic staff, provide customers with secure, simple self-service access to data, so that we could retain key business accounts.

Research

We interviewed Tropic staff and customers to understand existing interactions and customer needs. Lo-fi wireframes were shared to gauge interest in a self-service tool.

Research revealed:

- Long wait times for data delivery
- Lack of personalization in existing reports
- Strong customer interest in self-service benchmarking
- Similar offerings from competitors

Design Process

Using the "Shape Up" methodology, we:

- Discussed the problem, potential solutions, and scope with team leaders
- Worked in low fidelity, sharing concepts internally and with beta users
- Identified key interaction points and crucial data for users
- Found users primarily needed this feature for contract renewals

We designed an interaction where users could:

- Visit a supplier's page and initiate a benchmark report "order form"
- Specify purchase details (product, quantity, cost)
- View their pricing relative to median values
- See a gauge visualizing their percentile
- Access additional metrics and negotiation recommendations

Implementation

I worked with the product and engineering managers to scope the project, breaking down tasks and acceptance criteria in Tropic's project management tool.

Rapid changes were sometimes needed based on diverse feedback. I worked to minimize engineering changes while meeting presentation requirements.

Results

- High adoption and praise from beta users, especially procurement and finance leaders
- Significant increase in customer retention
- Marked decrease in requests for custom benchmark reports

"We've been able to leverage Price Checks, which has been really helpful to us."
_{- CFO @ B2B SaaS company}

The feature has since continued to become a primary experience available to all Tropic users. It has expanded beyond its initial entry point, and has been upgraded to a 'first class experience', becoming a core component of Tropic's Procurement Intelligence product.

Reflection

This project reinforced the value of user-centered design and iterative testing. In hindsight, earlier research and more customer feedback could have guided the solution better. Using data to support design decisions could have reduced the need for rapid adjustments, easing the burden on engineering partners.