PART : 2
Don’t Make Me Call
Why share this study?
The genesis of this project was purely a grassroots effort, initiated by the PM and me. Convincing stakeholders of our vision wasn’t easy, but starting with research gave me the confidence that building a new platform for guests would be a positive direction for the company.
Looking back now, I’m incredibly proud of the little space we created on the internet—equal parts beautiful and functional. When we first released what we internally called Project Splash, its scope and utility were relatively simple. Yet, over the span of two years, with a small but mighty scrum team, we steadily added self-serve features for reservations, cancellations, and billing. It’s been deeply rewarding to watch this project grow!
Product strategy alignment Lean UX principles Information architecture User flows Wireframing
The quick take (tldr version)
Company
Evolve is a property management company specializing in short term rentals, responsible for all the digital aspects of management such as dynamic pricing, listing maintenance and 24/7 guest support.
Problem
Evolve’s transactional emails, which contained essential information to help guests prepare for their vacations, were getting buried inside inboxes. Even when opened, it was evident that people were struggling to find what they needed, as reflected by the increased volume of calls to our customer service team.
Solution
We leveraged SMS to direct guests to a new web-based app with all the necessary pre-stay information.
Result
In 2024 alone, we saw over 1 million unique visitors to Project Splash. By continuously layering in self-service functionality, we significantly reduced the manual workload for our customer service team—the time savings were equivalent to the work of six full-time employees.
Latest iteration of Splash now dubbed ‘Trip Hub’
The full length version
Background
Imagine you’re planning a beach vacation for your extended family, and at the last minute, your sister decides to bring her new French bulldog—adorable, yes, but now you need to figure out if Ovenmitt* is even allowed to stay at the property. Is there a fee? Do you pay through the booking website or this management company Evolve? This was just one example of common scenarios guests ran into that ultimately led to a phone call.
To reduce call and email volume while empowering guests to manage their own bookings, I proposed building a new web-based application delivered via SMS. This new experience would be integrated with Salesforce, where all our property data is stored. The goal was to make it easy to scan, optimized for mobile, and designed to accommodate additional functionality as our team expanded.
*I really want a French bulldog just to name him Ovenmitt. I know it’s two words, but as a proper noun, it looks better as one.
Negotiations
Some of our customer service partners were concerned that sending automated messages to guests could lead to unanswered questions and ultimately more calls to Evolve. To alleviate these fears, we negotiated to run our solution as a test for 90 days on 1,500 properties only—this being less than 15% of our overall portfolio. We felt this would give us ample data to prove our hypothesis.
Assembling the mvp
I began the design process by reviewing the listing object inside Salesforce. This was the content we would use to populate the page. Since adding new content was outside the scope of our MVP, the design process was relatively speedy.
Screenshot of Salesforce listing object, data is all currently entered manually
Once in Figma, I divided the page into three distinct sections: the top introduced our brand and our affiliation with the booking site, the middle section highlighted essential check-in details, and the bottom section had multiple accordion-style drawers to house all other relevant property information. After doing some light usability testing with internal teammates, I shared the completed designs with the larger stakeholder group and handed them off to development.
A/B testing
Now that our new app, internally referred to as the Splash* page, was ready for production, we decided to experiment with the timing of our SMS messages. The first text was sent immediately after the booking was confirmed, while the second message was divided into 3 send groups:
3 days before check-in
1 day before check-in
Morning of check-in
Success was measured by open rates and the volume of guest calls/emails received. To ensure a diverse representation, the data science team selected a random sample of properties from various locations across the U.S. for both the treatment and control groups.
*Named for ‘diving’ into SMS since we were the first team to do so on both guest, owner, and partner sides. Totally corny, I know!
Post launch buzz
After launching our experiment, I wanted to maintain the project’s momentum—but not in a predictable way. Why not gamify the data as it came in? I created a trivia game using Slack, where I’d post Splash-related questions in our RASCI channel, assign point values for correct answers, and award a $100 Amazon gift card to the person with the highest score at the end of the experiment. Here’s a screenshot of one of the questions I posed.
Results after 90 days
After completing the experiment, we discovered some promising results but also encountered some frustrating findings. Our customer service team had implemented a new third-party tool that, unbeknownst to us, disrupted our ability to link calls to guests who received our Splash link. This data kerfuffle was a hand-to-forehead moment for the team, but we had to give each other some grace—situations like these are not uncommon when product, marketing, and CX are focused on different agendas and moving fast.
What we did know is that people emailing questions during their trip planning phase was reduced by 37%. Results also indicated that receiving a text, whether or not they clicked on the link, deterred emails and calls. The overall click through rate was impressive at 63%.We also ran a Hotjar survey on the Splash page to get qualitative feedback from guests. Out of 258 responses we received roughly a 90% satisfaction rate.
Despite the data not providing us with a perfect story (I was hoping for calls volume to drop off a cliff and everyone to sing our team's praises) we still felt confident to release the Splash page to our entire portfolio of properties.
Iterations
This case study highlights the MVP version of the Splash page. Since its initial launch, we’ve implemented several iterations. Guests can now cancel bookings, update payment information, adjust booking dates, and modify guest details directly through the platform. Additionally, I’ve integrated new branding and incorporated components from our updated design system.
What began as a simple concept has evolved into Trip Hub*—a comprehensive self-service solution that enhances the guest experience while reducing operational overhead.
*Trip Hub is the new external-facing name for the Splash page! We held a naming contest (of course) where our Customer Service partners submitted ideas, then had the entire company vote on the finalists using Slack.
Parent page: Trip details
Child page: Update payment
Child page: Change reservation
Child page: Cancel reservation