Bizwise

How bizwise become the backbone for
small service businesses?

How bizwise become the backbone for
small service businesses?

ROLE

Product Designer

ROLE

Product Designer

TIMELINE

May - August

2021

TIMELINE

May - August

2021

TEAM

Designer,

Engineer

CFO

TEAM

Designer,

Engineer

CFO

SKILLS

Product Design

Product Strategy

Prototyping

SKILLS

Product Design

Product Strategy

Prototyping

Overview

Overview

Small and medium-sized businesses often manage customers across fragmented tools spreadsheets, email contacts, paper lists, and lightweight CRMs. This fragmentation makes it difficult to maintain relationships, track interactions, and follow up effectively.

I led the design of a customer list management system that transformed static contact lists into a dynamic, integrated workspace. The solution automated customer creation from interactions, logged activities, and enabled SMBs to organize and nurture customer relationships more effectively.

Small and medium-sized businesses often manage customers across fragmented tools spreadsheets, email contacts, paper lists, and lightweight CRMs. This fragmentation makes it difficult to maintain relationships, track interactions, and follow up effectively.

I led the design of a customer list management system that transformed static contact lists into a dynamic, integrated workspace. The solution automated customer creation from interactions, logged activities, and enabled SMBs to organize and nurture customer relationships more effectively.

The Problem

The Problem

Research revealed that most SMBs lacked a reliable system of record for customer relationships.

Key challenges included:

  • Customer data scattered across multiple tools

  • Manual data entry and duplicate records

  • Lack of activity history or relationship insights

  • Security concerns around employee access to client data

Existing tools like payment or scheduling platforms solved only parts of the workflow but failed to support holistic customer relationship management for non-technical business owners.

Research revealed that most SMBs lacked a reliable system of record for customer relationships.

Key challenges included:

  • Customer data scattered across multiple tools

  • Manual data entry and duplicate records

  • Lack of activity history or relationship insights

  • Security concerns around employee access to client data

Existing tools like payment or scheduling platforms solved only parts of the workflow but failed to support holistic customer relationship management for non-technical business owners.

Impact & Measuring Success,

Impact & Measuring Success,

38%

38%

faster customer onboarding

faster customer onboarding

-41%

-41%

manual data entry

manual data entry

+26%

+26%

repeat customer engagement

repeat customer engagement

2.7×

2.7×

faster profile creation

faster profile creation

Research & Insights

Research & Insights

I conducted forum analysis, interviews, and competitor research to understand real workflows.

Key insights:

  • Less than 5% of SMBs used full CRMs; most relied on spreadsheets or email contacts.

  • Business owners wanted automatic customer creation from interactions (forms, emails, calls).

  • Relationship-building features—like reminders, tags, notes, and file attachments—were highly valued.

  • Employees needed limited access to prevent customer poaching.

These insights shaped a solution focused on automation, integrations, and relationship insights, rather than just contact storage.

I conducted forum analysis, interviews, and competitor research to understand real workflows.


Key insights:

  • Less than 5% of SMBs used full CRMs; most relied on spreadsheets or email contacts.

  • Business owners wanted automatic customer creation from interactions (forms, emails, calls).

  • Relationship-building features—like reminders, tags, notes, and file attachments—were highly valued.

  • Employees needed limited access to prevent customer poaching.


These insights shaped a solution focused on automation, integrations, and relationship insights, rather than just contact storage.

Design Principle

Design Principle

I led the end-to-end design process:

Systems Thinking
Designed an architecture that connected customer data with website forms, emails, calendars, and invoices


Prototyping & Testing
Conducted two rounds of usability testing using low-fidelity prototypes to validate navigation, grouping logic, and discoverability.

User Flows & Information Architecture
Mapped key workflows including:

  • Customer creation and editing

  • Activity tracking

  • Grouping & tagging

  • Importing contacts & merging duplicates

Key Design Decisions

Key Design Decisions

Automatic customer creation from inbound interactions

  • Activity timeline showing emails, appointments, and notes

  • Smart grouping and tagging for targeted outreach

  • File attachments for documents like invoices or appraisals

  • Reminders and relationship tracking (e.g., birthdays or anniversaries)

These features helped SMBs move from static lists to relationship-driven customer management.

Validation

Validation

Usability Testing, I tested the prototype with small business owners to validate:

  • customer creation flow

  • importing spreadsheets

  • navigating customer profiles

The biggest learning:

Users expected importing customers from spreadsheets to be extremely simple,
so the final design prioritized a guided import process.

Impact & Measuring Success,

Impact & Measuring Success,

38%

38%

faster customer onboarding

faster customer onboarding

-41%

-41%

manual data entry

manual data entry

+26%

+26%

repeat customer engagement

repeat customer engagement

2.7×

2.7×

faster profile creation

faster profile creation

Reflection

Reflection

This project reinforced that simplicity is often more valuable than feature depth.

While traditional CRMs optimize for sales teams, small businesses primarily need tools to remember and nurture customer relationships.

Designing around that insight led to a more focused product.

Corvette 327 emblem with crossed flags

Closing notes

Closing notes

This project honed my skills in iterative, user-centered design, revealing SMB-specific needs for seamless integrations and simplicity. Challenges like feature overload taught the importance of balance in complex ecosystems. In 2026's AI-driven landscape, I'd enhance it with auto-tagging and predictive analytics.

Key Takeaways:

  • Improved customer data centralization: Unified fragmented sources (e.g., spreadsheets, emails) into a cloud-based system for easy access and management.


  • Automated profile and activity tracking: Auto-created profiles from interactions (e.g., forms, emails) with logs for insights like visit frequency, cutting manual work.


  • Enhanced outreach and retention: Added grouping, reminders, and restricted exports for targeted engagement and lower churn via integrations.

Next Project

Next Project

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Tandem

This improved the product’s CSAT and helped drive increased buying & selling.

Early-stage SaaS

Problem Solver

Design & Prototyping

Fintech App

Tandem

This improved the product’s CSAT and helped drive increased buying & selling.

Early-stage SaaS

Problem Solver

Design & Prototyping

Fintech App