In-app Messaging
Project GoalsEnables customers to message Fleet’s operations pros directly from the platform to get vital shipment updates, verify information and send documents.
To eliminate email coversations and phone calls. To have one place where all important shipment questions and information is shared that the whole operation team and customer’s team is in the know.
To eliminate email coversations and phone calls. To have one place where all important shipment questions and information is shared that the whole operation team and customer’s team is in the know.
My RoleI was the sole designer on the team. I worked closely with the PM to figure out the required needs of the project from the user’s standpoint.
I was responsible for determining the overall design and user interaaction of the project.
I was responsible for determining the overall design and user interaaction of the project.
Design Challenges I researched standard messaging apps so that the feature was natural to use.
This was added to two different product lines so the designs had to fit within each of their UI pattern libraries.
What made for a challenge, is that the messaging needed to be Shipment based and not a simple chat box.
This was added to two different product lines so the designs had to fit within each of their UI pattern libraries.
What made for a challenge, is that the messaging needed to be Shipment based and not a simple chat box.
1st Month Feature Usuag
1,434
messages sent
17%
of shipments had a message
43%
of customers sent a message
messages sent
17%
of shipments had a message
43%
of customers sent a message
2nd Month Feature Usuage
37%
more messages sent
32% more shipments had a message
15% more customers sent a message
more messages sent
32% more shipments had a message
15% more customers sent a message
4th Month Feature Usuage
8,857
messages sent
67% of customers actively using messaging
messages sent
67% of customers actively using messaging
Real Time Messaging?
This feature was not a chat client with a person always on the other end. So how do we let the user know that? How do we set the expectations of how quickly the user will get a response?Ideas
Do we have a refresh button for the user? Does the page refresh it’s self so often to check for a new message? Those all seem overkill for we know that the operations person could take hours to reply.Soluton
Added a please note about response time to the bottom of the message thread to inform them about the fact that this is not instant messaging.We added alerts through out the site when a new message gets added so that they can keep going about their job. This was adding a new message column to the shipment list. I also designed for the message tab to get a red icon when there is an unread message.
Users were also emailed about a new message where they could read the message and click to go back to the Fleet site to reply to the message.
Deleting a message?
Should we give the ability for users to delete a message? Text messaging does not have delete. But Slack does have delete? How far back can user be able to delete a message? What would be the use cases for needing to delete a message vs correcting a message?Soluton
Allow the user to delete a newly sent message. If another person replies to the message - the older messages cannot be deleted.For messages that can be deleted: show a trash icon with “Delete” next to it that disappears when message no longer can be deleted. Show a confirmation dialog about deleting the message. This was in sync with the pattern of the site - confirm delete action.
Admin’s view of messaging
