Cresta Chat Platform
Transform any agent into an expert
Vision
Enhance chat agents’ workflows and improve their performance.
Problem to be solved:
Handling multiple conversations is overwhelming, especially without visibility and consistent training.
Business need:
Demonstrate AI's effectiveness in boosting agent performance.
My role:
End-to-end design leadership and solution launch.
Outcome:
Significantly improved agent performance, becoming Cresta's first core product.
Learning:
Intuitive design reduces AI anxiety and enables seamless workflow integration.
Key Challenges
1. Closing the Performance Gap
A small elite group of agents consistently outperformed their peers while new hires faced steep learning curves. This led to a perpetual cycle of underperformance and turnover.
We needed to democratize expert insights to elevate team-wide performance.
2. Enhancing Efficiency Under Pressure
Agents juggling multiple real-time conversations experienced heavy cognitive load, leading to inconsistent performance. When focusing on one conversation, others would suffer.
We needed to optimize workflows to help agents manage this pressure while maintaining quality across all interactions.
Problems - Why did agents suffer from performance gap?
Lack of visibility
Conversations were hidden behind tabs and agents saw one chat at a time. It was easy to lose track of the other ongoing conversations.
Inefficient workflows
Lots of clicks were required to switch to a different conversation:
Click another tab
Read and catch up on context
Click the input field
Think and type out the response
No real-time coaching
Everyone was siloed in contact centers and difficult to learn from their peers. Coaching from team leads was sporadic and reactive.
Agents simply didn’t know how to be better.
UX Design Goals
Create a Simple and Intuitive Platform
Despite Cresta's advanced AI capabilities, we prioritized a natural, easy-to-use foundation. This allowed agents to focus on problem-solving rather than navigating complex interfaces.
Seamlessly Integrate AI Assistance
We incorporated real-time AI support directly into existing workflows, ensuring agents received benefits without feeling burdened by additional technology.
Solution 1: Improved Usability
General upgrade to the UI was required. Here are the main changes:
Unified Conversation View
Replaced tab-based interfaces with a single, comprehensive view of all active conversations.
This user-requested change provided better context, reduced missed interactions, and empowered agents to manage multiple chats effectively.
Personalized Workspace
Made the platform where agents spend most of their day both accessible and customizable.
Added color-coded conversations, custom chat names, notification sounds, background options, and dark mode to improve usability while creating moments of delight.
Solution 2: Real-Time AI Assistance
We provided AI assistance in two layers:
1) Suggestions: Ready-to-use responses that agents can insert and send
2) Hints: Behavioral nudges that remind agents of successful habits and strategies
Ready-to-Send Suggestions
Suggestions are placed underneath the input field and generated at the churn of each message. Agents can click a Suggestion, edit if needed, and send it away.
They were especially useful for routine tasks — greetings, information requests, acknowledgments.
Behavioral Coaching Hints
Hints appeared directly above the input field, right after the most recent message — intentionally placed to align with the agent’s natural eye flow.
Often, we paired Hints with a paired Suggestion. This way, agents would know what to do and how to do it.
Impact
Measurable Performance Gains
↑ 82% sales conversion increase
↓ Ramp up time reduced from 7 months to 5 weeks.
Foundation for Company Growth
Successfully building this solution from 0 to 1 demonstrated its transformative potential. These results propelled our expansion beyond chat to voice interactions—the dominant contact center channel.
