Reducing operational load on Account Executives to enable strategic growth
ENERGY INDUSTRY
An energy company operating in the free energy market (the alternative to the regulated market) had relied for years on account executives who managed client relationships in an operational, highly hands-on manner. They were deeply involved in customers’ day-to-day activities and needs. However, as the company’s client portfolio grew, this hands-on approach became unsustainable and hindered scalability.
Based on this scenario, the following question guided the discovery process:
Account executives are responsible for cultivating and maintaining client relationships, addressing immediate client needs, and proactively identifying new business opportunities.
Understanding possible future scenarios was essential to defining the preferred role of Account Executives and avoiding a probable future shaped largely by current behavior.
If we do not create the conditions to support the future we want for the Account Executive role, we risk drifting into a probable future driven by the natural progression of existing behavior, rather than the future we prefer for the role.
Operational and reactive, focused on the past and present.
Account Executives concentrated on clients’ past and present needs by helping them navigate and resolve the day-to-day bureaucratic challenges of the free energy market.
Strategic and opportunity-focused, oriented toward the future.
In this role, Account Executives focus on the future by analyzing each customer’s energy portfolio and consumption to identify opportunities that drive financial gains for the customer.
As Product Design Lead, I:
Defined the discovery strategy and experiment plan, aligned with the Product Manager and business objectives;
Guided two designers in conducting interviews, prototyping, and concept tests, providing technical direction based on the research plan;
Managed design handoff to ensure smooth collaboration with development teams.
We proposed a three-week discovery phase centered on concept testing to address the main question through three key stages:
Empathizing with Account Executives to understand the problem;
Internal ideation and prototyping;
Concept testing with clients.
🧪 THE VALUE OF TESTING CONCEPTS
Concept testing was at the core of the discovery process. We used low-fidelity prototypes, developed from the ideation stage, to drive conversations and gain insights. These prototypes served as conversation triggers to explore the problem from the user’s perspective, going beyond the limitations of the prototypes themselves.
To start the discovery phase, we conducted three exploratory interviews with Account Executives to understand the context and the problems of their current role.
By analyzing the results, the team identified a key behavioral pattern in how clients interact with Account Executives.
To address the framed hypothesis, the team conducted ideation sessions using the Crazy 8s method to generate a wide range of diverse ideas that the product team could implement. These ideas were then prioritized by the design team, together with Product Managers and tech leads, using a matrix that evaluated potential user impact against development effort.
In the third stage, the team conducted one-on-one interviews to test concepts using prototypes with users. The goal was to gain a deeper understanding of the problem by guiding the conversation through these concepts.
6 Interviews for concept testing with clients.
4 Analysis sessions to convert insights into actionable next steps.
Throughout the process, the team developed a roadmap of validated ideas, prioritized based on user pain points against minimal development effort. These ideas were classified into three categories: NOW, NEXT, and LATER.
As a NOW action, we defined a predictive solution to proactively inform clients in advance through a simple, bi-weekly email. This email could significantly reduce the need for users to reach out to account executives directly.
Using concept prototypes to foster conversations proved to be a quick and effective way to gain deeper insight into user pains, opportunities, and how to address them.
Without a strong product culture, design improvements often lose out to technical work in the backlog, so usability never gets better. To avoid this, I worked closely with the Product Manager to turn discovery insights into clear, prioritized backlog items, ensuring design recommendations were actually implemented instead of being continuously deferred.