Media Inquiries
At Presspage, we noticed the challenges corporate communication professionals face when dealing with a high volume of incoming inquiries. The current process of managing inquiries through excel, notepad, or email inboxes can be overwhelming and time-consuming, causing teams to lack insights on the status, responsibilities, and impact of each inquiry. With this in mind, we set out to design a media inquiries tool that would streamline the process and enable corporate communicators to focus on what matters most. The final solution integrates seamlessly with other Presspage products, making the inquiry process more efficient and effective. By reducing the workload associated with incoming inquiries, Presspage is empowering corporate communicators to work more efficiently and focus on the things that matter.
Communication professionals lack an efficient and effective method for managing media inquiries.
I assisted the Product Manager with conducting initial market research to evaluate the current landscape of inquiry management tools. The goal was to understand the features and functionalities of existing tools and determine if we could offer a better solution. Additionally, we reached out to our clients to gather insights on their current process for managing inquiries, including the volume they receive and any challenges they face. This research helped to inform our design strategy and ensure that our solution effectively addresses the needs of our target audience.
Based on the insights gathered, there was a clear opportunity to design a media inquiry tool that addresses the challenges faced by users in managing inquiries. Our research showed that users experience a range of difficulties managing inquiries, and a media inquiry tool has the potential to greatly improve their efficiency and effectiveness. Although there are already several media inquiry tools available in the market, none of them offer the comprehensive capabilities that Presspage provides. By integrating media inquiry management into a workflow, Presspage offers a unique solution that can be seamlessly integrated with other products, such as CRM, to provide a complete and effective solution for managing media inquiries.
I was excited to be part of the first project at Presspage where we decided to embrace an Agile development process. The goal was to have a first version of the media inquiry tool ready for users to use in a matter of just 3 to 6 sprints, each lasting 2 weeks. It was acknowledged that not every issue users were facing with managing inquiries could be resolved within this timeline, but the development team and I worked closely together to prioritize and determine what could be accomplished with the least effort and have the greatest impact. The result of this collaboration was the decision to make the first version of the media inquiry tool a logging tool. This would allow customers to manually log incoming inquiries into the tool, providing a valuable solution for those who currently rely on tools such as Excel or their email inboxes.
It's essential to prioritize user feedback and stakeholder input in the design process. We started with a minimal viable product (MVP) design, gradually adding functionality based on user and stakeholder feedback. The first production version was a logging tool, which was well received by a couple of users. Our sales team also noticed an increasing interest from potential clients in our media inquiry product. Based on user feedback, we learned that users who haven't yet used the tool wanted the ability to respond to inquiries directly in the tool. This valuable feedback has informed our next iteration, which will focus on incorporating this feature. Our goal is to continually improve the user experience by listening to and acting on user feedback.
