From low adoption to high impact: Rebuilding trust in a Sales platform

The hidden friction limiting productivity

Stylists play a vital role in delivering the retailer’s high-touch, personalized service—but their digital tool wasn’t keeping up. Despite significant investment, adoption of the stylist app remained low as 17%. Teams on the ground continued to rely on workarounds, leaving leadership questioning whether to rebuild the tool from scratch or invest in a third-party solution.

Rather than defaulting to assumption-based decisions, I proposed a research-led approach to clarify the problem and guide a smarter investment. My goal was to understand where the current tool was breaking down—and why it wasn’t earning trust or traction with its intended users.

Uncovering the real needs behind the role

To diagnose the problem, I led a Jobs-to-Be-Done study focused on understanding what success looks like in a stylist’s day-to-day workflow—and what was getting in the way. My approach included:

• In-depth Jobs-to-be-done interviews and jobs mapping with in-store, digital, market, and top-performing stylists to identify both shared and unique needs across roles. These sessions revealed where the tool supported their work—and where it fell short.

• After interviews with stylists, I wanted to quantify how widespread the identified goals/jobs were across our stylist community. To do this, I conducted a survey with over 500+ stylists. This approach helped us validate our qualitative insights and prioritize needs that would have the most significant impact.

Key insight: Two missing functions were blocking adoption

Across all stylist types, two unmet needs surfaced as critical:

• Sales tracking: Stylists lacked visibility into their earnings and performance. Without real-time commission data, it was hard to stay motivated, measure impact, or prioritize outreach activities.
  JTBD statement: “When I'm trying to meet my sales goals,
  I want to see my commissions easily, So that I can plan my outreach and stay motivated.”
  

• Easy access to customer details: Stylists struggled to access accurate client details, preferences, and purchase history. The mobile app and internal client lookup tool often showed conflicting information, leading to mistrust in the app. As a result, stylists defaulted to older tools, adding friction to their workflow. They needed a single, reliable source of truth with the ability to quickly view and update notes for personalized service.
  JTBD Statement: “When I'm preparing for a client interaction,
  I want to quickly find and update their information, So that I can provide personalized service and build strong relationships.”

These weren’t just nice-to-haves. They were fundamental to the job—and their absence made the app unusable in the eyes of many stylists.

Turning insight into strategy

Equipped with this research, I partnered with product and business leaders to deliver a clear recommendation: whether the team chose to rebuild or buy, the next solution had to prioritize performance visibility and customer access.

These two features became north stars for the redesign, and the result was immediate—active users tripled in just four weeks, and frontline feedback showed significantly higher satisfaction and engagement.

Impact

• Active usage of the stylist tool increased 3x

• Provided clear direction on build vs. buy decisions

• Unified stakeholders around a shared understanding of stylist needs

• Strengthened trust in user-led strategy