Screenshot of Ship Smart central vendor dashboard on a laptop screen, displaying metrics, job statuses, invoices, revenue, and various charts and tables related to shipment and vendor performance.

Ship Smart Central

Cross‑Department Dashboard that Turned Transparency into Trust

Overview

Ship Smart helps people move across the U.S. and internationally using trusted third-party vendors. But without a centralized system, customers were constantly left in the dark. Support was flooded with “Where is my shipment?” calls, and Sales, Ops, and vendors weren’t aligned.

I led the design of Ship Smart Central, a vendor dashboard and automated email tracking system that provided real-time updates to all stakeholders (vendors, support, and customers) in one place. The result: fewer support tickets, 92% vendor update compliance, and a measurable increase in customer satisfaction.

KPI’s & Improvements

•$5.86 saved per support call

•↓ 60% in support calls about status

•↓ 40% in email follow-up requests

•↑ 17% in CSAT

•↑ 92% vendor email update compliance

•Improved on-time pickups & packing

•Better sales commissions through expectation alignment

Role: Lead UX & Product Designer

Responsibilities: Research, Visual Design, Systems Thinking, Cross-Functional Collaboration & Prototyping

Timeline: 12 Months

Tools: Figma, Send Grid, Jira

Final Design

My Process

Design Question

How might we keep customers informed and confident throughout their move without requiring them to contact support for basic shipment updates?

The image features a man and a woman sitting at a table outdoors, enjoying a meal with drinks in front of them. The man is raising a glass, and the woman is holding hers up in a toast. They are smiling, and the setting appears to be a sunny day in a garden or patio area.

Research & Discovery

I did a deep dive into every part of the customer journey:

  • Reviewed 160+ hours of support calls

  • Shadowed support as an interim manager

  • Audited vendor fulfillment threads

  • Mapped quote → pickup → delivery workflows

  • Interviewed Stakeholders

  • Benchmarked top competitors in shipping/tracking UX

Bar chart displaying the declining popularity of different music genres, with the most popular genre on the left and the least popular on the right.

49% of questions were about status.

80% of all customer inquiries are based on the same 30 questions.

21% were follow-ups due to a lack of communication.

Customer Support Questions By Category

Voice of Customer

Hand holding a laptop with a financial chart on the screen.
Collection of online customer reviews with ratings, review dates, and comments on various topics such as delivery issues, product experience, and customer service, displayed in a grid layout.

Customer Question Patterns

Flowchart diagram illustrating a logistics tracking process, including steps like direct tracking request, pickup status, timeline questions, delivery status, and general questions, with associated example inquiries for each stage.

The issue wasn’t complexity; it was predictability. Customers didn’t understand where their items were or when they would arrive, and support couldn’t keep up.

Key Insights

Inconsistent Experience

Operational Strain

Lead Loss & System Failures

Breakdowns in Trust

Support Overload

Unclear Timeline

Customer Journey Mapping

A detailed infographic illustrating a user engagement process in four stages: Engagement Funnel, Conversion Path, Order in Progress, and Completion & Feedback. It includes icons representing timing, emotions, and communication, as well as a line graph tracking user engagement over 30 days with key insights and opportunities highlighted.

Mapped quote → pickup → delivery and found:

  • Most stress happened after pickup

  • Wait times were unpredictable

  • Communication gaps caused support escalations

Service Blue Print

Supply chain process flowchart divided into four phases: Signup, Active, Post, and a prior phase. It outlines user actions, front-stage activities, back-stage activities, and system flaws, with color-coded notes and alerts indicating potential issues.

Mapped every tool and handoff. Found misalignment between vendor input, internal tools, and customer updates.

Group Brainstorm

Whiteboards filled with colorful sticky notes and handwritten notes organizing a project workflow, including stages like 'Schedule Pickup,' 'Dispatch Shipment,' 'Send Invoice,' and 'Receive Payment,' with diagrams and annotations about team communication and customer onboarding, in an office setting with windows and natural light.

Brought together Support, Ops, Sales, and Vendors to identify pain points and prioritize solutions through:

  • Dot voting

  • Affinity mapping

  • Theme Discovery

  • Cross-silo problem breakdowns

How Might We

Flowcharts outlining tracking inquiries, vendor communication breakdown, customer onboarding, and disconnected teams with problems, HMW questions, and ideas in color-coded sticky notes.

We grouped pain points into themes and reframed them into questions:

  • HMW help vendors update without delay?

  • HMW show customers shipment progress without needing support?

  • HMW reduce friction at final billing?

Solution Cluster

Flowchart depicting solutions for tracking vendor shipments, including email updates, structured submission forms, shared dashboards, vendor portals, and notifications for policy changes.

We grouped similar HMW solutions and found the missing piece: we needed a shared infrastructure to connect vendor progress with internal and customer communication. This insight became the backbone of Ship Smart Central, which includes:

  • Vendor Job Cards

  • Discrepancy Alerts

  • Triggered Emails

Strategy & Ideation

Whiteboard filled with handwritten notes, diagrams, and sticky notes, related to project planning and app development, with sections in black, red, purple, and yellow ink.

I began with a straightforward goal: to reduce the support load and improve customer confidence. Through collaborative discovery, including journey mapping and stakeholder alignment, we realized the real problem was bigger: There was no shared system to track shipments.

Touchpoint Mapping

A detailed flowchart of an email workflow process, including steps for web estimate, chat, phone, and various stages of order processing, customer engagement points, and end points, with color-coded boxes representing different email sequences and process statuses.

I mapped every email touchpoint and template from estimate to delivery to ensure customers received proactive updates triggered directly by vendor activity. No more manual follow-ups. No more guessing.

Final Design

Laptop displaying a shipping company's vendor dashboard with charts, job listings, and analytics

Results & Business Impact

Ship Smart Central unifies Support, Sales, and Vendors in one system.

It is a cross-departmental dashboard that formed the foundation of a better service model, reducing manual communication, cutting support tickets, increasing efficiency, and rebuilding customer trust.

KPI’s & Improvements

•$5.86 saved per support call

•↓ 60% in support calls about status

•↓ 40% in email follow-up requests

•↑ 17% in CSAT

•↑ 92% vendor email update compliance

•Improved on-time pickups & packing

•Better sales commissions through expectation alignment

Collection of customer reviews about a shipping or logistics service, with star ratings, dates, and reply comments, including positive feedback about service quality and communication.

What I Learned

This project changed how I think about UX. I learned that internal tools are just as crucial as customer-facing design because when backend systems fail, the customer experience suffers. Real impact happens behind the scenes, where alignment, systems thinking, and trust are built.

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