Designing a clearer customer success dashboard

Overview

IBM CustomerSuccess360 was built to replace an outdated legacy tool that left customer success managers (CSMs) struggling to track down key customer data across a fragmented experience.

As the lead designer, I partnered with stakeholders, product managers, and engineers to rethink the user experience. I was responsible for creating a clean, modern UI that brought together siloed data sources and made it easier for teams to monitor and act on key customer metrics.

The redesigned experience gave customer success managers a clear, unified view of their accounts, helping to spot risks faster and reduce churn.

MY ROLE

Lead UX Designer
Front-end developer

TEAM

Design
Product Owner
Development

TIME ON PROJECT

2019 - 2023

QUICK LINKS

Research
Solutions
Reflection

Context

Starting point

Users were relying on an outdated system with fragmented data. Accessing accurate customer subscription information was time-consuming, and these delays often led to customers being notified too late about overages, resulting in surprise charges, contract terminations, and poor customer experiences.

Goals

Reduce Churn

Prevent contract terminations by improving partner relationships.

Increase Efficiency

Pair contract details with usage metrics for quicker understanding of offering usage.

Provide forecasting

Use prediction models to indicate expansion or churn.

Research

Speaking with our users

Through user interviews with CSMs, I learned that their biggest challenge was how disconnected the data felt. They spent too much time switching between systems just to piece together customer subscriptions, usage, and adoption metrics. This fragmented process slowed them down and made it hard to spot risks or opportunities. From these insights, it became clear that their success depends on having a unified view of customer health.

Solutions

Subscription page

We introduced a comprehensive customer subscription page that displays a detailed entitlement list paired with customer usage metrics. Some subscription pages also offered customer health insights that predicted a customer’s future usage pattern based on previous usage patterns.

Screenshot of a software dashboard displaying customer insights and usage metrics. It shows financial analytics like potential value, actual value, and total value. A customer health insight section indicates usage decrease predictions. There's a graph illustrating usage over time, and a list of sales orders with item details and dates.

Partner page

We eventually expanded the app to monitor subscriptions for IBM partners. Users gained insights into consumption and subscription data for offerings used by IBM partners.

Screenshot of a software dashboard showing consumption history for USA Chairs Inc. Includes a bar chart of monthly usage from February to March and promotion details. Filters for programs, geography, and subscription type are on the left. Account information is displayed below the chart."

Dashboard showing cloud deployment data for USA Chairs Inc, including phases of deployment and categories like Cloud Pak for Automation, Biz Automation, Data, Integration, and Security, with global distribution and target platform OpenShift.

Reflection

The feedback from customer success managers was super positive. They finally had a tool that gave them a clear, at-a-glance view of their accounts. It helped them walk into customer conversations more prepared and better able to offer support that actually made a difference.

By giving CSMs the insights they needed, the tool helped reduce churn. Teams could spot red flags earlier, focus on the right customers, and build stronger relationships. Overall, it made their jobs easier and more impactful, and that’s exactly what we set out to do.