Softgarden(ATS)
2025
Cutting Feedback Solution activation from days to minutes without customer support
Role
Team
1x Product Manager
5x Engineers
1x Designer
1x QA
Timeline
April - July 2025
Constraints
Kununu dependency: Company name had to match exactly; automatic retrieval wasn't reliable.
Existing ATS patterns: Side panels weren't ideal for a multi-step setup, so a new modal pattern was needed.
Role
Problem area
The activation blocker
Companies wanted to publish verified feedback to build trust with candidates, but activating it required a manual, Support-led setup. Feedback sat unused for weeks, and Support carried the setup load for what was meant to be a self-service product, stalling Light Touch's Q2 OKR to remove every activation blocker.
Before: Activation depended on Support
Design goals
What I aimed to achieve
Build confidence
Give users enough control and visibility to make decisions before publishing.
Design decision 01
Turning a settings page into a guided journey
I started by walking through the current flow with the customer support to understand how they helped customers get through it. I explored two options: grouping the current feedback solution settings page and adding a checklist for keeping it simple. Both made the page clearer, but users still had to work out where to start and what to do next.
That wasn’t how support team guided them. They took users through the setup step-by-step. So I brought that guidance into the product with a step-by-step guided flow, using a centred modal and stepper to give each step a clear place and purpose.
What testing confirmed
Users could complete the setup without hands-on guidance: with intuness score of 7.75/10 for the Certificate Page, 8/10 for the Kununu connection.
Design decision 02
Making self-service discoverable from where users already looked for feedback
Customer Support used to point users to the setup, not just walk them through it. Once setup moved to self-service, that nudge disappeared too. I kept the existing entry point in Settings (1) and added a new one on the Feedback Page (2), where users already found their collected feedback. This made the setup easier to discover without changing the flow itself.
Design decision 03
Giving users control before they committed
Moving from Support-assisted setup to self-service meant users no longer had someone there to guide them. I added Save & Continue Later so users could pause when they were not ready with all the information needed, and Preview so users could review how the Certificate Page would look before publishing and catch any issues while changes were still easy to make.
"Save & continue later" button would be really useful to double-check the details and choose when the feedback should become visible, especially if I know important feedback is coming in at a certain time.
Design decision 04
Making the complex Kununu setup understandable
Kununu connection requires an exact company name match from the company's Kununu profile. My first idea was to automate this match, but developers and the PM found it technically unreliable. Instead, I focused on making the manual step clear. The input field (1) now sits alongside a short guide that shows users exactly how to find and copy their company name from Kununu (2), so they can complete the match correctly on the first try.
Learning from testing
Testing revealed users weren't sure what the connection actually did, so I clarified what it does and what they need to provide
Design Decision 05
Making the six week wait visible
Connecting Kununu wasn't the end of the process. Kununu still needed to review the feedback before publishing it, and this could take up to six weeks. Previously, Support explained this during setup, but users still came back with questions about why the connection was taking so long or why it wasn't connected yet.
I added a confirmation step that explained what had happened, what would happen next, and whether the user needed to do anything.
Learning from testing
Users wanted to understand what would happen after connecting and why the review could take so long. Making the next stage explicit helped remove that uncertainty.
Retrospective
From support guided setup to self service
Self-service isn't about removing a human from the process. It's about understanding the knowledge they provide, and deciding how much of that guidance the product needs to take over.
Before and After redesign
Impact
The last blocker, removed
146 companies published a Certificate Page and 160 completed Kununu setup, closing the last activation blocker on Light Touch's Q2 OKR
From weeks to minutes
Setup time dropped from weeks to under five minutes for both flows Median setup time: 4 min 55 sec Certificate Page · 1 min 47 sec Kununu
Fewer support tickets
No known setup-related tickets after launch, freeing the Onboarding team to focus on exceptions instead of manual setup
A pattern that scaled beyond the feature
The centred modal and stepper became a reusable pattern, adopted across other parts of the ATS
Reflection
Understanding Before Redesigning
Before touching the interface, I mapped what Support was doing that the product wasn't. That shift, from a settings problem to a guidance problem, shaped everything that followed.
Designing Within Legacy Constraints
Engineering couldn't touch the form logic, so clarity had to come from layout and sequencing alone. Working inside that limit showed me how much a good flow can carry on its own.
Thinking in Patterns, Not Just Screens
I built the modal to be reused, not just to fix one page. Seeing it adopted across the ATS changed how I scope future work.
What I would do next
01
The Kununu company name still needs a manual step because of a technical constraint. Before investing in more automation, I'd track whether it still causes errors or Support requests.
02
The next opportunity would be to explore automatic translation, as users told us it would make managing feedback in different languages easier.