Successful customer onboarding relies on a smooth transition from sale to product usage. Arrows, a company that helps B2B companies that run on HubSpot win more deals with digital sales rooms and onboard customers faster with collaborative onboarding plans, has made significant strides in this area by leveraging HubSpot's UI extensions. Arrows' new app cards bring real-time interactivity directly to a CRM record.
The Challenge: Navigating HubSpot's Legacy CRM Cards
Before the advent of HubSpot's UI extensions, Arrows was already deeply integrated with HubSpot. The company used CRM cards to provide key information about onboarding plans directly within HubSpot. However, these CRM cards had limitations. Matt Swanson, CTO of Arrows, said, "The legacy CRM cards didn't give us a lot of flexibility for people to use them in their own workflows and processes." They could only reside in the right-hand sidebar, which restricted how customers could use them in their workflows. Moreover, the static nature of these cards made it difficult for Arrows to provide the dynamic, interactive experience their users needed.
Arrows also faced challenges in maintaining a seamless user experience. While they wanted their app to feel like a natural extension of HubSpot, there was a fine line between making their interface look native and ensuring users understood which platform they were interacting with. This created a need for careful design and frequent updates to stay aligned with HubSpot’s evolving styles.
The Solution: Embracing HubSpot’s UI Extensions
With the introduction of HubSpot's app cards built with UI extensions, Arrows saw an opportunity to address these challenges. The new extensions offered more flexibility, and because they are built using the popular programing language React they allowed Arrows to build a richer, more interactive experience directly within HubSpot. This included the ability to use forms, panels, and multi-screen flows, which significantly enhanced the user experience.
One of the major benefits of the UI extensions was the ability to place Arrows’ features in multiple surface areas within HubSpot including contact records, side bar, and help desk. "The new UI extensions are opening up a lot of new possibilities for us to build more flows directly in HubSpot," Swanson said. It made us go back to the drawing board and say, 'Oh, how would we structure our extension now from a HubSpot-first perspective?'"
This flexibility meant that Arrows could tailor its product to fit various customer workflows more effectively, without forcing users to conform to a single process. This was especially helpful for customers who had established workflows and were reluctant to change them.
The Impact: Streamlined Onboarding and New Possibilities
The new UI extensions not only streamlined existing processes but also opened up new possibilities for Arrows. For example, Arrows could now create more specialized extensions that catered to specific customer needs, such as a data table that tracks form submissions within the onboarding process. This was a significant improvement over the previous setup, where users had to navigate away from HubSpot to access certain features.
Arrows’ team, which had primarily worked with Ruby on Rails, adapted quickly to the new, more JavaScript-heavy environment of UI extensions. Despite initial concerns, the development process was smooth, and the team appreciated how the extensions allowed them to build without needing to bring in external libraries. Regarding using a new language, Swanson said, "HubSpot has done a good job of pairing it down to the basics for what you need."
The Future: Expanding and Refining the Integration
As Arrows prepares to roll out its new UI extension-powered app cards to customers, the team is optimistic about the potential benefits. The integration is expected to reduce the onboarding time for new users and make it easier for customers to manage their onboarding processes directly within HubSpot. The team is also looking forward to quickly implementing upcoming UI extensions functionality to enhance the user experience even further.
By making their integration more intuitive and powerful, they hope to increase adoption among HubSpot users and make their product even more indispensable to their customers.
A New Era of Customer Onboarding
For Arrows, UI extensions have marked the beginning of a new era. The increased flexibility and functionality have allowed the company to rethink and refine its product, offering a more seamless and powerful onboarding experience. As they continue to roll out these new features, Arrows is poised to help more companies achieve smoother, faster onboarding, ultimately driving greater customer success.
With over 60% of their plans already being created through HubSpot’s platform, Arrows' app cards are being widely adopted by users. And as they continue to innovate, the possibilities for what they can achieve within HubSpot’s ecosystem are virtually limitless.
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