Drove a 45% increase in conversions with AI sales agents
OLIV AI
This case study details how I contributed to Oliv's vision by defining workflows for its AI agents to assist Sales Managers and Sales Reps in their day-to-day work.
Image: AI reports for sales team to track every deal in the pipeline
Impact
53% increase in sales demo bookings.
~45% increase in successful signups within the first two weeks of launch.
Secured a competitive advantage by positioning Oliv as an early innovator in AI for sales.
Users & their needs
SALES MANAGER
Pain: Manually review hours of sales calls to track deal progress and forecast sales.
Consequence: Key deals slip through the cracks due to a lack of real-time visibility into the pipeline.
Need: An intelligence platform for objective data on deal health and coaching.
SALES REPS
Pain: Losing selling time to manual work like research and post-call deal updates.
Consequence: Inconsistent and delayed follow-ups, leading directly to lost deals and a leaky sales funnel.
Need: An AI assistant to automate tasks and help them focus on the sale.
Team & my role
As the founding product designer working with a small team, I worked closely with co-founders, engineers, product manager, and product marketer.
Defined AI agent tasks and their integration into user workflows.
Designed user journeys and AI interactions.
Partnered with product marketing on the go-to-market strategy and narrative.
Constraints & roadblocks
Limited budget: As a seed-funded startup, all projects required strict prioritization.
Aggressive timeline: A pressing need to launch quickly to secure a first-mover advantage.
User trust barrier: Overcoming user hesitation to grant AI agents access to sensitive sales data.
Key decisions
Create dedicated AI agents for key sales functions: deal tracking, forecasting, coaching, and task automation.
Prioritize seamless integration of the AI agents into the team's existing daily tools like Gmail, Zoom, and Slack.
Strategically reposition the product from a simple meeting recorder to an "Intelligent Deal Hub".
Design solution
PHASE 1
Realizing we solved the wrong problem
To understand why Oliv wasn't becoming a daily-use tool for our users, we began by analyzing our churn data.
"I'm still blind. Oliv gives me another recording to watch, but I still have to dig through the entire call to figure out why a deal is stalled."
- Sales Manager
"We're already using Gong. It has its own issues, but asking us to switch to another meeting recorder is a huge hassle for little additional value."
- Account Executive
"I tried the prospect research feature, but the data quality just isn't there. I have to double-check everything anyway."
- Sales Rep
"Oliv doesn't touch real time-sucking manual work; updating the CRM and deal tracking, so it doesn't really change my day."
- Sales Rep
Image: Few feedbacks from lost deals and users that helped to see the bigger picture.
My key contribution here was pushing the conversation beyond the surface level. In brainstorms, I helped the team realize that even a "perfect" meeting tool would fail if it didn't help a sales rep with their ultimate goal: moving a deal forward.
Image: An overall comparison I called out during an ideation session. It contrasts the old model (meeting focus) with the new model (deal focus), illustrating our strategic shift.
PHASE 2
The new strategy – AI agents for sales
With our new focus set, I partnered with leadership to design the Agentic Framework, a blueprint for how our AI agents collaborate.
Image: This flow map shows the Agentic Framework in action, how our AI agents collaborate to automate workflows and deliver critical sales insights.
PHASE 3
Go-to-market – Shaping the narrative
To launch AI agents, we needed a compelling story. I helped shape the narrative for our launch videos and created low-fidelity storyboards to guide the animation team. This ensured the final videos reflected the true user experience we aimed to build.
Video: It presents the Oliv as a personal assistant for sales reps to automate notes and eliminate admin work.
Video: It presents Oliv as an intelligence hub for sales managers to coach, forecast, and enforce their sales playbook
Outcome
Doubled the sales close rate for key customers, with one team reporting an increase from 25% to 50%.
Drove significant market share growth and solidified Oliv's position as a key innovator in the competitive sales tech market.
Streamlined post-call workflows leading to "less deal tracking chaos" and more time for "real, human connection".
Learnings & growth
This project was a period of immense growth, teaching me three key lessons:
The most impactful design work happens when you move beyond the UI to diagnose and solve the core business problem.
To succeed in B2B, you must solve a critical, expensive problem for the person with purchasing power (the manager), by creating a tool their team (the reps) loves to use.
Trust in AI is not a given; it must be consciously designed through transparency, clear communication, and delivering on promises.
