A little over a year ago, Truly set out to reimagine making phone calls from a computer.
Truly’s differentiator has always been a best-in-class mobile experience and a lightweight chrome extension that makes calls out of your CRM. However, as our users have grown more sophisticated with their workflow, we realized we needed to build something that increased their momentum on desktop. Sales and support teams live and die by their ability to have quality conversations over the phone and our “bolt on” approach was no longer cutting it. It was time to build a first-class experience for our desktop users.
The first iteration of our app did a lot of things right. It brought Truly outside of the browser window and enhanced reliability by making sure calls weren’t affected by hiccups in your browser. We were able to add powerful new features that were not feasible in a chrome extension format. The app also gave users a small heads up display (HUD) that would allow them to take call notes alongside their CRM window. Lastly, it provided a consistent desktop experience to our users on Mac and Windows.
But, after spending countless hours with users over the last year, it was clear we could do better.
Here are some of our key findings:
- Users needed more flexibility: While some users need a compact version of the app that operates alongside their CRM, others want something a little more luxurious with plenty of room to take notes on longer calls.
- Death by context switching: The dialer HUD, while well intentioned, was causing fatigue for users who made a lot of calls every day because they had to switch between windows.
- The rise of the warm transfer: Our Switchboard functionality had become a key part of the workflow for many teams using Truly, and it needed to be unified with the rest of the app.
- Chromebook support: Many of our customers are moving to chromebooks, so our offering on Mac and Windows was insufficient.
Today I’m very excited to share what we’ve been working on for the past few months at Truly. From product to sales to support and engineering, everyone has contributed to making our desktop experience better. Welcome to Version 1.0.
Switchboard
Our desktop experience now offers a fully integrated workflow for managing multiple calls. Previously, you were required to open our Switchboard module to start a second call and create a conference. This functionality is now seamlessly integrated into the core app. Make as many conference calls as you need, take notes, everything syncs to your CRM. Simple.
Compact Mode
With Truly 1.0, we’re introducing a new feature called “Compact Mode.” If you make a lot of calls throughout the day and need to have another window easily accessible, Compact Mode lets you shrink the Truly app interface and dock it to the side of your screen while you do your other work. Rest assured, this is not a stripped down version. The product team has done a great job building an interface that enables all of the powerful calling functionality Truly is known for while taking up much less screen real estate. Compact Mode can be toggled on and off with a single click if you decide you need more room for notes, or just need a little more space to look around.
Chrome App
We’ve received an increasing number of requests to support Chromebooks. And we get why: Chromebooks are cheap, lightweight, and easier to administer from an IT support perspective. I’m excited to announce that we now offer a powerful Chrome app that will bring all the functionality of our desktop experience, including switchboard and compact mode, to Chromebooks!
That’s all for now, but stay tuned for a few BIG new features on our roadmap that we’re excited to share soon. The Truly 1.0 update is available for all Truly users TODAY so please reach out and share your thoughts!
