Vacasa - Christie Brodie

Delivered an onboarding experience for short-term rental homeowners that reduced unit time to live by 50% and improved CSAT, SUS, and CES.

Year

2022-2024

Role

Jump to section: Background | Onboarding Hub (internal) | Homeowner Wizard (B2B) | Results

Background

Vacasa is the largest vacation rental management company in North America. They manage over 40,000 homes and partner with all the major booking platforms. Vacasa only makes money when homeowners make money—so getting homes live and booking quickly is critical to the business.

3 million+

guests per year

500,000+

5-star reviews

38,000+

Vacasa homes

41

U.S. states

30+ days

to set a home live

Target Outcomes

The Onboarding Problem

At Vacasa, onboarding is defined as the timeframe after an owner signs a contract with Vacasa until the home is listed on Vacasa.com and partner channels. During this phase the unit listing is built, rates are set, and on-site activities are performed to prepare the home for guests. For owners, this period represents a first impression of how Vacasa will manage their home, therefore establishing trust and good communication is essential.

When I joined this initiative, the onboarding process was messy. It took over 30 days to get a home live, relied heavily on manual work and email, and homeowners had almost no visibility into what was happening. This created a negative first impression and delayed revenue for both the homeowner and Vacasa.

Our Dual Product Strategy

Ultimately our product team landed on a strategy to create two complementary products: a powerful operational tool for coordinators on the back stage, and a consumer-grade experience for owners on the front stage. Both would share the same data and status, creating one source of truth.

Onboarding Hub

Homeowner Wizard

Onboarding Hub

The first product we tackled was the operational tool to support our internal team of onboarding coordinators. Onboarding coordinators are the project managers of the onboarding process. They are the primary contact for owners during this phase and are responsible for completing or coordinating all on-site and off-site tasks completed by Vacasa employees, contractors, and/or owners.

User Interviews

To understand the existing process, along with the motivations and obstacles that our onboarding team was facing, I conducted interviews with 5 onboarding coordinators, 4 onboarding managers, 1 sales executive, and 3 local operations managers.

We learned that onboarding coordinators were using an unruly amount of tools and documents to complete their processes and that no two coordinators did it the same way.

We also learned that the team was required to maintain a spreadsheet with the status of their units. This was a fully manual process and each coordinator spent about 5 hours per week just updating the spreadsheet.

Diary Study

In addition to interviews, I ran a diary study to understand how onboarding coordinators decide what to do next, including how they prioritize their units and tasks, who they need to talk to, and what obstacles prevent units from moving forward in onboarding.

Since onboarding coordinators were evaluated based on how many homes they set live each month, the two week timeframe intentionally included a week at the end and beginning of the month so that we could compare how prioritization differed.

Design Sprint

The final activity our team did to inform the scope and design of this product was a remote design sprint.

I facilitated three days of collaboration between onboarding leadership and our product team. We identified problems/opportunities/risks, ideated on solution concepts, and gathered user feedback on concepts.

The result of this activity was a vetted design concept with alignment from stakeholders.

Features

Scope & Features

Design Decisions

Tradeoffs

Homeowner Wizard

The second product our team took on was a tool to support our B2B customer, short-term rental homeowners.Homeowners enter onboarding after they sign a contract with Vacasa. During onboarding their home listing is built, rates are set and the home is prepared to welcome guests. It is a complex and critical phase where communication and trust are essential.

User Interviews

To understand the first hand sentiments of homeowners, I interviewed five homeowners who had recently onboarded a home with Vacasa.

We learned that homeowners felt out of the loop during the onboarding phase which could last anywhere from a few days to a few months. The information they were receiving during this time was incomplete and inconsistent. They wanted to participate, but didn’t know how or who to reach out to when they had questions.

Baseline Survey

I also ran a survey in the Vacasa Homeowner Portal to gather baseline data in a few key areas including CSAT, SUS, and CES.

Persona

These discovery activities informed a persona snapshot that I created to use as a quick reference as we made decisions throughout the product development.

The Homeowner Wizard

Scope & Features

Design Decisions

Tradeoffs

Results

Reduced time to live by 50%

The average days from the time an owner signed a contract until their home was listed on Vacasa.com and ready to receive guest went from 30 days to 15 days.

CSAT increased from 71.4 to 84.4

SUS increased from 71.3 to 77.09

CES increased from 5.69 to 5.81

By removing the need to update a spreadsheet manually, we estimated that across a team of about 100 onboarding coordinators, they gained back 2000 hours per month.