Knock's mission was to create the most valuable communities in the multifamily building industry by designing the most enjoyable leasing experience for renters, the most intuitive tools for leasing teams, and the most profitable bottom line for management and owners. While Knock was helping property managers succeed in lead generation and engagement, the company was fundamentally lacking in its offerings to convert leads into applications and leases. When hired, I joined the newly formed screening team. Our goals were to empower Property Management Companies to increase their application acceptance rates and leases, maximize NOI (Net Operating Income) and simplify the application process for renters by building a new screening product.

Role: Design Lead of Screening Team

Platforms: Desktop and Mobile Web

Upon joining Knock the business was focused on:

• Increasing market share to increase ARR

• Increasing Knock’s win rate over competitors

• Retaining their current customer base

To tackle these goals, I interviewed our sales and customer success team to gain insight into our win vs lose rate and customer churn. The primary reason: customers couldn’t complete the lead-to-lease funnel within Knock was because lack of application screening and leasing capability.

I interviewed our current and potential customers to gain deeper insight into their workflow and product pain points. A reoccurring theme was found around customers spending too much time on manual application screening and leasing processes.

From these interviews I was also able to identify the key personas and each of their manual processes.

Based on my research, the Screening team decided to create a new product in the Knock Suite: Screening for applications and leases, and applications for prospects. Each feature would be focused on automating manual processes.

To save managers’ time on decisioning, accepting or rejecting an application, I created applicant scorecards to give them a quick snap shot of checks results.

These score cards were auto-populated based on acceptance criteria in configurations.

To help leasing agents quickly create an application, I integrated data from Knocks lead generation CRM and Tours app into the Screening Product.

To auto-generate these applications, a manager would set up the application configurations.

To save time on sending out applications for background checks, the team created an API to automate this step upon an application’s completion.

To save time on sending out leases, I designed them to be generated from the lease template and automatically sent out once an application was accepted.

Lastly, for all members of the leasing team to save time managing applications in various stages of the screening process, I designed the application table tabs to prioritize tasks based on urgency.

To save applicants’ time on completing their applications and improve acceptance rates, I focused on two steps in the application process.

First, I integrated Plaid into our application to save applicants’ time on gathering financial information. This would also create a more inclusive screening process for gig workers and freelancers to show a more holistic view of their financial standing.

Second, created a flow for the primary applicant to invite cosigners to fill out their portion of the application asynchronously and simultaneously. This would cut down on coordination time and inaccuracy of information submitted.

While the product was in Alpha, I Ieft Knock to join Reverb. However, while I was there, customer sentiment around the product we were creating was extremely positive.

During the project, I also spearheaded the creation of Knock’s first Design System and formalized the research program.

If you would like an in-depth walk-through of this case study, contact me for an interview.