Kellen LaGroon

Work

Contact

Ceterus Assembly

Optimizing Customer Relations and Management

What is Ceterus?

Ceterus is a fintech startup that provides bookkeeping and tax services for Small Businesses and Franchises. They offer automated bookkeeping and advanced reporting through an online portal. I worked there as a product designer from 2022 to 2025.

What is Assembly?

Assembly is Ceterus’s internal web application that serves as the central hub for operations. It brings together key tools and information, giving teams access to customer data, financial accounts, transactions, reporting, and location monitoring. Before my arrival, the company faced challenges with user adoption across many of these features.

My Role

This is a combination of multiple features of Assembly for which I served as product designer. All screens here are my original designs. Visual design is a combination of my own and our react library Ant Design.

The direct development team included ~5 engineers and a product manager. Work was organized in an Agile framework with three-week sprints. Strategy was coordinated by the product team and all research was done by myself and the product manager.

Impact

30% Reduction in Ticket Resolution Times

Streamlining internal workflows and removing the need for external application usage led to quicker response and resolution times.

30% Reduction in Ticket Resolution Times

Streamlining internal workflows and removing the need for external application usage led to quicker response and resolution times.

2x Increase in Feature Adoption

Prioritizing feedback from users and data insights rather than strictly intuition led to features that provide real value to users.

2x Increase in Feature Adoption

Prioritizing feedback from users and data insights rather than strictly intuition led to features that provide real value to users.

10 Minute Average Reduction in Manual Efforts

Aggregating customer information to new dashboards and removing the need for external applications led to a large reduction in manual effort.

10 Minute Average Reduction in Manual Efforts

Aggregating customer information to new dashboards and removing the need for external applications led to a large reduction in manual effort.

Challenge

Ceterus needs to grow, but is already struggling to support its current customer base. Ticket resolution times are slow, customer information is fragmented and leading to poor handoffs, customers are churning before they can even be completely onboarded, and recent internal tools have poor adoption.

Solution

Shift focus for our internal features to listening to our users and creating tools that tackle their biggest issues.

Features

Support Console

View Project

Problem

Customer information was fragmented and required customer-facing roles to navigate through 5+ applications/pages when handling customer issues, which ultimately led to shaky handoffs, double work, and slow ticket resolution times.

Problem

Solution

Create a single internal touchpoint where support teams could find or access everything they need, fast.

Solution

Create a single internal touchpoint where support teams could find or access everything they need, fast.

98% Adoption Rate

Highest adoption rate for an internal tool.

98% Adoption Rate

Highest adoption rate for an internal tool.

98% Adoption Rate

Highest adoption rate for an internal tool.

80% Time Reduction

For Customer-facing support roles preparing for tickets.

80% Time Reduction

For Customer-facing support roles preparing for tickets.

80% Time Reduction

For Customer-facing support roles preparing for tickets.

Blockers

Problem

Zendesk was unable to integrate with our customer-facing application to the level that was required for our application’s update.

Problem

Zendesk was unable to integrate with our customer-facing application to the level that was required for our application’s update.

Problem

Zendesk was unable to integrate with our customer-facing application to the level that was required for our application’s update.

Solution

Create our own customer management platform that can seamlessly integrate within both of our applications.

Solution

Create our own customer management platform that can seamlessly integrate within both of our applications.

Solution

Create our own customer management platform that can seamlessly integrate within both of our applications.

Reduced Time to Close

A more seamless messaging experience led to faster information transfer.

Reduced Time to Close

A more seamless messaging experience led to faster information transfer.

Reduced Time to Close

A more seamless messaging experience led to faster information transfer.

100% Reduction in Cost

Eliminated the business need for Zendesk as a CRM.

100% Reduction in Cost

Eliminated the business need for Zendesk as a CRM.

100% Reduction in Cost

Eliminated the business need for Zendesk as a CRM.

Location and Customer Assignments

Problem

Customers, locations and their relations were managed in Salesforce and excel sheets which were slow to update and easily mismanaged. These issues were only exacerbated with employee turnover and location transfers.