Buyer Portal · Customer-facing

The biggest cheque they will ever write

A buyer signs for a flat and then waits. Months go by between the things that actually matter, with no reliable way to know anything in between. So they called their salesperson, messaged on WhatsApp and hoped the right document came back, or came into the office for a receipt. Most gave up and waited in the dark.

The CRM and this app are the same business seen from opposite ends. One is for an expert who is in it six hours a day. This is for someone who opens it once a fortnight, on their phone, about the biggest cheque they will ever write.

That single difference decided four things.

Nothing can assume you remember. A non-expert visiting every few weeks starts from zero each time, so the screen has to re-explain itself without being asked.
It is a phone, not a laptop. This audience does not open a laptop to check on a purchase, which is what made it an app rather than a page.
Some things stay internal. Deal notes, the real reason behind a delay, anything about other buyers: none of it leaves the CRM.
It has to stay calm. An anxious person reading bad news badly presented will phone anyway, which defeats the whole point of building it.

The biggest cheque they will ever write, and no way to check on it

What a buyer can see for themselves

Home, bookings, payments, documents. The overdue amount and the next payment sit at the top of the first screen, because those are the two questions that were generating the phone calls

An app, not a link

It lives on the home screen

Instead of A web page the buyer opens from a message

A link is something you are sent. An app on the home screen is something you keep, and a buyer who has just committed years of income to a developer notices which of the two they were handed.

It also changes who does the work. A link waits to be remembered. An app can say the payment is due, the document is ready, the slab is poured, before anyone thinks to look.

After Notifications became possible, which turns it from a thing they check into a thing that tells them.

Show everything that is theirs

Withholding does not calm anyone

Instead of A narrow, reassuring summary

Payments and dues, documents, construction progress, their unit. The instinct with anxious users is to show less, but showing less is exactly what the phone calls already were. Someone who could not see enough.

Withholding does not remove the question. It moves the question to a person.

After If it is about their money or their flat, it is in the app.

Internal truth stays internal

Facts about their purchase, never the commentary around it

Instead of Piping the CRM straight through

The salesperson's notes, the honest reason a slab got delayed, anything comparing one buyer to another: none of it appears.

Internal shorthand is written for people who share the context. Read by the customer it is about, the same line stops being shorthand and starts being carelessness.

After Nothing written for colleagues reaches a customer.

Delay is normal and the app cannot say why

Delay is the normal state of this industry. A slab slips, an approval takes six weeks, a handover moves by a quarter. Buyers want to understand that more than anything else in the app, and it does not handle it. The app shows the current state accurately but never why it changed, so a delay still produces the phone call the whole thing was built to prevent.

I know why it is unsolved. The honest reason for a delay is usually internal and often unflattering, and the decision above says internal commentary stays internal. Solving it means the company deciding how much of its own mess it is willing to explain, which is a policy question before it is a design one. It is the next real piece of work here.

What happens when real buyers open it

Built and in Play Store review. At launch a buyer gets their payment schedule and dues, their documents, progress on their building, and a notification whenever any of it changes. Me on design, front end and QA with one backend developer, a few weeks on top of the platform that already existed.

The bet is that seeing the facts calms people down. Whether notifications cut the phone calls or just add one more channel to ignore is a guess until real buyers are in it, and that is the first number I want back.