01
Project Overview
Comlio is an omnichannel customer engagement platform designed to help small and medium-sized businesses manage customer interactions, support requests, and team communication from a single platform. The product combines messaging, ticketing, CRM, business telephony, and AI-powered support tools into one unified experience, eliminating the need for businesses to juggle multiple disconnected applications.
As Lead Product Designer, I owned the design function, responsible for information architecture, user flows, wireframing, UI design, and design system development across all five product areas.
The core design challenge: build something with enterprise-grade functionality that an SME owner could understand and use on day one, without a training manual, an onboarding call, or a dedicated IT team.
02
The Problem
Many SMEs rely on a fragmented mix of communication tools, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, email, phone calls, and SMS, to interact with customers. As businesses grow, this fragmentation creates compounding operational problems.
Before Comlio
Conversations scattered across 5+ platforms
No customer history without manual searching
Complaints fall through the cracks
No team accountability for resolution
No data on response or resolution times
Customer context lost between conversations
With Comlio
All channels in one unified inbox
Full customer history at a glance
Structured ticketing with status tracking
Assignment workflows with clear ownership
Reporting on response and resolution times
Unified contact profile across all channels
Existing solutions either cost enterprise prices (Zendesk, Intercom) or lack the financial and ticketing layers SMEs actually need (WhatsApp Business, basic helpdesks). Comlio fills the gap, enterprise capability at SME accessibility.
03
Competitive Landscape
I analysed the four dominant players to identify where SMEs were underserved, and what Comlio needed to do differently to win in that space.
| Platform | Strength | SME Gap |
|---|
| Zendesk | Enterprise ticketing, deep reporting | Expensive, complex, overwhelming for SMEs |
| Freshworks | All-in-one suite, CRM integration | Still enterprise-priced; too many features upfront |
| Intercom | Conversational support, strong product | Chat-first; weak ticketing; not built for WhatsApp-heavy markets |
| HubSpot | CRM + marketing automation | Support is secondary; no omnichannel inbox |
| Comlio | Omnichannel + ticketing + AI, SME-native pricing | The gap we fill |
04
Five Product Areas
The platform evolved across five major areas, each with distinct UX challenges. I owned the design of all five.
Area 01
Omnichannel Inbox
A centralized inbox where businesses manage conversations from WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, email, and SMS in one place, with unified and channel-specific views.
Key UX Challenge
Helping users switch between "all conversations" and "specific channel" views without losing context or feeling disoriented. Solved with a persistent left-rail filter and a conversation header that always surfaces the originating channel.
Area 02
Ticketing & Complaint Management
Structured ticket creation, assignment workflows, priority management, status tracking, and resolution monitoring, designed to improve accountability and reduce unresolved complaints.
Key UX Challenge
Making the leap from "conversation" to "ticket" feel natural, not bureaucratic. The ticket creation flow was designed to pre-populate from the active conversation, one click, not a form.
Area 03
Contact Management
A unified customer profile showing contact information, full communication history, open tickets, interaction timeline, notes, and internal collaboration, a single source of truth.
Key UX Challenge
Surfacing the right context at the right moment without overloading the agent. Contact information lives in a collapsible side panel that stays accessible without consuming screen real estate during active conversations.
Area 04
Business Phone System
Dedicated business phone numbers, call management, internal communication, and call tracking, integrated directly into the customer engagement workflow, not bolted on.
Key UX Challenge
Integrating voice into a primarily text-based product without making it feel like a separate app. Calls surface in the same conversation timeline as messages, a phone icon in the same thread, not a separate module.
Area 05
AI-Powered Assistance
AI tools to categorize customer issues, suggest ticket routing, surface customer history, and improve response efficiency, reducing manual work while keeping humans in control.
Key UX Challenge
Making AI feel assistive, not autonomous. Every AI suggestion is surfaced as a recommendation with a clear accept/dismiss action. The agent always has the final call. The AI removes friction. It doesn't remove control.
05
Design Process
Given the breadth of functionality, process discipline was critical. I followed a structured sequence that prevented feature creep and kept each iteration focused on a testable hypothesis.
Step 01
Information Architecture
Mapped user journeys, communication workflows, ticket lifecycles, and support processes. Created a navigation structure simple enough for day one, deep enough for power users.
Step 02
Wireframing
Multiple iterations of inbox layouts, ticket flows, and contact profiles. Each focused on reducing cognitive load and improving task completion speed before adding visual design.
Step 03
Design System
Built a scalable component system covering messaging, tables, dashboards, forms, and reporting modules. The system accelerated development and ensured consistency across all five product areas.
Step 04
UI Design
High-fidelity screens built on top of the system. Tested against real SME workflows, not hypothetical ones. Revised where friction emerged.
06
Key Design Decisions
Decision 01
Unified Conversation Workspace
Instead of routing users to separate tools for each channel, all conversations were consolidated into one workspace. The channel becomes metadata, not a destination. A WhatsApp message and an email appear in the same inbox, distinguished by an icon, not by location. This eliminated the context-switching that was causing conversations to fall through the cracks.
Decision 02
Context-Driven Contact Profiles
Customer information stays accessible alongside every conversation, not in a separate CRM tab. The profile is always one click away from the conversation. This eliminated the most common agent complaint in competitive research: "I have to switch screens to see who I'm talking to."
Decision 03
Role-Based Experiences Without Role Fragmentation
Different team members, such as owners, agents, and managers, need different views of the same data. The solution was progressive disclosure by role, not separate products. An agent sees their assigned conversations. A manager sees team performance. An owner sees the full picture. Same platform, same navigation, different data surface.
Decision 04
AI as Recommendation, Not Automation
Every AI feature was designed to suggest, not act. The agent is always in control. AI categorizes a ticket. The agent confirms. AI suggests a routing. The agent clicks accept. This is the right posture for SMEs who are new to AI tooling and need to trust the system before they can delegate to it.
07
What I Learned
Designing for multiple channels requires balancing flexibility with simplicity
Every channel has its own conventions. WhatsApp is informal, email is structured, phone is synchronous. The design had to accommodate all of these without imposing a single interaction pattern. The omnichannel inbox works because it unifies at the data layer, not the interaction layer.
Information architecture becomes the product at this scale
With five product areas and dozens of user flows, the navigation structure was the most important design decision on the project. Get it wrong and the product feels overwhelming. Get it right and the product feels simple despite its depth. I spent more time on IA than on any individual screen, and it was the right call.
SMEs need enterprise power with consumer clarity
The competitive gap isn't features. It's simplicity. Zendesk has every feature Comlio has. What it doesn't have is a UI an SME owner can navigate without a manual. Every design decision on Comlio was filtered through one question: would someone running a 5-person business understand this immediately?
Scalable systems require thinking beyond individual screens
The design system was the highest-leverage investment on this project. Every component built once became available everywhere. Every pattern established early reduced decision-making later. The product's visual consistency across five areas, designed over 10 months, is a direct result of building the system before the screens.
Want to See the Work?
Comlio design artefacts, including wireframes, UI screens, and design system documentation, are available on request.