Inbox: Streamlining Owner-Guest Communication
Overview
Evolve is a vacation rental management company focused on delivering 5‑star guest experiences and management services for vacation rental owners. Most of Evolve’s owner users fall within the 45–64 age range and are distributed across the US.
Problem
For property bookings, there was fragmented communication between guests, owners, and frontline teams at Evolve due to a lack of an on-platform communication tool. Frontline teams would handle the guest requests but would often need to contact the owner for final approval. In other cases, the owner would coordinate with the guest directly and off-platform (i.e. SMS, email). This led to confusion, duplicated work, and delayed responses to guest needs. It eroded guest trust and left owners frustrated by a lack of visibility. We needed to change how we approached communication and to redefine what support looked like for the guest and owner for all booking phases, such as when a guest booked to when a guest checks out.
Solution
I designed Inbox, a centralized hub consolidating all communication between guests, owners, and frontline teams. We prioritized speed by releasing an MVP for our partner Airbnb bookings, informed by research into owner behaviors, guest messaging patterns, and industry standards. Key design decisions included enabling messaging 4–7 days before check-in (when most guest questions occurred) and embedding education to reframe owner engagement as essential to performance. Success was defined by improved response times, reduced off-platform communication, and increased owner adoption.
Impact
The beta rollout showed strong early results: 83% of owners reported Inbox made guest communication easier, 73% found it valuable, and response times dropped by 98%. The beta demonstrated our ability to streamline workflows, improve guest experiences, and set the foundation for scalable communication improvements across Evolve.
Role
Lead designer
Team
1 PM, 1 Researcher, 1 Engineer – super small, but nimble!
Timeline
Feb 2025 – Apr 2025 (~1.5 mo)
Discovery and designs completed in ~3.5 weeks
Platforms & integrations
Responsive web (beta), native app (post beta), Airbnb Messenger API
Process
- Product strategy & roadmapping
- Vision concepts
- Large data analysis with AI
- Flow analysis, empathy storming, journey mapping, competitive audit
- Responsive design & IA
- Created new design system components
- Brand guidelines
The problem, in detail
Problem 1: Communication for a property booking between guests, owners, and frontline teams happened in silos, leaving each party without visibility into the others’ interactions. Nearly half of bookings required manual intervention, with many guest requests still needing owner approval. This created gaps that prevented Evolve from delivering a seamless experience. How could we give guests direct access to owners when needed and allow owners to address booking requests on their own—without delays or bottlenecks?
Problem 2: Owners had varying expectations of how hands-on Evolve would be in managing guests and bookings. In reality, owners could never be fully removed—certain requests and issues always required their approval, and their engagement was critical to rental success. How could we reframe success so that owners see engagement as essential, not optional, to their rental’s performance?
I needed to solve for three distinct users—Owners, Guests, and frontline teams—each with unique needs:
- Owners: Needed visibility into all guest interactions, without relying on off-platform tools
- Guests: Expected quick, familiar, friction-free communication, like what they’re used to with messaging apps and other vacation rental platforms
- Frontline teams: Needed transparency into owner–guest communication to reduce duplicate work and service costs
48%
bookings requiring manual intervention
30%
outbound messages for Airbnb bookings instructed the guest to reach out to the owner, forcing guests to do the resolution work
7h+
response time for frontline teams to get the resolution to send back to the guest
owner feedback
“I don't have visibility into guest communications on the different platforms and am not informed when there is a mid-stay message or pre-stay question. It has created a lot of issues for me.”
Current communication flow chart, demonstrating the broken communication system
Discovery
First, I needed to understand how our owners were currently communicating. Second, I needed to uncover opportunities that I could leverage to build a tool they would use. I led a research-first approach combining:
- Owner feedback: Mined NPS feedback and in-app feedback to surface recurring pain points, looking specifically at feedback mentioning “communication”.
- User surveys: I developed an initial set of questions and goals and reviewed with my PM and researcher. I wanted to better understand their current behaviors and expectations of communicationresponsibility by booking phase.
- Empathy storming: I led an empathy storming session with the team to understand the potential positive and negative sentiments toward a new communication tool. This was based off of user feedback from the surveys.
- AI + Design: Used ChatGPT to analyze thousands of lines of owner feedback, cluster themes, and identify root causes behind service breakdowns, user dissatisfaction, and pain points.
- Current state analysis: Mapped out current flow and process, and interviewed internal stakeholders to understand frontline team issues, needs, and process gaps. Created a user journey map with insights pulled from our survey, NPS feedback, and any frontline team feedback.
- Data insights: Identified >20K off-platform messages exchanged across 23K reservations, showing the scale of fragmented communication. We also analyzed the timing of the inbound messages in each booking phase to inform changes in the product strategy.
- Competitive audit: Studied Airbnb, Guesty, and other property management tools to understand industry standards.
Timeline
~2 weeks
Participants
6 owners interviewed
~1k owners surveyed with a 12.4% response rate
Tools
Sprig, interviews via Zoom
Competitive audit and analysis for communication tools
Owner survey results
Inbound messaging by booking phase
Empathy storming to create a tool the user would want to use, based on concerns uncovered in research
key finding that drove our direction for mvp
The biggest concern was efficiency—owners wanted to ensure that the right person handled guest inquiries. They worried guests would feel unsure whether to contact them or Evolve when issues arose. Regardless of communication tool, owners wanted to establish a personal connection with guests, as that may have resulted in a positive guest review after their stay.
Solution
We needed to release quickly and gather learnings right away. We decided on a beta release focusing on Inbox for partner Airbnb bookings only. My solutions to the key design questions were:
How could we give guests direct access to owners when needed and allow owners to address booking requests on their own—without delays or bottlenecks? I needed to build an intuitive communication platform that decreased time to respond to guest requests and enhanced our current notification system.
How might we reframe success so owners see messaging as essential to rental performance? Integrated education into UI and marketing, positioning Inbox as a core management tool to boost efficiency and engagement.
In addition to that, discovery showed most guest requests came 4–7 days pre-check-in, a critical window for connection. Rather than granting access only after check-in, I proposed opening messaging earlier to drive adoption and reduce issues. The team was on board with this idea and we adjusted the roadmap.
I then defined our success metrics with my PM:
- Owners: Less reliance on off-platform tools, indicated by decreased SMS or emails sent.
- Guests: Faster responses, fewer repeated questions, consistent communication.
- Frontline teams: Lower service costs, fewer escalations, greater transparency.
- Business: Higher NPS, improved response time, stronger review trends.
I started with mockups and an initial beta flow. I then created a user journey map to build empathy for the user. Once I presented the general design direction to the team, I worked with the researcher to test the initial designs with users. We found in testing that our users thought the design was user-friendly and easy to understand.
Key considerations
- On-platform = safer than off-platform.
- Users wanted quick, simple tools and were eager to engage.
- Educating users on engagement and performance would be important for adoption.
- Make it easy for users to handle guest requests so they continuously use the tool.
Key risks
- Owners saw extra workload.
- Peak periods like seasons and special events introduced timing and usage risks.
I starting by mocking up the beta flow and screens
Created a user journey map to guide every decision in the process
Designs
Due to the timeline of beta and releasing sooner to gather learnings, the beta was lean. I designed a minimal Inbox feature with a few educational interactions to help solve the problem of engagement and adoption. To make it easier for users to handle booking requests from Inbox, I created a pathway to the existing booking view.
In my design work for beta and future releases, I made sure to address their needs mentioned in the survey, which included automated messaging, easier dispute resolution, a guest review system, clear guidelines on communication expectations between owner and guests.
Follow along with my design process and decision making in my annotations throughout the Figma file.
Final designs for the beta release
I put together concepts to tackle the bigger problems we couldn’t solve in beta. Once the team aligned, my PM and I used them to reshape the roadmap and plan future releases through 2025. We ran several rounds of testing, and those ideas became the foundation for moving closer to our ideal state. A technical pivot later shifted the timeline, so they weren’t released while I was there—but the vision and groundwork were set for the team to carry forward.
Concepts for Inbox
What impact did we have?
The beta rollout of Inbox demonstrated significant improvements for owners and guests alike. We tracked adoption, friction, and sentiment using Sprig and Alchemer dashboards. Overall, response time to guest requests improved significantly, frontline team back-and-forth decreased and so did the cost to serve, and owner users were more satisfied with communication.
<30m
84% of the beta owenrs responded within this time
+1.9
NPS points increase around the communication theme
83%
found Inbox easy for communication
73%
said Inbox provided strong value
Opportunities I noted
- Inbox usage dropped 35% during a certain period. We hypothesized that certain owners or guests were disengaged or the interaction didn't require a response. Would educating the users that any engagement regardless of request was good?
- We didn’t notice a measurable shift in NPS scores around communication, only a 1.9pt increase. We believe it was due to our beta group being relatively small. How could we increase NPS around communication in future iterations?