nothing
Prior to my design and development of the following research tools, there was nothing. Calling agents were left to their own devices, persistently highlighting, copying, pasting, and searching prospect data as best they could. Anecdotally, most agents admit to not previously researching given the required effort that distracted from just dialing their phone.
the google button
The "google button" was the first research element I released as part of the performance enhancement project. When clicked, the button copies the prospect company name and address details to the user's clipboard so they can quickly "paste and search" within a new tab, saving several seconds of search time on each prospect visited, which adds up.
website link
Soon after the "google button" became synonymous with research, users requested a similar button for the website field so they could one-click to a prospect's site whenever a web address was provided in the data (or entered as part of their own research).
9 links and counting...
As the google and website buttons became indispensible to agent user workflow, agents began requesting similar shortcuts to their preferred research sites. Most sites were not searchable directly, but altering a string value to coax google into returning that site's results first was rather simple. With the core workflow already established, extending the research buttons to any other site was simply a matter of cataloguing agent requests and building a toggleable ui to house the new options.
