The solution
Our vision was to replace anonymous phone calls with a trusted, contextual calling experience. By providing caller identity and vehicle context while keeping personal phone numbers private, buyers could answer calls with confidence while dealers could connect more successfully.
Release strategy
To reduce risk and validate the core experience, Voice Calling launched in two phases. The first release introduced app-to-app calling between buyers and private sellers on the Carsales app. Once validated, the experience expanded to AutoGate, enabling buyers and dealers to communicate across platforms.
I led the design across Carsales, AutoGate and all Carsales marketplace brands (carsales, bikesales, boatsales and others), ensuring a consistent experience regardless of where customers interacted.
Because Voice Calling was only available in the mobile app, I designed a desktop handoff that guided customers to continue on their phone. Clicking the call button opened a modal with simple instructions and a QR code to quickly start the call.
Not every call gets answered, so I designed a recovery journey across push notifications, email and in-app messaging, making it easy for buyers to reconnect when they were ready.
I extended Voice Calling to AutoGate, enabling dealers to initiate calls directly from their lead management workflow. Because dealers primarily work on desktop, I designed a seamless handoff to the mobile app for placing calls. Buyers received the dealership, salesperson and vehicle information before answering, helping them recognise who was calling.
Dealers manage a high volume of conversations every day, making it difficult to remember every customer interaction. To reduce this cognitive load, I designed AI-generated call summaries and recordings that helped dealers quickly review conversations, capture key details and confidently continue customer interactions.
While we initially expected much of the experience to be handled by the underlying calling technology, we quickly discovered every part of the customer journey needed to be designed. From permissions and call states to notifications, error handling and recovery flows, every interaction required careful consideration to create a seamless experience.
Although Voice Calling was one product experience, iOS and Android handled calling differently.
I partnered closely with Engineering to understand how each platform handled calling and designed experiences that worked naturally within each operating system. This ensured customers had a familiar, intuitive experience on both platforms while maintaining a consistent Carsales experience.
Voice Calling connected multiple products, customer groups and teams across Carsales and AutoGate. As lead designer, I facilitated workshops and collaborated closely with Product, Engineering, Legal and Content to align priorities while maintaining a consistent experience across every platform.
The impact
Providing caller identity and vehicle context gave buyers greater confidence to answer dealer calls, significantly improving first-contact success.
Voice Calling was rapidly adopted across buyers, private sellers and dealers, with more than 15,000 calls taking place on the platform every week.
By enabling secure in-app calling, Voice Calling reduced reliance on personal phone numbers and brought more customer communication back into the Carsales ecosystem.
