Voices, a well-established leader in the voice-over marketplace, had built a mature product that thousands of clients relied on daily. As their platform grew and they shipped new capabilities at pace, they recognized an opportunity: the rapid innovation that made them competitive also created natural friction points in how new and existing features worked together.

The Voices team had the product expertise and market insight to identify these opportunities. What they wanted was a structured, repeatable process to tackle optimization work with the same rigor and speed they brought to new feature development. With a research team focused on supporting multiple product initiatives and a roadmap full of competitive differentiators, they needed a way to create dedicated space for deep problem-solving without slowing their innovation velocity.

"The sprint really allowed us to get to the root cause as opposed to just understanding the symptoms of the problem."

The Challenge: Maintaining Excellence While Scaling

Voices had identified numerous opportunities to refine core workflows, but addressing them required a different approach than their typical development process. As a high-performing team shipping new features continuously, they needed a way to bring that same intensity to optimization.

Strategic Resource Allocation

With a full roadmap focused on new features and staying competitive in the market, the team needed a process that could deliver deep optimization work without pulling resources away from innovation. As Clare from the Voices team noted, "We had such a full roadmap of releasing new features... We did not have the capacity to dive down the avenue of 'how could this be optimized?' because our focus as a company was new things."

Growth Creating Complexity

As Voices shipped new capabilities, the connections between features became more intricate. Payment flows, for instance, needed to work seamlessly with newly added functionality, requiring thoughtful integration rather than just isolated fixes.

Validation at Speed

The team wanted to move quickly from identifying opportunities to testing solutions with real users, matching the velocity they brought to new feature launches.

They needed a structured process that could create focused time, drive cross-functional alignment, and validate solutions rapidly, all while keeping their core innovation engine running.

"We did not have the capacity to dive down and ask: 'How could we make this even more robust for users?' because our focus as a company was on rapidly delivering all the new features our users needed."

The Solution: Design Sprints as a Strategic Capability

Voices partnered with Basis to embed Design Sprints into their product development process, running multiple sprints targeting specific opportunities across their platform. The sprint methodology became a strategic tool that complemented their existing strengths.

Structured Intensity

The sprint process created dedicated blocks of time for focused, collaborative work. This allowed the team to bring the same level of rigor to optimization that they brought to new feature development, without compromising either.

Cross-Functional Collaboration Amplified

The design sprints brought together Voices' talented product, design, engineering, and leadership teams to work through challenges together. This structured collaboration surfaced insights and created solutions that leveraged the full expertise of their organization.

"The collaboration element of the sprint really allowed for the real impact of these problems to come to light in a way that Voices didn't have infrastructure to do. It illuminated downstream effects of things that were causing friction that we knew at a surface level, but the sprint allowed us to understand deeply."

Rapid Validation Integrated Into Process

In a compressed timeframe, the team moved from identifying opportunities to testing actual solutions with target users. This validation approach gave Voices confidence to invest resources in the right solutions, backed by evidence rather than assumptions.

"Having that time dedicated to reviewing these things that were causing friction for our users in such an intensive way on that specific existing feature was something that we never would have had the structure or, frankly, the capacity to do internally. But having Basis kind of forced us to put real thought into how those things could be improved in such a way that it solved those core problems."

The Outcomes: A Repeatable Process for Excellence

The Design Sprint approach delivered tangible improvements to Voices' platform while establishing a new capability within their organization.

Outcome 1: 10+ Initiatives, Plus a New Core Competency

Rather than a one-off engagement, Voices ran design sprints across multiple initiatives, establishing the methodology as a core part of their problem-solving DNA. The process became something the team could leverage repeatedly, creating a sustainable approach to optimization alongside innovation. Payment agreements, which were entirely net-new functionality, went from concept to tested designs ready for development.

Outcome 2: Dramatic Improvements in User Experience

User testing revealed significant impact: optimized flows showed approximately 200% increases in key conversion metrics. More importantly, the solutions addressed real client needs, improving the daily experience for thousands of users while maintaining the velocity Voices was known for.

Outcome 3: Solutions Aligned With Brand Promise

The sprints helped Voices deliver on their brand values at every touchpoint. Payment flows became less legally-focused and more oriented around the service being purchased, making them more transparent and user-friendly while better reflecting what Voices stood for as a company.

"These solutions created opportunities for expansion of current features to be more user-friendly and transparent, which meant those features aligned better with Voices' business values."

The Bottom Line: Innovation and Optimization, in Parallel

By embedding structured Design Sprints into their process, Voices solved a challenge that many high-growth companies face: how to maintain excellence in existing features while continuing to ship new capabilities at pace.

The sprint methodology gave Voices something that complemented their existing strengths: a structured process for intensive focus on specific problems. The compressed timeline and built-in user validation meant they could confidently invest in improvements, knowing they were solving real problems for their clients.

The partnership didn't ask Voices to choose between innovation and optimization. It gave them a proven framework to excel at both simultaneously, turning what could have been competing priorities into complementary strengths.

Voices didn't just improve features. They built a systematic approach to continuous optimization that became part of how they work, enabling them to maintain their innovation velocity while raising the bar on user experience.