01 — Why it mattered
Booking agents were jumping between tools to handle a single quote — and the CRM was the slowest stop on the loop.
A keyboard-first CRM for an airline booking team — built around the workflow, not the database schema.
02 — Problem
The legacy CRM was mouse-first and form-heavy. Agents lost minutes per quote moving between dialer, calendar, and notes. The data was right; the interface was in the way.
03 — Approach
Rebuilt the workspace around a command palette and keyboard-first navigation. Pipeline, follow-ups, and notes live one shortcut away. Routes stream where it makes sense; the heavy data tables are virtualised.
04 — Build
Component library first, screens second. Tailwind tokens lifted from the brand work, typed end-to-end with TypeScript. Shipped in a tight loop with the booking team dogfooding nightly builds.
05 — Outcome
Median time per quote dropped meaningfully. Daily active usage across the team climbed once the keyboard layer landed. The "I will just open the spreadsheet" workaround quietly disappeared.
06 — Reflection
The leverage was not in adding features. It was in removing clicks. Every shortcut we shipped paid back the same week.