We launched with 16 message templates. We were wrong.

The assumption we made

When we were building the message template library for Konnect, we thought like founders do: more is better. We looked at what other CRMs offered and thought, 'We should at least match that.' We created 16 templates across categories like follow-ups, new client welcomes, proposal reminders, referral requests. They were good templates. Useful. But they were built on a false premise.

We assumed that independent professionals, freelancers, recruiters, and small sales teams would want choice. We thought a sole trader running a window cleaning round needed a library to browse through. We thought a network marketer recruiting through WhatsApp would scroll through options and pick the right one in the moment.

What we didn't understand, until the feedback started coming in, was that our customers didn't want a library. They wanted their template. Singular.

What the data actually showed

By week four, the numbers were clear. The average user accessed the template library once and used the same template three times. Not different templates. The same one. Over and over.

Real estate agents had one template for follow-ups and one for new leads. Mortgage brokers had variations on a single message they'd refined over years. Network marketers had the script that worked for their network, not a dozen scripts to choose from.

We'd built choice. They wanted consistency. We'd optimized for flexibility when they needed muscle memory.

The irony was sharper when we looked at the Pro tier, where the template library unlocks fully. Customers weren't complaining that 16 templates was too few. They were saying that most of those 16 were noise. One user, a recruiter in Leeds, told us she'd deleted 12 of them because they cluttered the experience. She kept four. That was her workflow.

Why we got it backwards

The mistake, I think, came from comparing ourselves to enterprise CRMs and desktop tools. In Salesforce, a template library of hundreds makes sense because you're usually at a desk, you have time to browse, your company has governance, and teams need consistency across regions. None of that applies to someone selling from their phone while visiting clients.

A solopreneur is not thinking, 'I have fifteen different customer contexts and I need a template for each one.' They're thinking, 'I message this type of person every other day and I want to send the same message I sent last week, faster.'

We also underestimated how much of professional selling, especially for sole traders and small teams, is actually built on personalization, not templates. A real estate agent's follow-up to a viewer is personal. A recruiter's outreach is personal. Templates are useful as a scaffold, not as a menu.

What we're doing about it

We're not removing the library. We're redesigning how it works. First, we're making it easier to save and reuse your own templates without scrolling through defaults. Second, we're rethinking what belongs in the starter set. We're moving from 'a template for every scenario' to 'four or five templates that work as examples and starting points,' plus a very fast way to create and pin your own.

The new approach is simpler. You open the template menu, you see a small number of solid examples, and below that, your saved templates rise to the top. The library stops trying to be comprehensive and starts trying to get out of your way.

We're also adding something we should have thought of earlier: a history of templates you've actually used, sorted by frequency. Because if you're using the same message three times in a week, you should see it immediately, not buried in a dropdown.

The bigger lesson

This whole experience taught me something uncomfortable about how we think about our product. We were designing for 'a professional' in the abstract, not for the mortgage broker in Manchester or the window cleaner in Bristol. When you're building something for solopreneurs and small teams, especially on mobile, your default should be toward simplicity and speed, not toward comprehensiveness.

The customer who uses Konnect is usually doing three things while looking at their phone: checking their pipeline, logging a call they just finished, or sending a message they need to send right now. They don't have time to choose from sixteen options. They need to send the message and move on.

That realization has shifted how we think about every feature we build. Not 'What options would someone want?' but 'What does someone actually do, and how do we make that faster?'