From Helpdesk to Head of Product: Why the Best Product Leaders Start by Listening

InfoTrack's Head of Product, Louise Edwardes, traces the journey from frontline support to executive leadership, and why understanding conveyancers is still her most powerful product tool. 

Picture the scene. A conveyancer on the phone, mid-transaction, working through a search order that arrived (and this is not a joke) by fax. On the other end of the line: a young woman on the InfoTrack helpdesk, listening carefully, quietly noting where the process could be smoother. 

That was the beginning of Louise Edwardes' career at InfoTrack. More than a decade later, she's Head of Product, sitting on the executive committee. The fax machine is long gone. The instinct she developed on the helpdesk hasn't. 

The Unexpected Beginning 

Louise didn't arrive with a product career mapped out. But something shifted as she started noticing patterns, with the same friction points surfacing week after week. 

"Being on the front line was invaluable. You hear the same complaints daily, and that helps you understand what's actually broken versus what's just a one-off issue. It taught me to nurture that feedback loop and build real relationships with clients who trust you enough to tell you the truth." 

The question she couldn't stop asking wasn't 'how do I close this ticket?' It was: 'why does this ticket keep coming back?' 

Building a Platform That Earns Its Place 

Louise's move into product wasn't a straight line, but each step deepened her understanding of what customers actually needed. One feature she has invested the most in is the Land Registry integration. "When InfoTrack started, we took a very basic, out-of-the-box integration. Over the years we've really had to build, improving interfaces and functionality across all their services, handling requisitions properly. It's one I've logged a lot of hours on." 

That philosophy of building beyond the minimum extends to smaller features too. Source Eye, which lets users verify exactly where data in a report has come from, has become one of the platform's most-loved features. "It might seem like a small thing, but small functionality improvements make a real difference. It builds trust, because you can always verify your information." 

Then there's the Lender Handbook: a slow burn that has quietly become integral to the platform. "We didn't have huge usage of it in the early days, but it's grown into something that's ingrained in how people work." It's now woven throughout the platform so that wherever a conveyancer is working, the Handbook is always at hand. 

That instinct to anticipate need before it becomes urgent defines how the team builds. When new CQS requirements meant firms needed to save evidence of Lender Handbook checks on every file, one of InfoTrack's clients logged in to find the platform had already solved the problem. A pop-up was waiting for her, explaining that she could now save a copy of her handbook check directly within InfoTrack, noting exactly which sections had been reviewed. "She told us she'd been racking her brain all day about how to build a policy around it. Then she logged in and the answer was already there. That's what we're here to do, solve the problem before we're asked." 

Tackling the Chunkiest Problems 

The product Louise is perhaps most proud of right now is Enquiries, and in particular Linked Enquiries. Nine months in, engagement is still growing. "We are the biggest provider in this market, and that means we have a responsibility to tackle the genuinely hard problems." Enquiries is one of the biggest. Traditionally managed over email, the process can quickly become fragmented, with questions buried in chains and audit trails hard to follow. Linked Enquiries changes that, allowing any counterparty to access a shared workspace and collaborate in real time via a secure Reply Code, whether they use InfoTrack or not. It's not innovation for the sake of it. It's making conveyancers' lives genuinely easier.  

The Lobbyist 

Perhaps the most unexpected part of Louise's role is one that rarely appears on product job descriptions: lobbying. She writes to government bodies, engages with industry regulators, and advocates for realistic, incremental change. 

"Because of the size we are, and the amount of people we serve, we have to take accountability for the data we collect, the insights we have, and what we do with them. It's not enough to build a product that works and sell it on. We have to make noise." That means raising awareness and pushing for change that benefits the whole industry, rather than pushing the burden back onto conveyancers. 

There's so much discussion around complete industry overhauls, she explains, that the conversation can lose sight of what's actually achievable. "Sometimes there's a distraction in debating the utopia, when everyone, whether it's a tech supplier, a law firm, or a government body, could be doing something incremental right now." 

The industry has noticed. "There have been quite a few things on LinkedIn lately where people say, 'InfoTrack will figure it out, they always do.' That's my team's job: to figure out how we do that and make it happen." 

Stay Close to the Customer 

At 32, heading product at one of the UK's leading legal technology platforms is a significant achievement. But ask Louise what drives her, and the answer comes back to the same place it always has: the people using the platform every day. 

"We always instil in the team that you should either be building things with the developers, or out speaking to clients, and minimise the noise around that." For aspiring product leaders, her advice is simple: form your own opinions, advocate for yourself, and never lose the feedback loop. 

From helpdesk to Head of Product. Louise Edwardes proves that the best product leaders start by listening and never stop sweating the small stuff.