#419 Learnings While Collecting User Feedback

As we make pivotal decisions as to what to build next, we’ve been ramping up our efforts to talk to our users. In doing so, we’ve learned some interesting things about how to actually get people on a call.

We asked a subset of our users if they’d like to learn more about features we have coming up. Would they chat with us and give feedback to make Parabol the most useful it can be? Zero people were willing to hop on a call after that ask.

I understand their hesitation! We are mostly trying to speak with Engineering Managers who have a lot on their plates. Taking time out of their day to help Parabol shape it’s product roadmap is not a high priority. Most of our users say they like us because we are easy to use, we make meetings more engaging, and we make team’s more efficient. I can see how “hopping on a quick call” doesn’t feel easy, engaging, or efficiency boosting.

The exception to this rule is when we reach out to a core set of users who enjoy giving us feedback and have agreed to help us out when we need it. We maintain an internal list of these folks, and we are so grateful for their insights.

If someone is not going to talk to us out of the goodness of their hearts, we have two options. We can offer something enticing (carrot) or threaten a consequence (stick.)

Both options tend to get responses, but it’s the carrot driven exchanges that tend to result in interesting and productive feedback calls. (The stick has proven essential for moving sales deals forward, though)

A common carrot we use is to offer extended free use of Parabol in exchange for feedback. We literally have thousands of companies using Parabol that are right at or just above our free tier limit. These folks will tell us about their experiences with Parabol in exchange for even more time on our free plan.

Another way we’ve had success is by offering to help users clean up and better secure their accounts. Domains that use Parabol often create many different teams and orgs over a period of years. Like a garden, a Parabol account can become overgrown and unwieldy without vigilant attention. After a while, figuring out who still needs access, which people are in charge, and who has access to what, can be a challenge. Accounts are happy to let us work with them on this kind of account hygiene in exchange for giving us product feedback.

The excellent feedback we get really does help us build the best possible product. Let me extend a huge thank you to all the users who chime in. And I’m sorry if ever had to drag you to a call kicking and screaming. It will all be worth it when you see what we create over the coming year!

Despite a slight dip in new web users and weekly meetings, we’re seeing steady weekly signups and a continued increase in total registered users.

….Finalized our team insights feature and started rolling it out to select customers

…created a new marketing email performance dashboard

…placed our bets for what we want to work on in Shape Up Cycle 5

…made pretzels as a team building activity!

…hold our quarterly Board of Directors call