What’s new at ProdPad

We recently launched some great new features like Activities and a whole Discussions redesign, alongside some huge improvements to the ideas list. These improvements ensure you have the best tools at your disposal to foster collaboration and transparency.

Have your say in the future of ProdPad

Work never stops at ProdPad, and we’re currently working on some very exciting improvements to the roadmap!

We can’t wait to share with you the latest on agile roadmapping so that you can build the best products. If you’d like to get involved, let us know if you’d like to join our brilliant group of beta testers to have your say on the final version.

Thank you for being awesome, and as always – let us know if there is anything else we can do to make ProdPad better for you!

The post Woohoo – We’ve officially hit over 1,000 customers! appeared first on ProdPad.

We covered:

• Why (and how) we launched our Slack community
• How we reduced churn to under 2%
• How we manage feedback, support, and community moderation
• How you can launch your very own Slack community

During the webinar we asked the attendees why they are looking to start a Slack community. Let’s check out the results:

What people meant when they clicked “other”:

• Connecting customers doing similar work at the same scale. I guess another form of User Engagement.
• Offload some of the support costs. Expert users can intervene and help more novice users without requiring us to be involved and field 100% of questions
• Looking for clients to self-service and reduce “incidents” logged, but also get more feedback

Sound familiar? There might be specifics for why you want to start a community but you’ll find we’re all in the same boat, trying to create engagement, loyalty and have a core user base that gives you regular product feedback.

We had so many great questions, we decided to put them all together here for you. If you have any other questions, just ask!

Let’s jump in:

Q: Which forum tool were you using that was eventually shut down?

We used Zendesk’s community forums, as we already use the Help Center and the ticketing system.

Q; How often do employees get tagged by customers in questions? (Does it take too much employee time to monitor so that customers aren’t feeling ignored?)

It’s mostly me getting tagged, so others aren’t necessarily interrupted. The rest of the team jumps in when they feel they can pitch in and if they’re free, but it doesn’t really break up their work.

Q: What if your target user base may not necessarily be native Slack users?

Use the format that works best for your target audience. Forums didn’t work for us, but it might work for you! The majority of our user base is on Slack anyway, so it worked out great. There is a small percentage of people who can’t use Slack (either because of company restrictions or because their company just doesn’t use it, for example) – but it’s generally a small set of users.

Q:Does the welcome bot function required a paid version?

Not at all. We’re on a Heroku free plan for now, but the more users you have the more dyno hours you will have to get, so it depends on the size of your community and how long you want the bot to be running.

Q: What happens to the feedback when proddy captures it?

All feedback that is captured go straight into our Customer Feedback section in our own ProdPad account (because of course we use ProdPad for ProdPad!) From there I tag it and triage it accordingly, making sure that they’re taken care of by the team and if needed also linked to ideas in our backlog. When that happens, it allows our CPO to view the product backlog in relation to the amount of feedback it has, so he can prioritize issues better.

Q: Have you noticed a negative of the community of users asking questions being offline and not being available for potential customers of how the software is being used?

We cover most hours (from 6am-9 or 10pm UK time) so we cover most of the timezones with direct team support. We also have a Help Center, so most answers can be found there!

Q: Is someone monitoring the slack channel 24/7?

No, but we do cover most UK hours (6am-10pm UK time.) Our customers are happy to jump in and help any way they can when we’re offline, so for now it’s working quite well.

Q: What would you say was the most important reason why this was successful when the original approach failed? Was it the tool itself because most client/users already use Slack?

I think so, yes. The forum required the user to find it, log in, navigate through it – it was too much. With most people using Slack, it’s just another group they have running in the background, and if they need us they can just pop it open and there we are!

Q: How specifically are you using Slack for user testing/user interviews?

For User Testing, our UX designer Kav will share his calendar whenever he’s running a user test and ask people to join (we use Calendly for that – it’s great!) For beta tests it’s a similar concept, we’ll send out an email as well as post in the community and ask who wants to join.

Q: How do you handle who can join the Slack community? Can you restrict access? How complex is user management?

Right now we invite all new admins and editors as soon as their account becomes active. The email is automated as part of our onboarding flow, and it sends them a link that’s hosted on Heroku from which they can request their invite.

Q: Are you still using your traditional channels to receive product feedback and support requests? Do you believe you will eventually replace them or will they stay in place regardless?

Absolutely! We don’t plan on cutting any of those off. We try to make it as easy as possible for all of our customers to get in touch with us, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Zendesk, email, or just a good old face to face chat. If we start making restrictions, they’re more likely to not want to send feedback.

Q: Do you clean up old unused Slack channels over time?

Yes, of course. We haven’t had to do much so far, but when necessary we’ll archive a channel.

Q: What are the benefits/drawbacks of having a public community during an failure or outage?

You’re there to talk to your customers right away. There’s no point in trying to hide! They already know something is wrong, and nothing is more reassuring than speaking to the CEO sometimes and have her tell you that the team is on it!

Q: How do your customers who aren’t existing Slack users react to having to join and learn this new tool?

Some download Slack just to be able to talk to us, and sometimes don’t join – and that’s ok! The majority of our user base is on Slack, for anyone else we have other channels through which they can reach us.

Q: Does your support work on Zendesk conflict or cannibalise your Slack group or vice versa? How do you get them to work together?

Not at all. We have a support bot setup with BubbleIQ that allows users to create issues directly into our Zendesk instance, so they work together quite well.

Q: How do I enforce the data retention on slack? Inspired by GDPR!

I’m sure Slack will have something ready by May 28, but at this time we’re still waiting on them and working to get that ironed out.

Q: Are you able to easily obtain statistics/data on response time, resolution time, etc. through this approach?

The simple answer is no – because Slack isn’t a support channel. Slack is a way for us to casually speak to our customers, answer questions, and build engagement. All of our users know that if they need to submit a request they can do so through Zendesk, either directly or using the bot, so we’ll look at response/resolutions times on there.

Q: Is it the same workspace for your staff and customers?

Two separate instances – our team has one group and our customers another. The whole team is part of both.

Q: What % of your new zendesk support tickets originate from slack?

The honest question is… I don’t know. It isn’t particularly significant, as most users will just email in or go directly to our Help Center. We’ve made it a point to ensure the Help Center is easily accessible from the app, so they’re more likely to click on it directly than click on Slack and raise an issue through there just to get to Zendesk!

Q: How do you ensure that you have one voice when you reply (ensure that everyone is aligned on the topic). do you set rules internally how to reply? Especially if you need to discuss solution before hand?

One of our core values at ProdPad is that we’re always transparent about everything that we do, and we take care of every request like that. We’re fun, casual, but also honest. Everyone knows to be respectful (of course!) but everyone is free to jump in and help, and we always encourage that.

Q: Is there a way to collect insights from slack communication with customers? Do you use this to gain insights about your users’ preferences at all, and if you don’t, what tool do you use?

Proddy the bot  – you can find out more about Proddy here.

Q: By the way – have you encountered any issues with the free Slack plan not archiving old messages/threads? (This was a problem I have encountered at a client)?

Not so far!

Q: How do you use it internally?

Some of our team is remote, so it helps with communication!

Q: Follow up to non-slack customers: will Facebook group work as a customer community tool?

I did consider Facebook, but was worried about privacy issues.

Q: Have you noticed a negative of the community of users asking questions being in an app – not a website. ie not being available for potential customers of how the software is being used?

Not at all. We have a Help Center, videos, in-app help – plenty of resources for our users to find relevant information outside the community. It’s important to remember that while the community is a great way to engage and talk to users, it shouldn’t be your only form of communication.

Q: Did you put together a community standards doc that users are required to read/acknowledge when they join? How do you communicate and/or enforce the community as a safe and friendly place for everyone?

That’s definitely something I may have to consider eventually, but the bot covers that for now. Luckily our clients are super so we haven’t had any problems.

Q: As Community Manager – how much of your time is in the Slack Community working it? Do you get other employees to cover the channel at different times or is your culture embracing employees to directly answer questions – like your UX designer who jumped in? How did you get that going?

Everyone in the team has access, no one here is shy! We all love talking to our users so it has never been difficult to get our team talking to them within the community!

Q: How would you recommend encouraging interaction between users in a new channel? We started a power user channel but haven’t had much luck with users talking to each other despite introducing the channel purpose and posing one initial discussion question.

Start talking yourself! Ask them what they’re achieving this week, what they’re up to, get them involved in user testing and constantly ask for feedback. Sometimes people are just shy about being the first one to talk.

Q: How do you avoid it becoming a sounding board for complaints?

That’s a tough one! A customer will complain about things if they’re having issues, regardless of the channel. If it is raised on Slack, it allows us to get to the issue and answer is publicly, and also ensure that anyone else having the issue sees our reply in the community. I don’t see this as a negative thing at all, but rather a positive thing. If one person is having an issue, the likelihood is others are too, and it’s better to address those issues quickly and with as much transparency as possible. I can’t imagine anything worst than trying to hide issues under the rug – that would be incredibly frustrating for our users!

Q: Did you say you use Zapier to help remove users from Slack? How does that work, and do you know the name of the Slack integration for that?

Zendesk ticket (with cancellation request) -> Zapier – > Trello board

Do you think this would be successful with high status end users such as physicians, executives, etc.?

You won’t know until you try, give it a go!

Q: Why did you decide to use Slack on top of Intercom?

Intercom is installed in our marketing site, and it allows us to jump the user to contact us right away without any restrictions. Slack is to build and maintain ongoing relationships, and allows the user to stay engaged with us after they’ve subscribed.

Missed the webinar? Watch it now.

If there are any other subjects you’re interesting in learning about please do let us know via comments, emails or tweets and we will be sure to add it to our webinar calendar!

The post Launching a Slack Community 101 <br> On Demand Webinar and Full Q&A appeared first on ProdPad.

Serve up an order of options 

If anyone would have to say “nope, sorry” a lot, it’s me.

People come to ProdPad expecting the same project management features they see in all the other product roadmap tools they’re looking into. And when they don’t find it, they email us:

“Hey, where can I set up a timeline or a Gantt chart on my roadmap?”

I could answer that in one of two ways:

Option 1:

“No sorry, we don’t have Gantt charts because that falls under release planning and project management. Our software doesn’t support these functions.”

Option 2:

“Hi Lance,

Thanks for getting in touch!

We don’t have dates on our roadmap, as we find it helps keep the purpose of the roadmap focused.

The roadmap is meant to show you which areas of focus (sometimes called Themes in the Agile world) you’ll be working on at various time intervals.) We stick to the time horizons of ‘Current’, ‘Near Term’ and ‘Future’ (though these can be renamed) as they are more appropriate for a roadmap than a 4-quarter style or detailed release plan. We wrote a little about this here:

– Roadmapping without dates

– How to build a product roadmap everyone understands

Essentially, we’re differentiating between a roadmap and a Gantt chart, which is project management functionality that we don’t touch. Instead, we integrate with a bunch of great tools, like JIRA, Pivotal Tracker, Rally, etc. which do make for great project management tools!

That being said, once they’ve been completed, adding a date and allowing for a field where you can write some details about the project.”

Which one do you think does better? Option 2 routinely gets us customers who respond thoughtfully back:

• ”Hmm, never thought of it that way”
• ”Thanks for sending me these resources, I will look into this and get back to you!”

Dig deeper to find out what they really need

The truth is that customers usually have no idea what the solution to their problem is – all they know is that they’re having one.

This is how we bring potential customer over to our side. We take the time to communicate that we don’t lack functionality, we’re just solving the problem differently.

There’s another good reason to avoid Option 1: People don’t respond well to the word “no.”

Starting off an interaction with a denial or refusal kicks off a biological process in your customer’s brain: the brain releases dopamine, which fuels anger and disappointment.

That flood of emotion overwhelms their logical reasoning, making them both unable and unwilling to listen to whatever you might say next. However, if you position yourself and your words to show your customer that you’re capable of helping them, they are more willing to stay and listen.

It would be the same if you go to a restaurant and they were out of your favorite dish. You would be annoyed if the waiter just told you, “Sorry, we don’t have that!”

But if he explained that it was a seasonal dish and the ingredients aren’t available, you could understand that. Any reasonable person would.

A good waiter would follow up by asking what else you like in order to recommend an alternative. That would demonstrate that they know the menu well and care about your experience. You would trust their judgment and you might even relax a little, opening you up to trying out this new dish.

Position yourself as a trusted resource, problem solver

I’ve found that when you don’t keep “no” as a fallback option, you end up having more productive conversations and they do generally result in sales or upgrades. (There’s a reason my former employer Apple has such a stringent vocabulary policy.)

They also open doors over time. Here are some ways we’ve won customers:

• They were impressed with the way we listen and respond to the particulars of their situation 
• They were referred to us by another customer who specifically cited how helpful we were

But what if even after all these conversations, you really can’t help them with what they need? Thank them for getting in touch with you and let them know you’ll log it in as feedback.

Not only does this help your customers feel heard and appreciated, it’s also generally an excellent practice to follow at a product company.

We use our own tools – ProdPad and the Customer Feedback Portal – to log customer feedback and link them to ideas in our product backlog.

This way, these customer comments surface again during product planning sessions. We all see them, we all think about them, and our product managers actively consider them as they’re developing product specs and setting out priorities.

The remarkable thing is, customers do notice and appreciate your efforts when you take care of them. We see our approach pay off in a very tangible way through our customer surveys.    

When you listen to your customers, they walk away with a solution in their hands and you walk away with another great rating. Everyone wins!

The post There’s One Bulletproof Way To Politely To Tell Your Customers “No” appeared first on ProdPad.

When you have all that feedback logged, you can run test scenarios, beta releases, and ask for more information from the users directly. After all, who best to test new features out for you than your own clients! From the source to the source and back around, allowing you to work in an agile way and make sure your product is up to standards.

If you have a public roadmap, you’ll also be able to keep your customers (and your team) in the loop of what you’re working on, which gives them extra confidence that you are indeed listening to their feedback.

Once the feature is released, you can personally send an email to those customers letting them know that the new feature or issue is ready, and of course thank them for taking the time to provide you with the details necessary to make that happen. You’ll look like a superstar, and they’ll feel like you really value them – and you do! It’s a win-win situation!

Let us know your top tips for minimizing or dealing with customer complaints in the comments, or see for yourself how easy it is to manage customer feedback in ProdPad with a free trial!

The post Why You Should Embrace Customer Complaints appeared first on ProdPad.

Promising dates

We’ve all been there: that moment when your client asks you the-ever-so-dreaded question, “how long will it take?” Promising delivery dates is never easy, especially when the product is still under development and ideas have yet to be fully fleshed out. So how do you deal with clients that constantly ask when the work will be ready?

The solution: don’t promise dates

The best way to not have a client constantly asking why you aren’t done is to not provide them with an exact delivery date. Sounds like a crazy concept, but it works. Instead, give them a ballpark estimate of how long you think it may take, like 1-3 months, up to 6 months, maybe a year. Remember, if you’re only just gathering ideas and fleshing out the concept of the work itself, there’s no point in giving an exact delivery date in the first place.

Validate your progress

Regularly communicate with your client and give them a progress update of what you’re working on. With open lines of communication comes trust and understanding. Once your client understands the complexity of the work (at least to a certain point) then they’re less likely to wonder how much longer it will take, and they will panic less about having it out the door by a specific date. Make sure you get their feedback and thoughts on what you’re working on – make this a team effort!

Build a roadmap

The best way to visualize what you’re working on is to put it all up on a roadmap. Use roadmap cards to decide which features you’ll be working on in the current term, in the near term, and in the future. As priorities change, these cards will change as well. Share this roadmap with your clients so they are also aware of the progress and use it as a key communication tool to keep them in the loop.

Dealing with negative feedback

If an angry customer contacts you, you may think you need to apologize profusely. But do you really? Don’t just apologize – first assess the situation. If you do nothing but apologize and don’t follow it up after, your customers will lose trust in your ability to provide them a good service.

Apologize with action

Is there a workaround? Is the workaround immediate? Can your development team do something to fix the situation in due time? Be sure to follow up with the client and let them know what the progress is every step of the way. Apologizing will only take you so far – do something to remedy the situation. At the end of the day, clients will be more thankful that you remedied the problem rather than saying “I’m sorry” but doing nothing to ease their frustration.

Log their feedback

Make it a point to log all your customer feedback, good or bad. Not only will it help you improve your support services, but your product. If you want your product to succeed, you should listen to the people that use it. This is also a great way to prioritize your backlog and note what features are the most important to your clients.

What tips do you have for nurturing relationships with your customers? Let us know in the comments. If you haven’t seen for yourself all the great ways ProdPad will help you communicate and collaborate across your whole team then take a free trial now!

The post How To Win At Nurturing Customer Relationships appeared first on ProdPad.

We have set up a special view within Zendesk called “Suggestions.” This means that any ticket that lands on this view will trigger the zap and import to ProdPad. Alongside the view, we also tag all tickets for reporting purposes.

Now authenticate your ProdPad account and define the trigger. For this scenario, we want the action to create new feedback within ProdPad.

Zapier will then prompt you to map fields between the two apps.

These are our current settings:

You can insert as many fields as you want to map over, but I recommend keeping it at a minimum to avoid confusion.

Once you’ve mapped everything, you can go ahead and test the zap to make sure the information is being imported as needed. Keep in mind that this test will generate an instance within ProdPad.

If you’re happy with the results, just click ‘Turn on Zap’ and done! All new submissions moving forward will be automatically added to ProdPad’s Customer Feedback module.

My top tip: Log in once a week and tag all feedback and link it to ideas. It’s a great practice to keep your backlog clean and up to date!

Which tools have you hooked up to ProdPad? Let me know in the comments – or if you haven’t seen the power of ProdPad for yourself start your free trial right here, right now!

The post Feature Friday: Connect Zendesk to ProdPad via Zapier appeared first on ProdPad.