How ClearPeople Has Improved User Adoption by 20% with UserVoice

ClearPeople provides software and services that put people first, creating an inspiring digital experience where everyone can work successfully, from anywhere and on any device. Atlas is a digital workspace platform developed by ClearPeople that includes out-of-the-box communications, collaboration and knowledge capabilities for end-users, management and IT. 

With its people-first design, Atlas enables organizations to make full use of their Microsoft 365 investment, optimising user experience and adoption.

The Challenge: Validating Product Decisions at Scale

ClearPeople has been a UserVoice customer since 2019. UserVoice Discovery helps their business capture and make sense of user feedback, expand their customer base, and get to the root of user needs. UserVoice Discovery has been great at providing Guillermo Bas, a Product Manager at ClearPeople, insight into pain points for their customers. But once Guillermo and his team decided on a problem to tackle, they needed a tool to help further validate those product decisions. That's where UserVoice Validation came in.

Prior to adopting UserVoice Validation, product research was determined in a more on-the-fly manner. Feedback was collected through internal meetings with customer-facing teams and one-on-one user interviews, which were then managed through various excel spreadsheets and team channels. While it was great for Guillermo and Customer Success Managers to meet with their customers regularly about feature validation, it wasn’t scalable. The time-consuming nature of these interviews were taking away valuable time from building and pushing their product further toward its goals.

ClearPeople was leveraging powerpoint slides to share what features they were building next, existing product capabilities that were getting an update, and entirely new product features the team was rolling out. It was a lackluster, tiresome process that left both the users and product managers feeling unsatisfied. 

In addition to an inefficient means of sharing product adaptations, ClearPeople found the one-way communication and not always colorful feedback they captured wasn’t the best way to validate product decisions.

The team needed a way to solve three core challenges presented by their previous process for validating product decisions:

• Lack of public roadmap
• One way communication with users
• Insufficient data to back up product decision making
  

 So, as any great product team does — they adapted and changed for the better by adopting a tool that delights both their end users and the team as a whole.

The Solution: A Scalable, Repeatable Research Channel

ClearPeople adopted the newest UserVoice product, Validation, roughly 2 months ago, and haven't looked back since. They are now able to test and validate features quickly and deepen their understanding of their end users preferences and motivations when it comes to their product.  

With UserVoice Validation, ClearPeople has:

• Eliminated the time-consuming individual customer interview process while actually increasing communication and user engagement.
• Eradicated the need for  “gut feel” decisions while also ensuring every decision is in the best interest of both the end-users and the business’ current strategic objectives.
• Delighted their end users and increased transparency by providing an interactive public product roadmap that allows users to provide their opinions, fast.
• Saved valuable resources by embracing a continuous research mindset and making certain they don’t waste precious development cycles on a product feature that isn’t hitting the mark.

Committing to Continuous Product Research

The team at ClearPeople understands that research leads to better outcomes for both their product, Atlas, and their customers. Product research is paramount at every stage of the feature life cycle (including when the feature is already released). 

“One of the great things now, with UserVoice Validation, is that we can validate what’s already been released which is an option we didn’t have before.” -Guillermo Bas, Sr. Product Manager

ClearPeople invites their users to check out their public roadmap and give feedback on the already existing features. Today, their end-users have the opportunity to share if the features released 6 months ago meet expectations and provide any other feedback that may be useful.  By embracing this continuous research mindset, they now have constant availability of up-to-date information that can help inform decisions and drive better outcomes.  

Building the Features your Users Actually Want

When it comes to building new features, Guillermo pulls out the most valuable ideas for the most customers from UserVoice Discovery and transfers them to UserVoice Validation. “We’ve been very effective on delivering what matters first thanks to UserVoice,” reflects Guillermo. By placing these popular ideas in the Considering tab in UserVoice Validation, it gives their customers a chance to review and provide feedback in context for the specific feature. 

UserVoice Validation allows ClearPeople to share screenshots of prototypes and details about what they’re considering building. With a high level overview of the feature that’s coming and screenshots of how it will potentially look, their end users have much better insight into the building process, which is making a big difference for them. It helps the team validate the features they’re building and ensure that they understand requests properly so they don’t waste any time or precious resources. 

Iteration is Key in Product Management

As features move from the Considering to Building, Guillermo continues to refine details and get more and more specific with the product functionality. This helps the team provide realistic expectations and keeps everyone on the same page.

By bringing their end users along for the ride, asking them to share feedback, and actively sharing their roadmap they improve the quality and quantity of information they receive, and as a bonus,  improve their relationship with users. 

The Three Pillars of a Customer Feedback Program

ClearPeople sees their customer feedback program as a three pillar operation in which both UserVoice Discovery and Validation play crucial roles.

1. Gathering open user feedback. Leveraging a tool or system where your users can openly and honestly share feedback is paramount. 
2. Enriching user feedback. Adding more information and color to this data helps your product team better understand users’ needs and breeds confidence that what you’re building is exactly right for the majority of your users.
3. Validation of product development. Building is just the first step, but iterating and giving your users an outlet to share feedback even once a feature has already been developed will unlock an entirely new and powerful relationship between you and your users. 

The Results: ClearPeople Has Improved User Adoption by 20% and Now Saves 46 Hours a Month with UserVoice

Thanks to a massive boost in productivity and time-efficiency, UserVoice has saved ClearPeople over 46 hours a month and has helped them avoid the need to hire an additional Product Manager saving them approximately $114,000 a year. By eliminating the recurring one-on-one user calls, customer-facing team meetings, and expediting all interruptions caused by unsatisfactory feature releases the team has become tremendously efficient.

In addition, ClearPeople has improved user adoption rate by 20% since leveraging UserVoice Validation. The team now has the ability to listen to their users at every step of the product development process, leading to this dramatic uptick in adoption. UserVoice Validation is designed to provide value to our customers’ customers so that they’re eager to continuously participate in product research efforts, and that’s just what the team at ClearPeople has found.