Qualitative feedback is essential when you’re building and maintaining an app that 1000s of users rely on. It’s the difference between having a functional & useful page, vs. buttons & features that are not working. No matter what you’re working on, or which industry you’re in, it’s important to understand the needs of your users, teams, and colleagues.
Not only does this make your life easier, but it’s also an indispensable way to increase efficiency, improve user satisfaction, and prioritize your goals.
Today, we’ll look into the challenges that Hunter Engineering encountered when relaunching an internal CRM and how their solution impacted the teams involved, including development, marketing & sales. You’ll learn how they improved their user-ticket resolution rate by 30% with the help of a customer feedback tool, what their issues were, and how they were able to receive better qualitative feedback with Usersnap. Ready? Let’s dig in.
Introducing Hunter Engineering
Hunter Engineering is a U.S.-based automotive service company founded over 70 years ago in Missouri. Over that time they have become a global leader in undercarriage service, inventing, manufacturing, and providing tools for technicians. While they are based in the U.S., they are active worldwide, with distributors active in over 130 countries, and subsidiaries in Germany, China, & other territories.
Meet Josh
Josh Stein is the Senior Manager of Business Technology at Hunter Engineering. He works with application developers, product owners & stakeholders active in various areas of the company.
Hunter’s Challenge
The main goal that Josh and Hunter Engineering wanted to achieve was to replace a legacy CRM platform. It had become outdated, there was a need for a new and more modern solution. Alongside this, they also saw the potential for improving the way that they receive and process qualitative feedback, and streamline communication amongst their customers, developers, and internal teams.
Out With the Old, In With the New
Hunter’s CRM platform has over 1,000 active users. They had been using the old version for over a decade. While their users were quite happy with the way it worked, its upkeep was starting to become a technological burden.
Sorry, Could you Repeat That?
Communication is key in any organization between teams, customers, and users. The flow of information between any of your stakeholders can make operations run smoothly, or, if there’s a hiccup, can lead to a miles-long traffic jam. One simple misunderstanding can lead to several exchanged emails, Zoom calls, frustrating conversations, and in general, a lot of wasted time.
This was one of the issues that Hunter wanted to address while transitioning between systems. Gathering feedback would be crucial for implementation. Based on their previous experience, they were already familiar with some of the common issues they had run into and could expect going forward:
- Misunderstandings between users and developers when discussing issues
- Time being spent on gathering additional information
- Details getting lost
- Users felt their problems were being ignored
- Resources are being spent on hunting down problems instead of focusing on innovating new solutions
Similar issues reach across companies and industries. One study found that as many as 86% of employees find that a lack of or ineffective communication can be attributed as the leading reason for workplace failures. An even higher 90% believe that decision-makers should rely on gathering opinions before making a decision.
Qualitative Feedback
It was clear that a systemic change in how this type of communication took place was necessary. Josh wanted to cut down on the time it took to resolve issues and make the lives of his product owners & developers easier and more efficient. One of the solutions that was clear from the outset was to improve the quality of feedback that his team was receiving.
A study by The Economist showed that one of the most common barriers to communication boils down to different communication styles, whether it’s due to personal preferences or using different tools. The more of a challenge communication becomes, the higher the delays, stress, and decreased morale.
Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way
After careful consideration, Josh and his team realized that the key to solving this problem was a tool that could offer them instantaneous feedback. They came to this conclusion once they analyzed the steps usually involved in taking care of a user issue – emails, explanations, phone calls & a lot of time spent on just understanding the issue at hand. The other aspect that they needed was more information from the get-go.
Keep it Simple
If you’ve ever had to explain how a browser works to your uncle, still using his Windows XP PC, you might understand the time and effort involved in getting relevant details between a user and a developer. Josh’s team found that with Usersnap, all of the qualitative feedback that they needed to solve a ticket was instantly available. On top of that, it was child’s play for end-users to submit all of the relevant information thanks to its simple and approachable interface.
With the simple feedback widget accessible across their apps, Hunter’s users could access it any time they encountered a problem. Once they were there, they could easily submit a screenshot, comments, annotations, or a screen recording describing what was happening.
On the other end, the developers and teams responsible for fixing the problems received all of the data that they needed to get started on the issue. They were able to know when the problem occurred, on which page, and who encountered it. On top of that, they got the visual information of the issue, and all of the rich metadata that they needed as well such as the operating system, browser, resolution, and console logs, which made the technical team’s task much easier to approach.
Not only was Usersnap able to make communication easier between teams at Hunter, but it also fit right into their existing infrastructure. Integrating the feedback widget was a simple procedure that made it available to all of Hunter’s users. On the technical end, developers were able to integrate Usersnap with their existing Jira system and get new tickets created automatically as they flowed in, with all of the relevant information.
Keeping Sales & Development Happy Through Communication
The adaption of Usersnap in Hunter Engineering was and continues to be a success. Users have reported that their needs are being heard and can see their issues being resolved promptly.
With all of the information being collected, the development team has been able to understand where they need to prioritize their efforts, and what the pain points of their users are.
Usersnap’s visual feedback tools offer our users an easy way to reach out for help and provide the tech team with rich feedback. It has improved our organizational efficiency and cross-team communication.
Josh Stein, Senior Manager of Business Technology
The changes implemented by Josh’s team lead to a 30% reduction in the time required to fix an open ticket. This is the time that they are now able to reallocate to the development of new features and further improvements of their apps.
From a managerial perspective, being able to tag, categorize & evaluate the types of issues that are coming in on Usersnap has been a great tool that lets Hunter understand what their issues are and where they need to focus.
Seeing is Believing
We were happy to see the value that Usersnap was able to bring to Hunter Engineering, so much so that we invited Josh to take part in a webinar.
See for yourself how Hunter was able to improve communication, and customer satisfaction & improve the quality of feedback they receive with the help of Usersnap.
Capture user feedback easily. Get more insights and make confident product decisions.
Getting feedback has never been easier and we hope you’ve realized that after reading this article. Let us know what you think, your feedback is important.
And if you’re ready to try out a customer feedback software, Usersnap offers a free trial. Sign up today or book a demo with our feedback specialists.
