What tools we use to work and communicate with users

Services for the organization of the process of working in a team today so much that in a month did not understand. If you test all the popular and suitable tools, this will take a lot of time, which is not enough, especially in terms of launching a startup.

In Carrot quest, we have found for ourselves an optimal list of such service tools and want to share our experience. We have been looking for a convenient form of work. The system we have built helps us to make our product better and faster.

Our team includes several programmers, analyst, content marketer and designer. The main work is done in the office, although sometimes you have to work remotely.
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Due to the fact that the needs for the organization of work among many startups are similar, we hope our approach will be useful.

1. Trello - set tasks for HADI

“All ingenious is simple”

To organize the project management process, we had to try various tools and approaches. As a result, we stopped at the Trello .

This is up to genius a simple tool created for managing tasks. It will take quite a bit of time to start using it. Our whole team mastered it without any problems.

The best part is that it is free!

For the organization we use the scrum methodology:

• we have weekly sprints;
• every Saturday summing up and planning the next stage;
• releases run on readiness.

Some of our boards:

• HADI board (Hypothesis, Action, Data, Insights)
• This is an interesting methodology. At the beginning of the week we put hypotheses that relate to certain metrics. During the week, these hypotheses are tested and analyzed. As a result, we conclude: is the hypothesis true or not? To start work on a task, we transfer it to another board (product, promotion, etc.).
• Board "Product"
• We divide the board into sheets: tasks for a week, in the process, done in a week, bugs, done in a month, etc.
• Board "Promotion".
• Here is a visual plan to promote the project. By time, channels, goals, etc.
• And etc.

On Zuckerberg Call we published an article " How to organize work on the SaaS project in Trello ". Be sure to read, we deployed there described our approach to managing tasks and metrics. And the way we implemented it with the help of Trello.

Below is the HADI board. As you can see, each metric that is affected by a task has its own color. This is done to ensure that when transferring the task to other boards, there is an understanding of which metric we want to improve.



And this is what the “Product” board looks like. These tasks come from the HADI board, and each of them is highlighted in a specific color. We see which metric this task will affect. Accordingly, testing hypotheses and analyzing the effect of changes becomes much easier.



It's great that as soon as something changes in our process - we come up with new management chips, or we understand that something is not “perfect” - we immediately change it to Trillo and begin to use it. The price of change is 3.5 seconds.

2. RealtimeBoard - manage changes in the interface

In online services, the interface is one of the main components of the product. Work on the design is constantly boiling. Any change or change planning should be discussed by the whole team. After all, in a startup the opinion of every player in a team is worth its weight in gold.

The designer sees the task from the point of view of design (how best to highlight key elements, place accents, etc.), the product owner from the point of view of the client (what is important for the user, what elements are forgotten or what is superfluous), the developer from the point of view of technology (not All designer fantasies can be realized in a short period of time).

If thinking about ideas and tasks is simple, then how to discuss the design itself? As is usually the case: “There is that thing at the bottom right, you need to make it slightly to the right and make the color of the stroke greener.” What kind of thing, what kind of stroke, what does greener mean? It did not suit us. Design needs to be discussed visually - that is, draw, scribble, see previous iterations.

Decisions must be made quickly, so there is no time for special meetings and discussions.
We use the RealtimeBoard service. Discuss the entire design in it. The service is perfect for this. You can keep versions of all pages, concepts, comments in one place.

Here is an example of how we discussed the process of developing a user card:



Each comment has its own color:

• yellow - just a discussion, a question, an explanation;
• red - a change in this place is necessary;
• green - resolved the issue (usually red turns into green).

Here is an example of describing the user's life scenarios.



We jointly built the user's life cycle and determined when to send which letters and messages.

3. Carrot Quest - we understand users and communicate with them.

It may not be modest to talk about our own service, but it is ideal for us. In it, we organize all analytics and communicate with users (we provide support, we do marketing, we return users).

The service combines event analytics, a CRM system and tools for communicating with users.



In this article we will cover only one topic about our service: “how we build communication with already registered users”. We often write about everything else on our blog .

So, the user is registered. Of course, we immediately automatically send a letter of thanks for registration and instructions (how, where to install the code on the site, etc.).

If we know how much time has passed since the moment of registration, we can assume what information is now relevant for the user and due to what to involve it further.

We divide registered users into segments according to the time of their registration in the service in order to help them at all stages of the trial (test period) and engage in further work.



Example:

• 2 days have passed the trial - we have time to analyze the user's site and determine how we can help;
• It took 3-7 days - we offer a number of instructions and cases that tell in detail about each tool (how to set up and use it effectively);
• 7-12 days have passed - we send statistics daily that we collected using the Carrot Quest (an example is shown below);
• 12 days have passed - we remind you that there are 2 days left until the end of the trial period and you need to pay to continue. We translate the client to the page with the tariff plans.

In the service we view detailed statistics on mailings (how many were sent per period,% read,% answered, etc.). It is also important that we know exactly which users performed the actions in the letter. So we choose those who read the letter and if they did not answer, we are interested in: “what went wrong?”



Here is an example of an automatic welcome letter that we send immediately after registration.



Here is an example of a letter with statistics about users of the connected site:



We will write about the process of analyzing user actions, support and activation in the following articles.

4. Slack - communicate in a team

Standard messengers usually distract from the work and disorganize the team (skype, vk). We cannot refuse them, but we believe that for working communication we need a special service, in which there are no external stimuli (friends, acquaintances, relatives). Therefore, we use Slack. It is great for communication within the team. It has everything you need.

In Slack, we divide conversations by channel, because The flow of information in the team is very high. If you keep everything in one place, it will not lead to anything good. Here are our channels:

• General (discuss all the main points of the project);
• Design (discuss design);
• Read-me (we share useful content: articles, videos, presentations);
• Bugs (actually, here we discuss bugs);
• Ideas (collect and discuss all kinds of ideas, both our and our customers);
• And a few other channels. I will tell about two of them in more detail.

Channel "Task"
We set up Trello integration with Slack. Now we see in real time what changes have occurred in Trello. This helps to quickly respond and understand at what stage of work we are currently located.

Integration of various services with Slack is a very cool thing that allows you to control processes in one place without sacrificing context and time.

Channel "Notifications"

We integrated the Carrot quest with Slack. Now we receive a notification if the user has committed a series of actions. You can choose those actions about which it is important for you to know and receive timely notification.

For example, one of the actions that we monitor ourselves is the registration steps. As soon as the user began to register, we instantly receive a notification that he connected to the site. And if there is time, from the notification in slack go to the user's card and through the chat help the user to configure the service.



These 4 services help us to work efficiently and improve our product. We are constantly trying something new and will try to share our experience.

It will be interesting to know how you work with similar services and what solutions you use for tasks of this type.

Work efficiently!

Your team from Carrot Quest .