How a 60-minute drive yielded great customer insight

Spikeball Chris
Jul 25, 2017 · 2 min read

My phone buzzed telling me a Spikeball pick-up game had been posted and was taking place in a few days. I clicked the RSVP button and was set to play that Tuesday with 5 complete strangers. This is exactly why we created the Spikeball app.

I made the drive to the Chicago suburbs that night expecting to have some fun meeting some players and playing a few games. What I got was much more.

I showed up a bit late and the guys were already a few games deep. I introduced myself and I learned that 3 of the 5 guys went to the University of Illinois. We played a few games and I think they were a bit disappointed that my title of CEO didn’t come along with much stronger athletic prowess.

Weak skills aside, here is a sampling of what I learned that night:

  • One player worked two 5am shifts in a row and had to trade a work shift to attend the pick up games. That was before he drove 1 hr 15 mins to get to the games. He likes playing with his friends but they’re not as serious about developing their game as he is. He wants better access to more, high level players.
  • A few of the players go to University of Illinois and have 50+ people in a Groupme chat. They play every Friday at 4pm on campus. Groupme is their preferred communication channel. (I also recently met a University of Indiana student that has 50+ people in a Spikeball group on Groupme)
  • Two of the players won a contest we hosted last year but we didn’t deliver the prize (Yikes!)
  • The guys were incredibly excited about a contest we did around social media activity last Fall. Internally, we had plenty of data around the contest but that data didn’t come close to showing the passion these players had for the contest.
  • One of them won a a Pro set ($120 value) in a contest we ran. He did some research on how to set up an auto-refresh system in his browser and then opened up dozens of tabs to increase his chances of winning the contest. Victory! He has told dozens of friends about his victory (that doesn’t show up in surveys).
  • A few of them saw Spikeball as a vehicle that encouraged them to travel more. They drive (and sometimes fly) to tournaments around the country.
  • 4 of the 5 players owned a Spikeball set (I gave a free set to the 5th). One of them had University of Illinois Spikeball stickers on their set (customization).
  • They all want to meet more players.

Lesson learned? Zero of this would show up in a survey and I need to get in the field more often. We have a treasure trove of goodness in our community and most of the valuable stuff can only be learned through good, old-fashioned, non-digital, human contact.

See you at the next tournament or pick up game.

-SpikeballChris

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