Transparency With A Capital T
How can you trust that a company has your best interests at heart? At a time when we have the constant option of choice, startups are realizing that transparency is crucial in order to develop a great relationship with their users. From Foursquare going public with future features and goals, to Reddit beginning the use of their new beta program, companies are putting more emphasis on user interaction and communication than ever before, emphasizing transparency in the way they talk to their audience.
When did transparency become all the rage?
When you’re having an issue with a startup, where do you turn? Do you call their customer service representative? Should you write them a handwritten letter of concern and fax it to their HQ? In today’s age, we reach out to the startups in our lives over social media — and we expect a timely human response and a fix to our problems.
The impact of a company’s users on their product and brand has risen dramatically over the last decade, thanks to the use of social media. People use their Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit accounts to speak their minds and convey their opinions, making real-time impacts on startups that depend on their users’ satisfaction for survival and support. The increase in individual user power has led to an expectation of transparency from startups by way of announcements, discussions, and replies.
Using transparency to a startup’s advantage
For startups, transparency should come with a capital T. Incorporating transparency as a company value will change the way you work with the rest of your team, the way you respond to your users, and how they advocate for you. You can’t please everyone — but you can keep them informed and show that their interests are at the heart of your product.
Communicating with users about the whats, whys, whens, and hows of your startup will help them feel like you’re on the same page and that you respect them enough to let them in on product decisions and future goals.
If your startup is experiencing an issue, such as a server going down or features not responding, users will always reach out to see what’s going on. The worst thing you can do is let them down by not responding. Instead of shying away from this type of feedback, embracing it allows for companies to improve their product, explain their features, and save money on hefty QA efforts.
Users who report issues through product features or on Twitter help advance the idea of transparency by being open with the startup, and expecting the same in return. Technical issues and unpopular product changes suddenly become easier to accept when they are explained by the team in a timely, clear, and direct way.
Transparency — How We Do It
OK you get it. Transparency is important. But how do you convey it to your users? At Codecademy, we have set spaces where we talk about the decisions we make for our company — whether they be engineering, design, or content. Our blog offers a space where we can talk to our users on a level playing field.
We explain our popular decisions, such as design changes, in the same way that we talk we about less popular decisions, such as sunsetting a current course. It’s a platform we use to offer insight into how we deal with problems that affect our users, giving them an inside look into the intricacies of running a startup.
Unlike many startups, we use Medium to give an in-depth look into our company and our decisions. Here, Codecademy team members are able to express their opinions about less-talked about decisions, such as design choices and intricate engineering choices. We talk about everything from why we created a certain image or flow to the different languages that our engineers are experimenting with in order to create a more exciting product.
Our Medium page allows our team members individuality in explaining how they feel on a variety of topics that would otherwise not come to public view. This transparency is unique and allows our users a much deeper view into our culture, thought process, and decisions. Read through our team members’ Medium posts to get a glimpse into our work.
There’s no better place to communicate with your users one-on-one than on Twitter. We use Twitter to answer individual questions, let users know of any issues that may come up, and update folks on what’s on our radar. We post photos of our team so people know who is working on the product they use every day. We try to be as transparent as possible with our users, sharing insight and asking for feedback every step of the way so that we can build a better Codecademy and a more satisfied user base.
Transparency works — period
At Codecademy, we reach out to our users on a weekly basis through Facebook and Twitter, asking for their feedback on areas where we think we may have opportunities for improvement. This transparency between our brand and our users has allowed us to build a better product.
We’ve seen that most of the time, frustrated users who get a response explaining the situation will be more happy about the response than annoyed over the issue, continuing to advocate for our brand. Our users report bugs that get fixed, as well as offer their input and answer questions that we ask about our product, helping us create a Codecademy that provides the highest value possible for our learners. That’s transparency at work — clearing up confusion for the startup’s community and letting them know that their experience is our top priority.
We listened to our users who wanted more hands-on practice with their material and created course projects — distinct areas for learners to work on projects mid-course in order to feel more confident in their ability to code. Today, projects are an immensely popular feature, and we’re expanding to bring more of that hands-on feel to Codecademy courses.
The opportunities that allow folks to communicate with startups on a human level result in feedback that can be invaluable for a product. Social media allows people to speak their opinions without being shy, and those opinions scale. How are you using transparency within your company?
