Why Yammer left UserVoice, and why we’re coming back
How has Yammer connected with customers in the past?
Over the past 5 years, the Yammer Research Team has connected with tens of thousands of people who use Yammer (plus many who are not yet customers!).
We talk to everyone: yes, not only admins and MVPs but also shift workers, middle managers, general contractors, small business owners, government agency clerks, interns, environmental scientists, field sales, support staff, retailers, and consultants who use Yammer.
When we talk with individual end users, they often come prepared with solutions of what we should build, change, or add. It’s our job to step back and make sure that we fully understand the underlying problem.
It is only when we understand a customer problem that we are equipped to build an appropriate solution.
Like any team, our resources are limited. We need to prioritize where we spend our time. So for the past few years, we have chosen to connect with our customers using the channels that have given us the richest, deepest understanding of how our customers behave and what they need most to get their jobs done. On-site observation, open-ended interviews, online and in-person usability testing, and intensely focused surveys.
Why UserVoice now?
Yammer’s customer growth is exploding! With so many more customers, it’s critical that we have even more of the directed conversations that have shaped our product vision to date. We see UserVoice as an easy-to-use, low-friction way to allow more customers to initiate conversations with us.
All of Yammer’s research and product management team will take turns monitoring and responding on the Yammer UserVoice account. We’ll be reading every comment and replying within 2 business days. In some cases, we’ll follow up with you to learn more about how you’re working with Yammer and the rest of O365.
How does customer input shape Yammer’s product development process?
Product development at Yammer starts by understanding the challenges that our customers are experiencing with Yammer the product, and more generally, in their organizations.
We get customer feedback from a variety of sources: from sales and account managers, from customer support, by following mentions in blogs and Twitter, and through conversations with admins and MVPs.
But the absolute best way to influence the Yammer product roadmap is to participate in the research that the Yammer Research Team conducts. UserVoice gives the research team a great way to find you and other customers to connect with!
What we learn from customers directly impacts how we prioritize future changes and where we focus our attention. We invest in the areas that create the most value for the largest number of our customers — whether that’s integration, performance, user experience, or features.
Does this mean Yammer is now going to build the features that get the highest number of votes?
Through customer research and quantitative data analysis, we make sure we understand the underlying problems that prompted that feedback. If a lot of people are expressing a similar problem, then we absolutely need to address that problem.
But here’s what we’ve seen: there are many occasions when what seems like the obvious solution to us, isn’t! It may be that a solution only benefits a small segment of our customers, that it inhibits usage, or that it adds a high degree of complexity to the product.
Once we understand the problem, our product managers come up with a potential solution. We conduct research and put early ideas in front of customers, but the only way to truly know whether a solution worked is to watch what happens when customers use it.
Every feature at Yammer is A/B tested, to confirm that it’s moving the core metrics that align with our customers getting value. A feature that doesn’t add value, doesn’t get shipped. If you’re wondering “why doesn’t Yammer try this?!” — there’s a good chance that we did. We tested it, and we saw that it reduced usage and usefulness. When that happens, we don’t give up on the problem. We keep exploring alternate solutions.
A good number of the solutions that Yammer builds and tests don’t end up addressing the underlying problem. We hear this from other companies who employ A/B testing as well — Amazon, Netflix, Google, Facebook. Everyone is wrong, at least half the time.
This means it’s critical to identify those ‘wrong’ solutions as quickly as possible! So when Yammer builds features, we opt for the smallest change that allows us to learn and to (potentially) provide customer value. If our A/B test results prove us wrong, we can more quickly shift to a new solution that may be right; if our A/B test results prove us right, we can revisit the solution and make it more robust and detailed.
Is Yammer still going to carry out traditional research?
Absolutely. We’ll continue to rely heavily on open-ended interviews, click tests, short surveys, prototype testing and usability testing. UserVoice will be the start, not the end, of the conversation!
We hope to read your feedback on UserVoice, and even better, to participate with you in one of our open-ended interviews, product surveys, or usability tests!
