How Hive uses Canny to collaborate across departments and increase their NPS

Hive helps teams collaborate and get more done together. Two main things set Hive apart:

1. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hive evolved as remote work became more prominent
2. Around the same time, Hive adjusted their product development process. Now, they put special emphasis on user feedback. They're proudly "built by users".

Naturally, Hive's product team needed a tool to help them listen to their users. And, the marketing team at Hive was looking for a way to learn about product updates and market them better.

We spoke to Kelley Bunge, Director of Product, and Michaela Rollings, Head of Brand & Content, to learn about their experience with Canny.

Challenge

Let’s travel back in time. The year is 2019. Team Hive is all in the office. People come up to each other’s desks and verbally pass on feature requests and ideas. Some feedback would get sent around through emails. And other requests appeared in the chat inside Hive’s tool.

Naturally, there was no single source of truth. On top of that, only the “loudest” customers who spoke up about their issues would get them resolved. Smaller teams didn’t always get a chance to share their feedback.

“We would rely on anecdotal feedback. Getting a cohesive look at what customers needed and wanted was hard. And that is very important for us.”

Solution

Team Hive came across Canny and wanted to test it out. Instead of sharing their Canny portal with the world right away, they decided to use it internally first.

Once they saw the value of Canny, they invited their users to their new community platform.

“In 2020, we shifted to being customer-first and community-built. Canny fit that mission perfectly and helped us with that transition.”

Today, many teams at Hive use Canny daily.

Kelley and her product team go through new requests, analyze trends, and engage with the community.

Michaela and the marketing team get ideas for their content. They find out what the product team is working on and what users care about. Here are a few ways they leverage Canny that they shared:

• Get a sense of the overall sentiment around potential new features.
• Ask follow-up questions to clarify and learn more about feature requests.
• See which features are getting lots of attention. Include them in newsletters and other promotional materials.
• Give shoutouts to active community members in your promotional materials. They’ll feel special.
• Reach out to very active users and invite them to do a case study with you.

“Canny is saving us about 2-3 hours per week on product marketing. Instead of going back and forth between various tools, everything lives in Canny now. It's our one source of truth.”

The sales team at Hive uses Canny to improve their process too. Any completed feature request, no matter how small, can lead to a sale. Existing customers who submit feature requests help account managers and customer success teams too.

To streamline all of these processes, Hive uses Canny’s Zapier integration. This helps them coordinate all project statuses across their tools.

“This integration takes the burden off our team to keep everything up to date. Also, when a post is marked “complete,” our customers get automatically notified.”

Every team points to Canny’s ease of use.

“When I train new team members on Canny, it’s very simple and straightforward. From release notes to voting, it’s very intuitive. Many other tools aren’t like that, so Canny really stands out.”

Hive also had a separate area of their site for release notes. With Canny’s Changelog, managing those and keeping everyone updated is much easier.

Results

Hive attributes many improvements in productivity, communication, and customer satisfaction to Canny.

Keeping up with customer communications is now a lot easier. Instead of asking each other for a status update, teams at Hive can just refer to Canny. Each team feels like their input matters.

“The sales team passes on feedback and feels like the product [team] really listens. And product [team] feels like marketing is on the same page. So even our internal feedback loop is improved thanks to Canny.”

The product team at Hive also points out that Canny helped them achieve more reach.

“We still do customer interviews and other day-to-day client communications. Doing thousands of interviews would take a really long time though. The reach that Canny provides is beyond what we could achieve.”

Above all, Hive’s product team now knows exactly what to focus on. Thanks to Canny’s prioritization, they can now inform their roadmap and ultimately delight their customers. It’s clear that Hive’s users enjoy Canny as well.

“Our users started to comment and help each other out in Canny. For example, someone will post about an issue, and someone else will comment and suggest a workaround or a resolution. Seeing a community fostering within Canny is beautiful.”

To measure Canny’s value, Hive looks at a few metrics.

• Number of votes
• Number of completed feature requests
• NPS score
• Time saved on product marketing

“If you look at our NPS chart, it’s pretty clear when we’ve switched to being community-focused. We’ve seen our NPS score go up consistently. And Canny certainly played a role.”

Kelley and Michaela have been using Canny to its full potential. If you’d like to make the most out of it too, follow their advice.

“Customize your Canny portal. We use custom fields to ensure we get the exact output we need from our users.”

Ready to start saving time, delighting your users, and building awesome products? Get started with Canny today!