Taking Responster from one clinic to 30 clinics proved difficult. Every clinic meant that we had to manually add the clinic as a collection point to be able to distinguish where the data was collected from. We also had to buy an iPad and a floor or wall stand as well as drive to the clinics and install the iPad ourselves. Using my mom’s car, we drove around in a snow-covered Sweden hour after hour, installing Responster units. For some time, more time went into installation rather than further developing the product. <!–more–>Some might think that this was bad, but it actually got us close to the end users thus enabling us to see all the little problems that could arise for them when using Responster.
<em>A great tip we’d like to share with other startups is to really get to know how your customers interact with your products whether it’s through website analysis or through controlling logistical routines.</em>
That way, you’ve got solid data for improving your service.
We noticed that Responster was kind of bulky to set up and we wanted to make this easier for the customers. So we enabled collection points to be created directly from the iPad, upgraded the floor stands to be easier to move and to come with the iPad and app pre-installed. We also wrote a FAQ to cover the most common questions that arose at end customer level as well as a manual for installation in case you got stuck.
However, we still had problems with things like insufficient WiFi networks on-site, which was a nightmare for us. After close communication with our customers, we now had a huge list of things we wanted to implement or improve. In January of 2013, It was time to go back to the drawing board…
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<em>The future of feedback</em> is a 10-part series on how Responster grew into what it has become today.
Every week I’ll publish a new post where I tell you about the life of a startup, the Responster-team and how a product is born.
I hope that you’ll find these posts interesting. If you have a startup of your own or have experience in software similar to Responster, I’d love hearing from you. You can drop me a line whenever you want at <a href=”mailto:[email protected]”>[email protected]</a>.
Tune in next week to find out what we had to do when we decided to improve Responster even more.
Take care,
<em>Hjalmar</em>