How we use these 5 free tools to help us get closer to users

We operate a bootstrapped, pre-revenue startup called Coincall. Obviously the bootstrapped nature of it makes us want to save every possible penny for as long as possible. But we are also kinda lucky - there is now a ton of great freemium software on the market.

Secondly, we really believe in being as close as possible to our users. This gives us an edge over alternative solutions, especially in the crypto space.

Crypto tools have traditionally been built by excellent engineers, who have created extremely feature-rich products. On the other hand though, there has been a severe lack of emphasis on usability and connection with customers in this space.

That's why we try to do things differently: our aim is to have a direct relationship with our users, listen carefully, observe how they use the product and quickly iterate.

So here are the tools that help us achieve this - all for free 👇

💬 Customer chat tool: Drift

We only use the chat widget part of the Drift product. And it serves us very well so far. It has everything you would expect from a modern chat product: good UX, mobile app and a Slack integration.

Why is customer chat important: we want our users to be able to talk to us directly and feel that there are real people behind the site. Sometimes they report bugs and then other times they have small feature request.

The best feeling is when we can get back to our users within an hour or two and say that the problem they reported has been fixed (an example from a few days ago below).

Screenshot 2018-04-05 14.53.13.png

People just don’t expect this from standard software that gets built with Jira 😱 and have months long lead cycles. This helps us build loyalty and word-of-mouth.

Alternatives: there are a million other chat tools that you could substitute Drift with. But for some irrational emotional reason we just love to support Drift’s team. Moreover, we share the same passion around customer centricity and quick product iteration.

📣 Product updates tool: Headway

Headway is a very nice little product that helps us keep our users up-to-date with the new product releases.

We primarily use their widget which displays a small notification badge when we want to communicate a new product update to our users. See an example below 👇

And as a bonus: they are a very tiny, bootstrapped team as well, which is always a bonus in my world ;)

Why are product updates important: we are now finally able to communicate our recent updates directly on the site. No more interrupting people with boring “What’s new” emails that very few people pay attention to.

Alternatives: I haven’t been able to find a very good alternative. I’ve been looking for a tool like Headway for quite some time and once I found it, I was immediately sold.

🙋 Customer Feedback tool: Hotjar

Ah, we love Hotjar. It’s one of the most no-brainer marketing tools nowadays. I believe it should be installed on every web product that cares about its users.

We primarily use their Polls feature that enables us to ask our visitors simple questions like “What would be one thing that you would change on Coincall?”

Why is customer input important: It enables a creator of a high traffic website to be way more customer focused. We know we are always just a few clicks away from starting a new short poll or doing an NPS survey.

Alternatives: Hotjar doesn’t have any decent competitors. Sure, there are products that do parts of what Hotjar does at a much higher price. But that’s not really what we are looking for ;)

📈 Customer Analytics tool: Google Analytics

We mainly use this grand-daddy of free web tools for their cohort analysis and acquisition reports. Recently, I started to also appreciate their mobile app, which has simple design and more focused feature set. I use it much more than their bloated desktop counterpart.

Why are customer analytics important: They say that you can’t improve what you don’t measure. We use Google Analytics to see whether our retention is going up, how some of the landing pages are performing and what we can improve on them.

Also stuff like whether recent speed improvements have brought more engagement and what are the best referral sources of new visitors. In general, Google Analytics is the last thing we look at after we have talked to customers, observed their behaviour and implemented new features. It gives us a high-level overview and reality check.

Alternatives: I would like to find a better free analytics tool for “open” products like coincall … but I haven’t been able to so far. If this was a more “closed” SaaS tool, I would probably use something like Mixpanel, Amplitude or Heap.

👥 Customer Community tool: Slack

Fostering open and active conversation around your product is the key to building great modern software. That’s why we needed a simple community place - we opted-in to use Slack for this purpose.

Screenshot 2018-04-05 14.43.15.png

Why is customer community important: It gives us another channel for us to update the most loyal users on what’s new. On top of it, it also gives our users ability to discuss and suggest future improvements. It’s the best feeling when we take one of these suggestions, implement it and then come back with it to the users. It’s hard to measure the impact of it, but we believe it will pay of it in the long run.

Alternatives: I’m actively looking for an alternative right now. Slack was just not build to serve large external communities. We’re probably going to switch to Telegram, but there are some other alternatives that I would probably consider in other non-crypto cases - the best one seems to be Spectrum.

So, that’s it from us!

Are there some other free tools that you use to get closer to your users?

Please let me know in the comments section below!