Great idea for a product! Love the discovery sprint concept http://fakenews.teamparlor.com/2...
Any thoughts on workflows/integrations with Github/Invision/other tools for product and design developments?
Hi Friends!
Welcome to Parlor – Parlor turns your users into collaborators & your product into a dynamic collaboration laboratory - all without impeding existing customers. Prefer to watch than read? https://soapbox.wistia.com/video...
We live in an age that demands constant evolution of product . Be it through new features, better user experience, or worthwhile engagement, there's always something new to build. But each year companies waste hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly tested features or redesigns that users at best don't want (Ryan had something to say about this https://www.recode.net/2018/8/2/...) or at worst hate so much they leave forever (looking at you, Snapchat).
Parlor is a Customer Collaboration Platform which transforms how you validate your ideas, de-risk your efforts, and ensure lasting customer loyalty. Would love to take any questions :)
@austin_federa@philnottingham Hahaha! All the credit goes to Wistia's Soapbox extension, a large cup of coffee, and my dogs miraculously staying quiet!
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Yo team Parlor! I'm excited to see the impact Parlor can have on customer engagement. What would you say has been the biggest challenge so far in starting up the company?
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@davygravy1337 Thanks, David! We are too! Biggest challenge? Tough one. I'd have to say managing our own emotional states, actually. The work itself is challenging, but we do it because we love it. Obviously any startup has financial and resource limitations, which can be trying. That is obviously compounded by our decision to not pursue institutional funding. But honestly the hardest aspect has been maintaining a measured, balanced emotional state; it can be very easy to get swept up in temporary feelings of stress, concern, guilt, etc., which can then distract or demotivate the team. Luckily we have a tight-knit team who have worked together for years, so we've been able to help one another manage those emotional swings well.
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This is a fantastic concept! @thekeithf The best feedback we get often comes from customers who are using our product and when they're using our product. Currently, we use intercom to communicate with our customers and that's once source of customer feedback. Another source of feedback is from Fullstory user sessions where we can witness where users are struggling or succeeding. Two Qs: (1) Does Parlor play nice with Intercom? My worry is that having multiple bubbles in lower right could be confusing/clutter. If not does parlor offer chat and alternatives to Intercom. (2) Have you thought about allowing customers to write support articles themselves if they've figured out the solution to a problem (also with approval from company)?
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@thekeithf Also are you more focused on customer feedback/collaboration on product features or current feature bug/support?
@daflatow Wow! Excellent questions, and I couldn't agree more about the source of best feedback. Most folks are relying solely on support tickets, analytics, and anecdotal sales calls to validate their efforts - rather than proactively engaging their population to help them vet and refine their ideas. That said, some responses:
1) We use both Intercom & FullStory as well (in fact, both of these were part of our 'patchwork solution' mentioned in one of my comments above which ultimately led to the creation of Parlor). Generally, the Parlor bubble is only displayed for those cohorts of users with whom a product team wants to more deeply engaged (e.g. beta testers, a customer advisory board, power users, etc.), so most users of a product still only see the customer support tool, like Intercom. For those users who see both: Today we simply nest the Parlor bubble slightly behind the Intercom one, and on hover they separate, allowing the user to select his or her desired choice. That said, we are currently working on a feature which will allow Parlor to act as the initial interaction and filter, meaning if a user has a support-related issue, we link to the Intercom message flow; likewise for a collaboration-related activity. That's certainly the ideal, and we're looking to launch support for that as quickly as possible. In the meantime, though, we let the support tool have preferential treatment and subtly hide the Parlor bubble behind it.
2) I LOVE this idea, and is fully within the realm of product development democratization, which is very much a goal of ours. At Firecracker, we would share a preview of an idea very early on with users (literally a design mockup or InVision prototype of a potential new feature we were considering), and some users would send us literally pages of notes on how it would affect their experience, how we could make adjustments, etc. So, I think this is very much in line with where we should go. We do already allow users to connect with other users in-app in order to discuss ideas, bugs, features, etc. The short-term version of what you're thinking could simply be promoting certain users to moderator roles, perhaps something called 'Collaboration Qualified User' (this is actually a term we've been playing around with internally). Would love your thoughts on this.
3) It's actually an interesting question; we've certainly approached Parlor prioritizing the former, i.e. concept/design-stage feature validation with users. That said, we have had a small number of companies interested in using Parlor primarily for QA purposes for their internal team. It's admittedly outside of what we originally envisioned, but is an interesting use case nonetheless.
Hope that helps!
Howdy neighbors!
Keith Frankel here from team Parlor. The idea for Parlor came about while my co-founders and I worked at our last company, Firecracker. The question we were trying to solve then was simply: "How can we validate the impact of all of the new feature ideas we have before we write a single line of code?" Our solution ended up being a patchwork mess of 3rd party tools, manual workflow hacks, and a lot of time intensive back and forth with users. But more importantly, it worked, and we used that novel system for product development to bootstrap Firecracker to an acquisition earlier this year.
Parlor is the result of all those years of learnings, productized so any digital product team can use it. In a nutshell, Parlor is a customer collaboration platform which adds a 'relationship layer' to your live product experience, allowing you to engage your most important users in highly specialized ways. By doing so, you can transform your customers into collaborators and your live product into a dynamic collaboration lab – all without disrupting those users or your UX.
I'm really proud of what we've built to date, but would love to now how we can adjust it to make it more powerful for you. Please shoot me a line sometime! keith@teamparlor.com
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Parlor reduces the friction between customers, developers, and designers. Instead of using intercom to relay messages for product feedback now you can run experiments in you app with very little time investment.
Pros:
Great product and design. Really helps increase user engagement
Cons:
Parlor is still early stage so a few kinks are still being worked out
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People who build software have been asking for something like Parlor for over a decade. Kudos to Keith and Co. for bringing it to life.
Pros:
Solves a real, tangible, tough problem in a new and interesting way.
Parlor reduces the friction between customers, developers, and designers. Instead of using intercom to relay messages for product feedback now you can run experiments in you app with very little time investment.
Pros:Great product and design. Really helps increase user engagement
Cons:Parlor is still early stage so a few kinks are still being worked out
People who build software have been asking for something like Parlor for over a decade. Kudos to Keith and Co. for bringing it to life.
Pros:Solves a real, tangible, tough problem in a new and interesting way.
Cons:New to market, but I'm rooting for them.