How Figured uses Canny to strengthen team collaboration and build community

When people think of farming, they usually think tractors and cows. What most don’t realize is that many farms are multi-million dollar businesses with incredibly complicated structures.

Most farmers, however, don’t have complete financial visibility into their business. This means that budgeting and long term business planning can be complicated.

Figured helps drive farm profitability by working with trusted partners—like accountants, farm consultants, and bankers—to link together important financial data, make it visible, and bring the whole farming team onto the same page.

Nick Barraclough is Partner Success Manager at Figured, working with the customer team to make sure their clients, consultants, and partners make the most out of the software.

His team also works closely with the product team, acting as the advocate for people using the tool.

“There needs to be a healthy tension between the customer team and the product team. We have to inform them about issues and push on it, but also pass on the good feedback.”

Besides communicating user needs to the product team, Nick and the customer team also work with the development team, making sure everyone is on the same page about feature requirements.

Challenge

Before Canny, Figured struggled with a different tool to manage their feedback and feature requests.

“It wasn’t pretty. That’s the first reason we started looking elsewhere. We put a lot of effort into our own user experience, and if our own product isn’t good, people won’t use it.”

Although the customer team tried their best to direct customers to leave feedback, the poor experience meant that engagement was close to zero.

The feedback that would roll in through other channels would sit in team members’ inboxes or Slack channels, and die a quiet death.

The user experience wasn’t only poor on the customers’ side. The Figured team themselves weren’t too happy about it, either.

“There were some half-finished ideas in there, but nobody wanted to go through them to add more detail because it was so tough to use.”

Another issue was disconnection.

The previous tool the team used didn’t integrate with any of theirs—it was a completely separate island.

They weren’t always aware if requests were coming in or not, and there was little to no conversation happening.

After one too many suggestions slipped through the cracks, the team decided that they were wasting too much money on a tool that was not being used.

“We encourage everyone in the company to make bold decisions. We have a very driven and productive team. If something doesn’t work for us, we switch.”

The requirements for a fresh new feedback management tool were:

• A clean, easy-to-use interface that provides a great user experience for both the team and their customers
• The ability to integrate with their other channels, so nothing falls through the cracks

“We don’t need a million complicated features, we just need it to do what it does really well, and look beautiful while doing it.”

So, the search began.

Solution

After some digging around, Jessie—Customer Success Specialist at Figured—stumbled upon Canny.

“She said: “This is pretty, I’ll look into it.” She loved it, we compared it to what we were using then, and never looked back.”

The team setting Canny up was also very happy about the migration process from one tool to another.

“It couldn’t have been easier, I wish more tools were this straightforward to set up.”

After all existing feedback was successfully migrated, the team got excited about combing through the requests.

With a tidier and better-looking tool, a process that would have been incredibly laborious before, was now a breeze.

Canny also resolved the disconnect between channels and other teams.

“Suddenly, everything from Canny to Intercom to Slack was linked. We were actually able to record what people wanted in one place, with basically no effort.”

Even though Canny is predominantly owned by the customer team, nearly everyone—from customer success to the CEO—spends time in it.

The whole team can do and see things quickly, and is connected to users and their requests.

Results

One of the main benefits of using Canny has been the excitement and sense of collaboration that the team now has.

“As soon as something blows up in Canny, everyone knows. It’s all connected and accessible to everyone.”

Nick noticed that team members started proactively going to Canny to see what their customers want. Conversations have started to happen unprompted, and everyone is effortlessly on the same page.

Besides internal clarity, another big bonus was the communication that opened up between Figured and its users.

When customers see other requests, it begins a conversation organically.

“It’s almost become like a mini community.”

And, their users are no longer confused or waiting in the dark.

“I’ve heard our customers say some great things about Canny. What I haven’t heard is, ‘When are you going to start working on this?’ or ‘Have you not gotten my feedback?’”

Ultimately, Canny was exactly what the team at Figured was looking for. And as for whether it could be the right fit for someone else, too...

“Anyone who spends any time looking at other tools—and we did—is just being daft. You’d be crazy not to go for Canny.”