How Strapi uses Canny to interact with their community and close more deals

Strapi empowers millions of people to create and share content anywhere. Like many startups, Strapi started as a student project in 2014 and grew into a 15-person CMS (content management system) platform.

Aurélien Georget is the CPO (Chief Product Officer) at Strapi. Naturally, he does a bit of everything and primarily ensures that his team is set up for success. That includes getting the right tools – for the team and the customers.

Challenge

Strapi’s customers are a tight-knit community with opinions, ideas, and a desire to communicate with each other. That’s why Aurélien saw a need for a feedback management and prioritization tool.

Before Canny, Strapi used a different approach. Even though they were collecting feedback, they were lacking the context to really understand the issues.

“We were using another solution. We didn't like it because it was lacking interaction with the community. So we started looking for a tool with a public roadmap where the community could also interact with us and also between each other. It was really important for us – to give them a place where they can chat about feature requests and what's missing in the product.”

Another issue: the previous tool didn’t have the API and the integrations Strapi needed. They had to resort to using spreadsheets to manage feedback, which definitely wasn’t the most efficient way.

Solution

Strapi adopted Canny and saw immediate results.

“With Canny, it’s different. It really changed everything. Now we have threads and comments already attached to the feature. So it improves and makes our discovery process faster and smarter.”

Canny doesn’t just help the product team. Almost everyone at Strapi is using Canny every day (and seeing awesome results).

• Product managers – they check feature requests, feedback, and comments
• Sales team – they explain to prospects what’s coming and get them excited
• Customer success and support – provide visibility to current customers

“Canny even helps us win deals. When a prospect requests a feature, it’s easy for the sales team to log it in and follow up once it’s shipped. It changes everything for the customer – suddenly they have full visibility into the process.”

Aurélien and his team also really enjoy the simplicity of the design and the overall tool.

“It just works. The UX/UI is simple, people have no questions about using it. It’s the kind of product that I really love.”

The integrations really help Strapi make the most out of Canny. They use our Slack, Discord, and Github integrations. Aurélien even says that he was surprised by how many integrations Canny offers and how well they all work.

Results

Since adopting Canny, Strapi has doubled their number of interactions!

“We saw an increase of 100% in terms of comments. People now have more visibility, our team has more context, and overall our customer satisfaction grew.”

Aurélien sees the benefits all around – for the team, for the customers, and even for investors.

“We shortened the discovery time and reduced costs associated with that. Sometimes we don't even need to send out surveys anymore because we have enough people to interact with.”

Aurélien shared a story with us:

“Just this morning I was talking to a digital agency, and they told me: “We can invest in Strapi because we have the visibility of what’s going on and what’s coming.”

Overall, Strapi saw a huge boost in customer satisfaction thanks to Canny. Especially because they could compare it to a different product management software; Canny stood out.

Aurelien stressed that Canny's simplicity, UI, features, and integrations just get the job done.

We’re excited to see what’s next for Strapi! Team Canny will keep helping them reach new heights!