It’s rebranded to Relay now. Same idea-ish. We’ve cut back a lot but leaned right into the anonymity aspect for staff. We believe that as long as we protect the ability of the team to have a voice without negative consequences, then management gets more accurate data to act on. And also that it’s managements role to listen and respond to the commentary, even if just to acknowledge it.

We have definitely taken a hard path on this. The product requires strong management or team leads who aren’t afraid of criticism … funnily enough, that doesn’t make it easily saleable. But the businesses that are using it, and responding weekly to their teams concerns, do see a growth in trust and engagement. That lowers staff churn, increases institutional knowledge, etc. etc.

Additionally - we’re an AUS based business where state laws on psychosocial safety are quite strict - we actually meet the reporting, recording and response requirements for that legislation.

We’ve made loads of product improvements - AI generated summaries that keep context on the clients over time, easier account sign ups and logins, simpler pricing, better dashboards and an increase in anonymity through how we collect responses.

Over the last three years we have learnt that we are not sales people. It’s our single biggest challenge. We’re just not good at it. So that’s something we’re trying to solve.

It’s free to sign up and start using it. We’d love any and all feedback - the last time we posted was super valuable and I really appreciated everyones feedback.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49603555

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If you wanted to test it from Ireland, let me know and we will add support for it.

On the roadmap, we have a task to base the number on the end-user location (based on the dialling code of their phone number), which will also allow us to vary the sending times based on their location. Currently, the survey will deliver based on the HQ location time.

On response rates, it's around 20% more responses via SMS than email or chat apps. This is the same for marketing delivered via SMS - the percentage is lower but compared to email, etc. it's relatively high.

In terms of the data quality - we think it's because SMS is not a "company owned" platform that could keep logs, etc. Maybe it feels safer for the end user so they're more honest.

Also, the interaction is fast and fun. We get responses initially via emoji and within the text comment you can hashtag and mention other staff. We're working on MMS support so people can send photos too. It's not globally supported but it works in the US at the moment.

Signals can have an impact if it's run executive level to all staff. It gives people a voice who can see inefficiency but don't have a forum to talk about it, and move past layers that are trying to preserve their roles / status.

While many managers won't do it, usually it's an innocuous thing like being able to move employees between teams and see where data moves that give things away. Not saying that's what's happening in OfficeVibe at all, but it's a common fault.

Writing styles and people exposing themselves is definitely an issue. One commenter here had a great idea on rephrasing through ChatGPT or similar to mitigate that issue.

The decision for us to house the whole interaction within SMS was also a response to links in SMS getting much sketchier to click. Emoji responses are more expensive to run, but they're smoother to work with and more useful for team feedback.

I've been part of teams and seen exit interview data reviewed openly with names, supposedly anonymous feedback twisted to unmask people and D&I surveys where really personal information has been shared in areas it shouldn't be. But that's just where I've been. I think part of what we're doing is a response to that.

The bigger part of it is rapid, in-the-moment responses to issues impacting the team, clients or partner businesses. Because this ideally works weekly, and responses need to be fast and short, it sort of fulfils a different need than a traditional survey. At least, we're seeing different data back with our test group so far anyway.

And yeah, we know the Signals thing might cause some confusion. We're in a different world as a product but it's sure to come up. Funnily enough, when we registered the business we had shortened Signals Intelligence down and Intel's lawyers here got in touch within days to ask us about it. Ahaha.

On your last paragraph - we're looking at incentive programs but we don't desperately need them. Over the long test timeframe, we've averaged 60+% each week for responses (40% within the first 60 mins) and one in two leave a comment with it. In all honesty, our current data is skewed by some companies in the system testing with us and not pressing their team to actively participate which has dropped the weekly average by ~10%. We're going to add a disengaged score (people who haven't responded for 3 consecutive weeks) and a super-engaged score (the opposite of that). Our customers have said they're more worried by the disengagement level than the negative sentiment because it means the team don't care at all.

Thanks again, this is some great stuff for us to think on!