Case Study: Product Testing
In the start-up space ‘market validation’ and product testing are common terms, and in reality, they’ve been done for years in most businesses. Basically, you assess the size of the market to see if there’s enough space for you to compete and win, and you test a product or gather feedback from potential users for your new product before launching it.
We like to walk the talk, so we always do this too. We’re focused on our mission to provide marketing and sales tools that are useful and effective. Getting the ‘ugly MVP’ in the hands of people that work in the spaces we want to help, is crucial. So here's the intel on what we did and the feedback we got on our cool new product launching soon!
Case Study: Product Testing. New product for Retail, Hospitality and Contact Centres
After launching the original sales competency cards, we started hearing rumbling in the ranks of our friends, family, customers and cool kids working in hospitality, retail, and customer service. The common statements were ‘we can’t find good people’, ‘customers don’t like my new team member’ and ‘how do you pick winners to join the team’?
We hear ya!
So we set about designing a solution. Our ‘Frontline Sales and Service Competency Cards' aim to solve the hiring headaches for hospo, retail and contact centres, while also helping manage the team's performance.
Easy for us to say that! To make sure what we develop actually adds value, we spoke to people in leading positions in these industries, from family-style cafes to fine dining restaurants, from clothing retail stores to hairdressing salons and high-end spas – they kindly got hands on, and we got their awesome feedback! Awesome because it was useful, not just glowing.
The trick to product testing
is to watch, listen and understand their view, and be prepared to tweak your product as needed.
Seriously, leave the sales pitch and the ego at the door and get up close to your customers, some real gems come from these sessions.
Due to high volume of staff churn and busy days and nights, the recruitment process in hospitality and retail business can be ‘quick and dirty’, the hiring can often take shortcuts, fast-track things and miss steps such as skipping reference checking, informal interviews, mates of mates being hired and the likes – all meaning that making a choice for the right candidate a guessing game.
Did you know that hiring a bad fit can cost you up to 40% of their income? Not that bad you might think, but if you consider the quarterly turnover rate of over 25% in hospitality (almost making 100% in a year!) and around 20% in retail, it can add up pretty quickly. Once you look at the actual numbers, you are dealing with approximately $14000 lost for a bad hire on a permanent position, calculated on a $17 an hour wage.
Yes, there is not enough time in the day, and we are not asking you to spend hours and hours interviewing potential candidates, however we wanna save you pain and cash! Take some time out at the start of the process to set yourself up for success and you’ll get the best possible outcome. Honestly! Don’t just trust us, read on and we’ll share what the industry leaders had to say.
Our idea revolves around the use of competencies. To be clear, a competency is:
“a skill, knowledge, motive, attitude, or personal characteristic that causes or predicts outstanding performance.”
This is where you are going to spend that extra time ahead to make it much easier for you in the long run: by knowing what the competencies are that YOU star employee has and then finding them is the way to go. Otherwise it’s more ‘lucky dip’. We know that ‘gut feel’ has a place too, we suggest that comes in after you’ve assessed competency though.
So, this cool tool we have eluded to? We have developed over 30 competencies that are highly related to retail, hospitality and customer service. Using these 30 competencies (they’re in a deck of cards), you can choose your top ten that are an absolute must for employees in your business.
It is crucial to allow some thinking time around this because it will be the basis for the rest of the recruitment process and even the management and improvement of your team's performance. And as a bonus, you will figure out what kind of employee you actually need: would it be a charmer, who can use their people skills to make customers feel welcome and have no problem to chit-chat, or preferably someone that is thriving in a busy environment, being a star at prioritising and time management? You decide!
During the market testing and feedback gathering, this was the part that was the most interesting. Watching each person going through the cards and deciding which competencies would be the most important to them was enlightening because the cards they chose differed based on their different backgrounds and reflected the variety of businesses they have and do, work in.For example, the most chosen competency in the hospitality industry was ‘Effective Communicator', closely followed by ‘Personable/People Skills', ‘Passion and Enthusiasm', ‘Team Player' and ‘Self-Management'.
The people working in the retail industry however, chose ‘Product Knowledge' as their highest priority, followed by ‘Empathy', ‘Time Management’, ‘Customer Satisfaction’ and ‘Effective Communicator’. If you want to see how you use these types of cards, check out the short video on our original SALES cards.
Hospo chose:
Effective Communicator as their top competency.
This shows us that the variety of competencies provided are useful in a wide range of businesses. Awesomely, these people told us the cards themselves were easily applied, clear, detailed and to the point. Cue the high fives around here! We’re always aiming for brevity and effectiveness over bullsh!t and waffle!
Step two is to use the free workbook ‘How to Ask and Conduct Interviews’, which was deemed very helpful by many of the people we spoke to. Having that structure and scoring system allows for interviewers to evaluate applicants, rank and decide based on the competencies a candidate could bring to the team, rather than making a solely subjective choice. This does have a place, but like we say, after the role specific assessment, please!
This product testing was so good for letting us know that there was another issue that was a roadblock for many – they didn’t know how to do proper reference checks and often end up not doing them.
Eeeep! The consequences can be huge when this is skipped, given that it is your only option to check with someone else other than the candidate on whether he or she will be a good fit for you and that they’ve been legit with their CV etc. So we got the whiteboard all dirty again and mapped a solution – so we have created a free tool that will walk you through a professional and character reference check.
We got a tonne of intel from doing this product testing, and due to the iterative approach in our product design process we were able to get them hands-on with an MVP that did connect and add value. Okay, we’ll pat ourselves on the back here as we received comments such as:
“I can see these becoming a successful tool used for recruitment in the hospitality industry as the concept is so easy to follow and can see the benefit these would provide during the recruitment process, particularly for smaller businesses.”
“This product is easy to use and convenient where the competencies are displayed clearly on small professional cards with good size of fonts and use of colours.”
“I think the cards would also be an asset when hiring through a cultural or language barrier, as they are very logical and easy for people to understand. They could be used in a variety of ways, to get to the same outcome. I also thought the marking system that comes along with the cards, is a great thing.”
“We were in strong agreement that the competency cards are a fantastic idea, that being able to score an interview in such a clear and defined manner is a very useful tool to have at ones' disposal.”
If you wanna get hands-on with some of these cards, if you have a situation you want us to help solve, or if you have any questions, hit us up!