Product Team in Focus: “Creating a great product is a team effort”

Mopinion’s company culture is like no other. We work with a diverse group of individuals who are passionate about what they do and truly take ownership for their work. From all different backgrounds (and even different countries), our team is an ambitious one that likes to have fun too. And that’s how we – as a company – have adopted what we call a FRESH perspective.

FRESH is who Mopinion is at its core. And that’s something we want to share with you. Each month we will show you how our company and its individual departments live up to the FRESH values Mopinion stands for. This month we sat down with none other than the Product team.

In this post, Head of Product Jos van der Kooij will give you some unique insights into the Product team and how it shapes our organisation.

But first, let us explain what we mean with FRESH.

The FRESH Perspective

If you’re not familiar with the FRESH perspective, here it is.

FRESH is who we are. It stands for Feedback, Result, Eager, Social and Humour and each and every team within Mopinion embodies these values in one way or another.



FEEDBACK
We practise what we preach. Listening to our clients and using their input to continuously provide a solution fit to their needs is our top priority.

RESULTS
Mopinion strives to be the best solution of its kind. Our team works day in and day out with this ambition in mind.

EAGER
We are constantly on the move – seeking new opportunities to grow and expand our solution and services and truly make an impact on the market.

SOCIAL
The team carves out time to give back to the society and the people around us – through volunteering and charitable giving.

HUMOUR
Our success is thanks to our ability to stay true to who we are. We know how to incorporate humour into our work, making it fun and professional for everyone!

So what about Product?

Mopinion’s Product Team

The Mopinion Product team isn’t your typical department. Putting a truly meaningful product on the market requires collaboration, good communication and a wide range of disciplines. Therefore, the team isn’t confined to a Product Lead or Product Designer, but rather an entire interdisciplinary team.

Jos van der Kooij, Head of Product elaborates:

Product is the vehicle for everything we do. Our goal is to meet the needs of our customers, which means we need the right information to hit the mark. That requires tight lines of communication with Support and Customer Success. We also make sure that these insights are translated to our Development department and later on, marketed effectively to our customers and prospects. It’s really a team effort.

How the Product team lives up to the FRESH values

F stands for Feedback

As a feedback software, feedback is high on our list of values. And that holds true for the product team as well.

“We have an all hands on deck mentality. There is a lot of ‘back and forth’ between teams so that Product is always up-to-date with customer needs. Based on what is relayed to us, we then dive in and validate that feedback. That means looking into whether there’s a need (e.g. for a new feature or update), if there’s a market for it, and how we can communicate this to the team. It’s a very intricate process that ensures we’re on the right path.”

Jos also mentions that Product makes use of what is called internal marketing. They make sure that Mopinion colleagues know what’s coming up on the roadmap or what’s about to be released so that they can become true ambassadors for the product.

“It’s actually really interesting to see how different colleagues from different departments interact with our software. We like to encourage colleagues who aren’t likely to log in to the software on a regular basis to explore and see how they use it.”

Here’s an example of how the feedback is baked into the product development process from start to finish:

Exhibit A: The Duplicate Forms feature

Discovery Phase: In this phase the team collaborates closely with Customer Support, Customer Success, Sales and Development. There is a need for being able to create feedback forms faster, but how? In tandem with these teams, an idea is born but needs to be fleshed out. The Product team dives in and does research into the potential feature and how it should look. Commence design process.


Hanne Nusselder (UX Designer) and Jos van der Kooij conduct customer panel interviews to gain better insight into UX

Development Phase: In this phase, the feature is tested and validated in collaboration with the Development and Customer Support teams. The feature is released in a beta environment and various ‘edge cases’ are used to identify the likelihood of success (using different datasets).

Final Release Phase: In this phase, we bring in our Marketing team to help build a product story that helps our prospects and customers learn more about the features and its benefits. Even in this phase we are gathering feedback from our own teams and customers to make sure the advantages to the new feature are well understood.

Continuous Feedback: From there on out, we are focused heavily on product adoption (e.g. how the product is being used). To understand this we gather quantitative and qualitative data on user behaviours and iterate as needed. This feedback also helps us with prioritisation and building the roadmap for future iterations!

R is for Result

Product is a very result-driven department. Our ultimate goal is to put the best feedback solution there is out on the market

As a result of all the feedback we gather, we are able to achieve great results with our releases and updates.

Here are some of our finest achievements over the last few years:

• User Management (or Access Groups). A large majority of the enterprise organisations we work with have adopted this feature. It was a greatly anticipated feature that has really made an impact on these customers.
• Direct Insights – This fully automated new feature has helped countless customers save time and effort and given them exactly what they needed: useful and actionable insights.
• Native SDKs (Mopinion for App). Though this release was a necessity, it was a great achievement on the mobile front and gives our customers added flexibility.

E is for Eager

The Product team is constantly on the move. They are always seeking new opportunities to grow and expand Mopinion’s solution and services in order to truly make an impact on the market.

“We are also looking for new and trendy ways to showcase our newest features. For example, our Direct Insights feature was revealed using a video created with a recording tool. This gave our customers an easy and fun glimpse into the new feature and how it works.”

On top of that, the team is exploring fun ways to create video content for marketing and educational purposes.



“We are eager to try new methods and test how they work, and how they are received by our customers. That’s also the benefit of having a smaller team. We can try lots of different ideas.”

S is for Social

Though it may sound cheesy, the Product team is all about celebrating its successes. And typically this is done by bringing the team together and recognising those achievements.

“The team often hosts release parties where recognition is given to those involved. It’s great because it gets people excited about the product and where it’s headed! Not to mention it brings us all together.”


Native Android SDK Release Party (with doughnuts!)

The Product team also schedules regular Catch-Ups and Live Demos with the entire team so that team members can ask questions and talk about the release with one another.

And then, of course, there are the Social Jams that include the entire Mopinion organisation. And the Product Team takes part in those as well!


Giving back at the local dog park

H is for Humour

Lastly, we place a lot of attention towards humour here at Mopinion. Sure, we take our work seriously, but there’s also time to have some fun with it!

“One way we make our product releases more fun is by weaving pop culture references into our product marketing. This helps showcase the product while still keeping it fun and light. For example, we used a Game of Thrones theme to showcase Tips and Tricks for Unlimited Dashboards. This really helped keep our users engaged with the content.”


Unlimited Dashboards feature

Another way the Product team applies humour is via GIFs and memes. In fact, the Head of Product himself (Jos) is the king of GIFs within Mopinion. Where there’s a GIF, there’s a Jos giggling quietly behind his laptop.

Product: a team that is always moving forward

As you’ve probably gathered, the Product team never sits still. There is always work to be done, whether that’s market research, user interviews, keeping up with the voice of the customer, product testing, creating a really great meme, or cooking up the next best feature.

Speaking of which, we are excited to share that there are a lot of exciting new releases on the roadmap this year. We don’t want to give away too much…but we’ve got some cool plans to enhance the feedback analysis process in order to help organisations (like yours) share the value of feedback across more departments. We are also working on some features that will give our users the opportunity to deliver an even better mobile app experience, and much more!