Fehlgeschlagener Launch
Even the best laid plans can go awry. When it comes to software, new releases or updates are often closely followed by bugs you could have never seen coming. Pendo helps production teams react quickly to unforeseen problems—and arms you with tools to quickly communicate with your users and reinstate confidence in your product.
Nach dem Rollout einer neuen Version einer ihrer Apps erhielt ein führender Anbieter von Analyse-Tools im Gesundheitswesen vermehrt Rückmeldungen, dass Nutzer*innen Fehlermeldungen bekamen und keinen Zugang zur Plattform hatten. „Die Leute erhielten Fehlermeldungen, sobald sie versuchten, sich bei unserer Plattform anzumelden“, erklärte ein Produktmanager des Unternehmens. Schließlich konnte das Team hinter der betroffenen App die Ursache identifizieren: Veraltete Browserversionen mit nicht geleerten Caches, die die neuen Dateien der App nicht korrekt empfingen.
Dem Team fiel schnell auf, dass es sich nicht um ein flächendeckendes Problem handelte, sondern nur um eine kleine Nutzergruppe. „Uns war wichtig, nicht alle zu verunsichern“, erklärte der Produktmanager. „Aber wir wollten dennoch Hilfe anbieten und verhindern, dass all diese Personen beim Support anrufen.“ Also wandte sich das Team an Pendo, um eine passende Lösung zu finden.
No cause for alarm
Das Produktteam entdeckte, dass die Anwendung den Fehler intern abfing und den Nutzer*innen stattdessen eine Pop-up-Nachricht anzeigte, die sie darüber informierte, dass kein Zugriff auf die Plattform möglich war. Das Team entschied sich dazu, genau dieses Format gezielt zu nutzen. „Ich dachte: Wenn wir die Meldung in der Anwendung sehen können – können wir sie dann nicht auch in Pendo taggen?“, erinnerte sich der Produktmanager. „Das war ein ganz neuartiger Gedanke – etwas, das wir vorher nie hätten umsetzen können, weil wir bisher nur absichtlich platzierte Features getaggt haben.“
The company’s product team collaborated with the IT department to intentionally trigger the error message so they could track it in Pendo and segment the users affected by the issue. After reproducing the error, the product manager was able to tag it in Pendo and launch an in-app guide on top of the existing pop-up message. This in-app guide included targeted messaging to guide users through a way to resolve the issue. “Instead of a generic error message, we said, ‘we just launched a release; this requires you to clear your cache,’” the product manager explained.
Furthermore, Pendo’s segmentation functionality allowed the product team to create different messages for users on different web browsers, with instructions for clearing their cache directly on the guide. “I was able to use segmentation to say, ‘show this one to Internet Explorer users and this one to Chrome users,’ and have a different version for each browser with the right instructions. It immediately cut down on the calls,” said the product manager.
A few days later, the company’s product team was able to release a patch to clean up the issue created by the initial update—and were easily able to unpublish the guide they had been using as a stop-gap. “We had 17,000 users log in during that time when the problem was there, and 750 of them saw that message,” said the product manager. “So instead of having to tell 17,000 users, ‘there’s a problem you might experience,’ we were able to just target the people who were having the problem and give them instructions for how to manage it themselves. It was a great experience of being able to help the right people without alarming everybody.”
The company experienced other benefits as a result of using Pendo this way. Internally, Pendo has inspired a cultural shift—empowering the organization’s product and IT teams to collaborate using Pendo to monitor usage and leverage analytics to make more informed decisions. And externally, the team’s ability to move quickly to resolve this production challenge proved to be a massive win in terms of bolstering user and client confidence. “It was sort of like an avoidance of an erosion of confidence,” said the product manager. “[In the product support world] if you’re doing it right, no one notices. But we knew we saved the day.”
