How Activesoft utilized UserGuiding’s in-app surveys to gather over 8,500 responses

Activesoft is a platform that offers comprehensive school management services for private schools in a single place, including sectors like academic, financial, and administrative management.

They had two main problems concerning onboarding and in-app communication.

Video onboarding users didn’t yield the results they were looking for—on the contrary, it led to longer meetings.

The lack of in-app communication wasn’t any better, as Activesoft was neither able to track the interaction metrics of the blog articles they published for each announcement nor collect user feedback to create a continuous feedback loop.

Fortunately, they met UserGuiding, which served all their needs through interactive guides, tooltips, banners, and, most importantly, surveys.

Collecting over 8,500 responses through in-app surveys created and deployed with UserGuiding in little over a year, Activesoft acquired countless valuable insights and direct, actionable feedback, which helped them better understand user needs, improve their platform, and make data-driven decisions with ease.

Want to get inspired? Let’s check how they did it:

It’s hard out there for a complex product… (especially to onboard and ensure in-app communication)

As a school management software, Activesoft has three different sectors that users can track and control: academy, finances, and administration.

However, the main users, schools and teachers, were neither able to keep up with the updates and changes through blog articles nor follow the path to efficient onboarding through videos.

Another pressing matter for this comprehensive product was the communication becoming one-sided—not including the element of feedback.

All of this caused Activesoft to send e-mails for urgent matters, publish blog articles for each update with no ability to track who read them and who didn’t, and hold longer meetings for onboarding.

Our biggest challenge was making a complex system feel simple. Before UserGuiding, we just couldn’t bridge that gap.”

Juliana Ozeranski

Enablement Coordinator

Trying out new strategies to improve onboarding and in-app communication didn’t yield fruitful results… until UserGuiding

To efficiently onboard users to their platform, Activesoft first used a video onboarding tool and placed videos over each product section that needed an introduction.

However, seeing how these videos became obsolete with the upcoming releases and UI changes, they knew they had to look for a more sustainable solution.

In addition, this type of communication wasn’t enough to form a clear cycle in which users could also pitch in and leave their comments on the onboarding and updates for a better experience.

A positive change happened when they heard about UserGuiding through word-of-mouth marketing and gave it a chance after joining a demo, where they experienced firsthand how easy to implement UserGuiding.

Not only did our old video onboarding setup break with every release, but also feedback was something we chased manually—emails, support calls, and long meetings. It wasn’t scalable.”

Juliana Ozeranski

Enablement Coordinator

Here comes UserGuiding:

First, Activesoft improved onboarding by using tooltips and interactive guides instead of videos to encourage in-app training and cut the time spent on one-on-one meetings with users.

Then, they replaced blog articles with banners to announce new features and updates to earn the ability to track interaction metrics (and boost adoption).

Now, whenever there's something new, we can ask, “Hey, do you know our new menu?” “No? Then, click here”. Then, we guide users through new features step-by-step."

Juliana Ozeranski

Enablement Coordinator

Saving the best for last, Activesoft fully focused on making the communication process more efficient than ever by implementing surveys.

Committed to making a complete communication cycle, the first survey they added to their platform was a 3-question one to understand what the users thought about the new menu, measuring user-friendliness:

Survey question asking: How is your experience using the new menu? — *How is your experience using the new menu?*

After asking users to rate their experience with the new menu, Activesoft wanted to understand more about the difficulties the users had while adapting to the new version through an open-ended question:

Survey question asking: What difficulties did you have using the new menu? — *What difficulties did you have using the new menu?*

For the last step, they asked another open-ended question to get comments on the new design, whether positive or negative:

Survey question asking: Comment on your experience of using the new menu. — *Comment on your experience of using the new menu.*

We didn’t need 20 questions—just 3, delivered at the right time with UserGuiding, told us everything.”

Juliana Ozeranski

Enablement Coordinator

The second survey they created was segmented to users who preferred to use the old version of the menu, asking them to provide reasons for their choice:

Survey question asking: Why did you choose to go back to the old version of the menu? — *Why did you choose to go back to the old version of the menu?*

After the users chose why they didn’t prefer the new version, the second question was an open-ended question that asked users to elaborate on the reasons:

Survey question asking: Comment on your decision to go back to the old menu. — *Comment on your decision to go back to the old menu.*

In the third survey they published, they focused on the dashboard for the maintainers and asked users to rate their satisfaction:

Survey question asking: How satisfied are you with the dashboard for maintainers — *How satisfied are you with the dashboard for maintainers?*

The second step was also a star-rating question; this time, asking users to rate their experience using the dashboard:

Survey question asking: In general, how difficult or easy was it to make any queries on this screen? — *In general, how difficult or easy was it to make any queries on this screen?*

The next question involved a blank space for users to fill up regarding the queries they performed on the dashboard:

Survey question asking: Which query(s) did you perform? — *Which query(s) did you perform?*

The fourth question required users to tell Activesoft a bit about their experience with the dashboard, identifying the reasons behind the number of stars they selected in the first question:

Survey question asking: Comment on your experience of using the dashboard for maintainers. — *Comment on your experience of using the dashboard for maintainers.*

The last question of this satisfaction survey was directed at school managers and directors, asking them to specify what data is indispensable to consult in their routine:

Survey question asking: Tell us what data is indispensable to consult as part of a maintainer's routine (school managers/directors). — *Tell us what data is indispensable to consult as part of a maintainer's routine (school managers/directors).*

The most notable impact here is that Activesoft collected over 8,500 responses through in-app surveys they created and deployed with UserGuiding, which allowed them to perform feature enhancements and improve the overall user experience based on user feedback.

Over 8,500 responses later, we’re not guessing anymore—we’re improving based on what users actually want.”

Juliana Ozeranski

Enablement Coordinator

Long Story Short…

Activesoft needed a solution that would improve the onboarding process and help them communicate more effectively with users.

Before UserGuiding, they used a video onboarding tool, but it didn’t yield the results they were aiming for—they wanted this process to be inside the platform.

Unfortunately, there was also another pressing matter: in-app communication.

Since Activesoft’s communication cycle was one-sided, without any feedback collection for feature and UI enhancements or tracking of interaction metrics for announcements, they needed their next solution to check these two items off their list.

After meeting with UserGuiding, Activesoft stopped relying on videos for onboarding and started using interactive guides and tooltips, which led to meetings with users getting shorter and shorter.

The communication problem was also solved when Activesoft adopted banners to make announcements and surveys to collect feedback from users.

What’s even better is that Activesoft has collected over 8,500 responses through in-app surveys to put themselves in the shoes of their users—gaining pointers to optimize their experience and increasing adoption.

If you wanna ensure that your users make the best out of your product, see what UserGuiding offers in action 👈

Juliana Ozeranski

Enablement Coordinator

COMPANY

Activesoft