techdiff

No, I understand what you're saying. But they absolutely aren't doing that and there's no way they were eating the hardware cost as a loss-leader on future recurring revenue. The buyers paid for the hardware and then needed to pay for software to enable it.

I don't think either of those are consumer benefits at all. And the hardware was charged for when the car was initially sold - it was part of the total unit cost of creation. The subscription was a consumer hostile way of increasing spend with the brand. The genius' at BMW looked at Tesla's Plaid mode and FSD and thought they could replicate that model but failed to realise that people don't view their brands the same way - people treat a Tesla like a software purchase, but a BMW like an expensive toaster.

There was the army commissary thing too: https://signalandsilence.substack.com/p/i-think-someone-hack...

This is up there with BMW charging a subscription for heated seats.

Good question! And something I should explain better. This iteration of it uses the HQ location to generate the sending number. So if you're admin sets up within England, we grab a +44 number to send from. Irelands +353 code should be able to receive a message with some limits on Meteor Ireland network.

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.

Not that I've found. If you have time, let me know what you're thinking and happy to see if we can help.

Thank you! We tested several ways of sending but the highest response rates and the most candid data came back via SMS.

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.

Agreed. Thanks for this one! Will look into it.

There's so many troubles with org structures and models of operation. My day job is in this area, in an industry that is criminally inefficient. Any field that sells hours isn't incentivised to be quick about anything.

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.

I will take a look at OfficeVibe for sure. How frequently do they send it out?

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.

Good info, thank you! We were pushing on WhatsApp for South America and Asia (we tested through Singapore, Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia and Malaysia but pulled back on the region because SMS carrier support is so varied. New Zealand is a nightmare too. But being well used in EU, we might need to bump this up the roadmap.

This is a super interesting idea. It might muddle things like sarcasm, in-jokes (we see a lot of those around Christmas party time) and things like that. But even if it was something the user could control perhaps, it might be a great addition.

I get what you're saying for sure, but I think there's a level below that where you need to deliver some bad news into middle management about what's happening and it can be "career limiting" to say it, so people avoid the issue. Hopefully they gain a level of safety to deliver that message through us.

This was the failure of the first version of the build years ago. We had positive and negative links sent via SMS in that one, which took you to a page where you could add a comment - anyone with some level of dev knowledge worried about hitting the links and certainly about commenting on the page.

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.

Absolutely, I have a friend who forwards all his linkedin approaches to his boss, just to keep them on their toes. Ahaha.

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.

This is actually a good call. I'm a similar age and didn't really look at it like that. Will get it changed though. Thank you!

Actually, that's a great idea! I might see about a ToS update to cover it. Thank you!

Ahaha! That line on the site came from our awesome designer. Definitely a big call.

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.

Thanks so much for this one - great insight! We use eNPS as shorthand, it's the easiest way for people to grasp what we're trying to achieve but we're actually measuring through a binary initial question, followed by an open comment. The binary along with the timeframe seems to force an "on balance" measure of the week, so sentiment fluctuates with the business activity, initiatives, wins and losses. Within this, we're building features to gain context by asking the exec team on their comment against the week ahead of results, which is useful when taking a long view on sentiment moves. The best way to view the results you get from this is absolutely about detecting emerging issues, resolving ongoing challenges and improving communication. But the dream for us would be to tie business data into the commentary from staff, clients and stakeholders to form a rounded view of problems, and potential solutions.

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!

That's totally true. The initial version of this is still running at the company I set it up in. That was years ago. And I have spoken to people in recent weeks who have said they didn't trust it - they were shocked when I talked them through how and why it was. Ahaha. And they felt they'd missed an opportunity to say things.

Convincing people it's a safe space is one of the biggest challenges for us. It's part of the reason we think SMS is great (it's not a company-owned platform), and we make an effort to describe our process for the staff so they can understand it. But it's definitely something we will need to work hard at.

I understand where you're coming from. While it’s not perfect, we think it’s a lot better than what’s out there, and we take these potential holes/gamification seriously and will make a point of addressing them in future iterations.

If the team is 15 people, you get that information in the initial message and you can determine how safe you feel, and how honest you want to be in your return to it. No doubt, it's less safe at 15 people than at 300 people. But we want to let the end user make the decision.

In terms of the employer or staff gaming it - there's two sides to that, what's happening that would cause them to put the effort in to do it? I mean, a pre-paid sim for enough numbers and to spend the time for setup, etc. It's not a small investment. Not discounting that there's a few people in the world that would, but I think that's a fairly extreme edge case. I think we're trying to work a problem that prevents smart people from contributing to a better workplace because of bad managers, politics, career climbers, etc.

Companies with a culture that would allow that kind of behaviour are unlikely buyers for us too. The anonymity raises too much risk for management around bad behaviour being exposed. And once a comment is on the record, there's some level of accountability at an exec level.

Good question! We encourage a weekly cadence - send the survey Friday morning, collect responses over the next few days. The exec team review the comments on Sunday night and present back in the all-hands on the Monday. This is the ideal.

The best companies using it talk to the comment themes (always starting with the most pointed and critical comments) and discuss the details around them and how they're going to remediate the issue, or take advantage of the opportunity.

The worst ones ignore the hard comments. This guts the trust the staff have in the exec team (because the staff WILL talk about what they say in it) and the culture of the company is impacted.

The companies who genuinely buy into this, change their workplaces quite a bit over time. From micro things like the wrong coffee in the kitchen, through to how they're being treated by managers, how the team works together or how they create their product or service.

I come from a professional services background and the people closest to the clients had the best answers to their issues. But due to hierarchy, I often didn't get to hear them. This gave me a direct line.

This is a great idea. Thank you! We will look into it for sure. We're looking at WhatApp, WeChat, etc. too and trying to decide the best way for us to let the staff decide how they want to receive the message.

That's a risk for sure - we're based in Australia, you couldn't fire someone in the way you described here, but I understand that's not the case everywhere. It's something we're thinking about.

In all the testing we've done; the feedback is generally honest but professional. The more pointed feedback is often a call for help from the team, and the manager needs help/training to improve. For example, in one test, we uncovered a manager forcing their team to work insane hours, on their days off, etc., without any additional pay or time in lieu - IMO, they deserved to be fired but were just given coaching.

It’s a fair concern that’s certainly on our very near roadmap. We’re adding an MFA confirmation on each phone number which helps validate respondents. Aware that it’s not a bulletproof solution, but it will close the gap another few inches.

Ahaha! Fair call. We're looking to support WhatsApp but SMS is handy because it's not an org owned platform. I've previously been in large corporates where chat logs etc. are maintained and might present a risk to the end user that's beyond our control. Also, response rates are way, way higher through SMS than any other delivery method.

Thanks for the question! Absolutely understand the scepticism. We have a user ID that we match to the Twilio response, so staff can't submit multiple answers. We delete our data from Twilio after seven days at the moment (Twilio mandated min); we’re working on a 1-hour retention policy via their Rest API. We’re always working toward minimising any end-user identifiers back to comments.

For me, there's also our reputation - if we claim we're protecting users and then don't, our product would be over quickly.