How do you communicate with your beta testers effectively?
Elena
25 replies
I'm looking for the best software to create a group chat for our beta-testers to communicate with each other? Any suggestions?
Replies
Leandro@lifelivedfreely
Merida for Remote Workers
Telegram is free and incredibly flexible, allowing you to create groups in the way you'd want to use it here. It has a desktop as well as a mobile app.
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@leandro8209 Our team recently switched from Slack to Telegram and its working great so far. Do you recommend a group or a channel? Should testers be split up in groups or just have everyone in one big group?
Merida for Remote Workers
@bundubuduri If you want multi way communication, then it’s a group you want. A channel is a one-way method of communication to broadcast messages. The other part depends on size. Once things go over 50 people, it might make sense to create separate groups. Entirely up to you though.
@bundubuduri @leandro8209 what about gitter?
@leandro8209 Excellent. I like the Telegram route. I think it is much easier especially when onboarding. Not that slack is not a great tool- I feel that, sometimes for groups that are not well established its better to take the Telegram route and then transition to Slack later. Thanks for your insights.
@leandro8209 @sreekanth850 Havent used it yet. Will check it out.
Now almost all communication takes place through the FB community. There are 750 active users, we receive new feedback/questions every day. Members can join the community by answering a few questions. In this group, you can run polls, polls, or ask what exactly is missing in your product.
We also have a not new, but relevant article https://www.chanty.com/blog/how-...
@new_user_23a8482d5c anything but Facebook, lol :)
It came down to three choices, Telegram, Slack, and Discord. What are the pros and cons of each?
@elenanabi there's also the option of having a forum directly on your website, if you have one that is. Can't comment regarding discord, but between Telegram and Slack, it partially depend on geography; Telegram is particularly present in Post-soviet spaces and where people have less trust of other communication media, whereas Slack is common in places percieved as tech/start-up hubs.
@elenanabi Discord has multiple channels under one big group, so it's easier for people to choose and join the channel / topics that they're interested in.
I talk directly with the individuals to get an insight
Discord absolutely
For me, I will chat directly with each individual beta testers. So I'm not sure how many beta users you have to make it a group chat?
Our beta test began right after lockdown, so we created a Slack Workspace to stay connected with users. We added a "Join our Slack Group" widget inside our product during the beta test, and users slowly started to join. The key was keeping the channel engaged with lots of easy-to-answer questions (emoji polls), product announcements, and always inviting users to online meetups (group sessions) and one-on-one calls (individual sessions).
@elenanabi I am part of some slack groups for beta testing. It allows for creation of polls, DMs and channels for various purposes. More importantly, I am assuming it is easier for the product manager and teams involved who already use this.
@colin_pace did you look at discord?
@suryanarayanan why slack?
@colin_pace I agree. Slack and Discord are great for this. I would lean a little towards Slack
Having Beta-testers talk to each other can be problematic because you can end up with groupthink, or people attaching themselves to the opinions of others rather than giving you the individualised feedback that you likely want. You might want to avoid a common talking space, and instead produce a survey based on the answers from your first x amount of beta testers, to give to the following z amount so you can start doing some quantitative analysis.
Hi all! I'm Moran, CEO of Volar and we improve and automate beta features feedback cycles!
With Volar, you can easily invite the relevant users to a "Beta Space" and communicate with them in context and on top of the product platform.
Volar provides various interaction types to ensure ultimate communication (e.g public discussion, moderated chat, surveys, and user feedback).
All feedback provided is collected and tracked in a dashboard, where it is analyzed and allows teams to make data-driven decisions and prioritize product improvements based on the feedback collected.
If you are interested to try it out reach me out at moran@volar.team