Flagging the Future, How SafetyCulture went from reactive reporting to proactive alerts.
The Conundrum - Pinpointing Areas for Improvement
Back in 2015, SafetyCulture was in the spotlight, and our flagship product, iAuditor, was revolutionizing how workplaces managed safety and quality. iAuditor's core feature was inspections, essentially reusable checklists that allowed managers to gauge safety and quality with simple yes-or-no questions.
Teaming up with a UX researcher, we engaged with customers from diverse sectors: construction, retail, hospitality, and aviation. While their use cases varied, they all had a common need – the 'traffic light report.' This report showed what was working well (green) and what wasn't (red).
The hitch? To identify problematic questions, customers had to manually comb through inspection reports, a time-consuming process that often led to delays in resolving issues and increased safety risks.
Another significant finding was that not all 'red flags' required immediate attention. Some were more like gentle reminders. Unfortunately, these reminders often ended up buried in the database and could escalate into more significant issues over time.
We were presented with a couple of challenges;
How could we speed up the process of alerting managers to high-risk issues for swift action?
Challenge 1
Challenge 2
How could we ensure 'red flags' remained prominently visible in the manager's workflow, reducing the risk of oversight and encouraging proactive problem-solving?
Business realities and Opportunities
In the backdrop of these challenges, SafetyCulture faced resource limitations. We needed to be selective in our feature development, ensuring that each step was validated by real-time customer feedback.
At this stage, we operated without a dedicated product manager, relying on the collaboration between a small design team, 15 engineers, and our CEO, who also assumed the role of the product strategist.
Additionally, our customers had expressed their dissatisfaction with the usability of our analytics feature. User engagement statistics were not promising, with only 20% of customers engaging monthly. To address this, we initiated a project to overhaul our analytics infrastructure, presenting an opportunity to enhance the analytics experience in parallel.
Closing the loop
Following extensive ideation, we devised a two-pronged strategy to address the identified challenges while concurrently improving our analytics feature.
First, we introduced email and SMS notifications to alert customers in real-time when a specific question received a 'failed' response during an inspection. This allowed customers to customize their notifications and receive a comprehensive summary report upon inspection completion, significantly streamlining the process of identifying failed items.
Simultaneously, we undertook an overhaul of our analytics functionality. We shifted the focus to present critical statistics upfront and introduced a dedicated section within analytics that highlighted responses containing flagged items. This approach eliminated the need for customers to dig through inspections to identify issues.
Ultimately, our enhanced analytics structure provided customers with an overarching view of safety processes while enabling a deep dive into specific issues at the item level within inspections.
The Payoff
Our efforts paid off, and customers began experiencing the meaningful impact of these enhancements. User engagement with analytics doubled, with 40-50% of our customers actively engaging with flagged items.
Furthermore, our improved product experience attracted attention, leading to a successful Series B investment round in 2017.