Blue Yonder recently launched AlertYa™, a fully customisable app that delivers surveys at the moments that matter. We had the opportunity to sit down with Hannah Kirk, Innovation Manager and the creator of AlertYa™, to learn more about the app and her journey in bringing it to life.
How did the idea of AlertYa™ come about?
I was actually in a brainstorm meeting about a new project by chance, but listening to the conversation, I realised we really needed some sort of automated platform that could send surveys to our consumers at relevant time points to events in their life. It was possible to do it manually, but not at all sustainable or realistic.
I called Jonathan, our Founder and CIO, and said “I have an idea!” and explained my thinking. As we fleshed out how it would work, how the app would look, and the benefits, it was really clear that we just had to do it.
I was lucky enough to get the trust and investment from the business to build an MVP, and it worked! We’ve now gone through a big round of development to finesse the app and here we are.
It was really just an idea from a conversation that I happened to be in, but soon became a necessity – we needed a solution to be able to deliver surveys at key timepoints, but importantly time points that were specific to each individual on the project. Now we have just that!
What were some of the biggest challenges?
To be honest, the main challenge has been patience for me! Building something that is really dynamic and customisable, like AlertYa™, does take a lot of time. I’m a very eager person, sometimes too eager for my own good, so it’s been a good lesson in patience whilst the app was being developed and tested. I really challenged myself during the process to collaborate with all teams at Blue Yonder and get feedback from clients and consumers alike to ensure the app was the most optimised as it could be for everyone who uses it. Taking the time to do that extra step or feedback has definitely been key.
What can consumers expect when they use AlertYa™?
When consumers use AlertYa™, they can see all of their tasks and surveys on the app, and will be notified exactly when we’d like to understand their opinions – for example, if they applied their deodorant at 7am that morning and we want to understand the experience after 12 hours, we’ll ping them at 7pm. It also provides a user friendly hub of all their tasks, so they can respond to the relevant surveys as and when they need to with ease, and not have to wait for a survey to be sent a set time point to the whole sample, like what may have been the case in the past. The app really makes things easier for the consumer, so they can get on with their day, with the convenience and assurance of being alerted, as and when they are required to respond.
Why should clients use AlertYa™?
AlertYa™ is the only tool that triggers insight capture at the specific time needed, so data is more accurate, reliable, and generally richer because we are negating the challenge with most surveys in the limitations of human memory! When experiences are captured as close to the moment they happen as possible, we’re less at risk of getting flat data, because we pick up on all the little nuances of the experience that would be forgotten at the end of the day.
It also means that for those projects where we want to understand how things are experienced as close to they would naturally, we have more freedom to let consumers do things at their own pace. AlertYa™ can be set up so the relevant survey/task is readily available to capture the experience as it happens, so we can test more in a real world environment without prescribing certain days or times of completion that may or may not be how the individual would actually behave if they used the product / brand normally.
What’s your biggest achievement?
I feel great about bringing AlertYa™ to life, especially with all the consumer feedback we’ve had back so far. One of the things I’ve been really passionate about is making the experience easy for them, and ensuring we stay true to that principle by creating something that is simple to use and allows timely completion of surveys. In our first month alone, we had 98% of consumers who said using AlertYa™ was better than traditionally emailed survey links, and 96% of people finding it easy to use, which just makes it all worth it!
What exciting plans do you have for the future?
I plan to continually improve the app based on feedback from users and clients, as well as adding a language feature so we can use AlertYa™ around the world. We also have some exciting ideas on integrating AlertYa™ even further into Blue Yonder’s toolkit, but more to come on that in the future!
The ultimate goal is to make AlertYa™ the go-to app for all surveys and tasks for Market Research and beyond. As the world continues to evolve in the post-covid era, flexibility and individual timelines are crucial, so we need to use tools like AlertYa™ in our industry to be as in tune with our consumers as possible, and continue to design products and services that best meet their needs.
We’d love to hear from you if you’d like to learn more about AlertYa™ and how it can help you get closer to the right moments. For more information or to discuss your needs further please contact Hannah Kirk at [email protected].
Hannah Kirk
Innovation Manager
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