So you’ve made the decision to use GoSpotCheck to collect the data that matters most to you and to make life easier for your field team.
Congratulations, and welcome to the family! The first few phases of your GoSpotCheck journey are all very exciting: we’ll upload existing data like your People and Places, ensure you’re comfortable with using GoSpotCheck’s web dashboard, and set up your very first Missions.
There’s one more crucial piece to this puzzle, though, and that’s rolling GoSpotCheck out to your team. Or, to put it another way, the next step is what we-in-the-biz call, “User Adoption”. This is where you get your field team trained and, more importantly, engaged with GoSpotCheck.
For insight into some best practices for this very important stage, look no further! We’ve got you covered. Here’s what we’ve found works best.
- Tell your field team about GoSpotCheck
This may seem painfully obvious, but the least effective trainings are the ones where the field reps have never even heard our name. We’ve made GoSpotCheck extremely user friendly, but getting started with any new tool can sometimes be overwhelming. After all, it’s a new thing to learn – and it’s much easier for your field reps if they’re introduced to GoSpotCheck by you, an administrator or manager within their own organization, rather than by someone from the outside who’s not as familiar with their day-to-day. Which leads us to…
- Explain the “why” behind your Missions
Whether you are replacing an old system with GoSpotCheck or hiring a brand new field team to use it, a great second step is to explain to your team what data they’ll be collecting and why. Are you looking to track performance and display of your product versus competitors? Show your vendors you’re doing an awesome job putting up compelling displays? Ensure that your facilities are managed to your high standards of quality?
Whatever the motivation, reps will be more engaged in the Missions they’re completing and happier with their work if they understand the larger purpose behind the data they’re collecting. Consider letting them see “behind the curtain” to the reporting, or involving them in the bigger picture behind the Missions via Notifications. (For more about how to let members of your field team view select data in the web dashboard, contact your Customer Success Manager.) The more visibility your users have into the “what” and the “why” behind the data you’re tracking, the more buy-in and engagement you’ll get from them. After all, the goal of GoSpotCheck is to provide value at all levels, and this includes your field reps!
- Test drive your Mission in the field (if you can)
Sometimes Missions make more sense when they’re being built in the Web Dashboard than they do in practice on a mobile device. It’s hard to really know, however, unless you try the Mission for yourself. The user experience while collecting the data can be just as important as the data itself. If Missions are too long, redundant, or missing tasks that are important to your reps, your field team may experience burnout and frustration.
If you can, consider spending part of a day in the field, and test out the Missions you’ve built. This will give you direct insight into what your reps are dealing with in the market, which can be extremely valuable. It might point out holes or items you suddenly realize you should be tracking. You may also uncover a few tasks that you intended to mark as optional, but are displaying as required (and preventing you from submitting your Mission)!
If you can’t go yourself, getting direct feedback from your field team is a good second option. You might even consider setting up a Feedback Mission, so that reps can give you their thoughts in real time, without having to exit GoSpotCheck to write up an e-mail.
- Identify and enable Power Users/Product Champions
One of the best ways to get your field team engaged is to identify “power users,” also known as “product champions”. These are tech-savvy people on the team; usually early adopters who understand GoSpotCheck and how to use it, and who can share this knowledge and enthusiasm with others. It’s great if these people are team leads or managers in the field who can get their teams on board, but power users can be reps as well.
If no one comes to mind at your organization, consider creating this as a role on your field team. It will be an opportunity for someone to learn a new skill and to shine and will help you promote high levels of engagement with GoSpotCheck. These users will be great points of contact for both you and the reps. You’ll be able to keep your finger on the pulse of how Missions are running and how teams are responding, and the reps will have an additional resource to help answer questions and communicate any issues.
- Provide an incentive
Let’s face it: we all like competing for prizes, and providing your team with an incentive can be a powerful way to get users engaged right from the start. A good method is to pick an initial milestone to shoot for, whether it be a target number of Missions or account visits within the first 2-4 weeks, and provide a prize for all who reach it. Or, pick a single great prize and reward the user with the most Missions complete by the end of a set timeframe. However you choose to go about it, rewarding user participation in the early stages can be a fun way to get teams on board.
- Last but not least: Communicate
The only constant is change, and change can often happen at the most inopportune times. Is it really worth the effort of communicating changes out to all of your field reps every time? At GoSpotCheck, we strongly believe that it is. Making a point to call out change as it occurs will enable your reps to better manage themselves and hold themselves accountable for their own work, and it will be easier on you and any other managers at your organization over the long haul.
Communication is a critical part of allowing reps to do their jobs effectively while eliminating confusion, and it can take work off of your plate too. Rather than having to answer individual questions, or deal with the fallout if the right questions don’t get asked, consider using in-app Notifications to communicate to your team when major changes take place.
Hopefully you’ve made it this far with a better sense of how you can promote high levels of User Adoption within GoSpotCheck. If you have any other ideas that you don’t see here, or if you’ve tried some of these and had success, please let your Customer Success Manager know! We’re always interested in making these conversations a two-way street, and we love hearing from you.
