How Cosmic transformed client communication with Userback

About Cosmic

Cosmic is a social impact creative agency that empowers social impact organizations to make transformational changes by embracing a digital-first culture that leverages the advantages of the information era.

We work with organizations that are eager to take a huge leap from a preinformation-era mindset into a digital-strategy-driven approach built on a modern and flexible technology stack. It’s important for us to provide our clients with a simple, intuitive interface for user experience and QA feedback. Userback allows our clients to easily step into what can be an overwhelming process with minimal technical knowledge and effectively collaborate with us.

The Business Challenge

The organizations we work with have varying levels of digital and technical experience. Because they don’t work in the design space every day, it can be challenging to communicate their expectations and any misalignments. During the digital design and development process, they need a way to effectively provide objective and actionable feedback.

Feedback can be highly subjective, incomplete, confusing, and even contradictory. Our developers used to spend a lot of time trying to understand exactly what our clients were trying to communicate and how best to address issues.

Clients can get frustrated too. Prior to adopting Userback, we asked them to use a number of different platforms and applications to report bugs or submit a simple feature request — and sometimes we would still need more information. For example; we trained clients to use whatsmybrowser.org in order to replicate many issues. We then asked them to provide their descriptions in a GoogleSheet which by its nature, is disconnected from other information. It was another step for them to clear up any vague or out-of-context information through screen images or screencasts of interactions or screen states.

We always do our best for our clients, and to do that we need to give them a clear path to critique and contribute. However, our previous process was time-consuming and confusing for everyone. And let’s face it, no one wants to spend the last few weeks prior to launch going back-n-forth over tiny details.

In addition, since most of our business comes through referrals, it’s critical for us to remove the friction from the feedback process in order for the project wrap up to be as good of an experience as the rest of the engagement.

We want to leave each client with an overwhelmingly positive view of our time together and feel confident that they would recommend us and be happy to supply a testimonial.

We tried multiple combinations of workflows and platforms including Asana, Basecamp, and other project tracking tools. What we really needed was a simple and easy-to-use platform that connects our development team directly with clients. After a market review and thoroughly testing the suitability during the free two week trial, we chose Userback.

The Userback Impact

Userback has transformed the way we engage with our clients during the digital development process. The platform has a number of benefits for us including:

• Intuitive Interface: It’s really simple to use. Our team uses it every day, including our technical director, creative director, project manager, developers, and designers. And our clients benefit as well. EDs, marketers, and development (fundraising) teams can jump straight in to provide timely feedback and approvals.
• Smooth Workflows: The customizable workflow allows us to be transparent without overwhelming clients with technical details. The Kanban-like board workflow is easy to read, see what’s ready for development, and what’s in progress.
• Effortless User Information: The automatic capture of page URL, console output, errors and device information gives our developers the context they need to replicate and resolve issues without having to ask the client for more details.
• Increased Visibility: Having both an internal and external view of the project is great. Userback provides progress transparency all the way up to launch — they know that we’ve received their feedback and that we’re taking action to address it.

With Userback, Cosmic has achieved

Improved Efficiency

Userback reduces the need for our developers to have back-n-forth conversations with clients to replicate reported issues. It also highlights duplicated feedback when both our team and the client team notices the same issue.

Central Workflows

Userback gives us a single place for both our team and our clients’ teams to collaborate on digital projects. It simplifies project management and enriches project and development oversight.

Clear Communication

Communication between our team and client teams has dramatically improved. We no longer have to rely on guesswork, assumptions, or incomplete information coming from a jumble of disparate sources. It’s all in one place.

“Love it, use it every day!”

SaaS and web applications love Userback as their in-app feedback tool! Read more reviews on G2