Ready to revolutionize how your organization communicates and engages? This episode promises to deliver the secrets, as we sit down with Robert Graham from Poll Everywhere. We explore the remarkable versatility of Poll Everywhere from asking multiple choice questions to open-ended queries that capture real-time responses. We also dive into the power of integrating Poll Everywhere with Zoom, PowerPoint, and Slack to open up new channels for data exchange, keeping your audience connected in a meaningful way.
Wondering how to create an exceptional onboarding experience? Look no further. We discuss how Poll Everywhere can take your HR and TA to the next level, transforming your employee engagement strategies. From the buying process to getting started in no time, we navigate through the industries that have thrived with Poll Everywhere. We also examine the changing expectations of the audience and the need for data integration. Join us on this journey and discover the potential of Poll Everywhere.
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Ready to revolutionize how your organization communicates and engages? This episode promises to deliver the secrets, as we sit down with Robert Graham from Poll Everywhere. We explore the remarkable versatility of Poll Everywhere from asking multiple choice questions to open-ended queries that capture real-time responses. We also dive into the power of integrating Poll Everywhere with Zoom, PowerPoint, and Slack to open up new channels for data exchange, keeping your audience connected in a meaningful way.
Wondering how to create an exceptional onboarding experience? Look no further. We discuss how Poll Everywhere can take your HR and TA to the next level, transforming your employee engagement strategies. From the buying process to getting started in no time, we navigate through the industries that have thrived with Poll Everywhere. We also examine the changing expectations of the audience and the need for data integration. Join us on this journey and discover the potential of Poll Everywhere.
Listen & Subscribe on your favorite platform
Apple | Spotify | Google | Amazon
This is William Tincup and you're listening to the Use Case Podcast. Today we have Robert on from Poll Everywhere and we'll be learning about the Use Case, the Business Case for Wise Clients, pick Poll Everywhere. So, while we start with introductions, robert, would you do us a favor and introduce yourself and Poll Everywhere?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thanks, william. I'm excited to be here and talk through some of this with you. My background at Poll Everywhere extends back about eight years. Poll Everywhere is an odd startup and then it's pretty old it's a teenager. I was one of the early YC companies and we haven't taken any funding really since. So we've been profitable and bootstrapped since very early days and we make software that enables people to connect better with their audiences, and usually you see that in the form of integrating polls and activities, competitions and other ways you can connect into slideware or into a presentation and a web browser.
Speaker 1:So a number of intersection points. So, as it relates to understanding how the audience, what they care about obviously we'll talk about probably employees and candidates and how HR and TA can use Poll Everywhere. So what does that usually?
Speaker 2:present. So a couple of most common ways you'll see it and people may be most familiar with it from time in school, especially in higher education. But you'll see perhaps some sort of question and either a series of answers presented as multiple choice or potentially just an open-ended question where you reply using a phone typically, but other devices work, and so you would pick ABCD or you would reply with a few words that you think answer the problem to best. And then the part that's connecting is that everyone sees the answers as they appear in real time. So there's a graph of percentages responses on those multiple choice polls and there are different potential visualizations for free text responses, but the most popular is probably a word cloud of the most common words and phrases used.
Speaker 1:It's for HR that use this to understand kind of employee engagement, I'm assuming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to understand it, to measure it. It's an extremely common use case in onboarding. How?
Speaker 1:interesting. Okay, so how did our onboarding experience, how did you meet your expectations, et cetera?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even at a maybe a more granular level, you can break the ice. There are a lot of times where people will open up with a really low stakes question, something about where you're from, something that might connect the audience in an unknown way, right.
Speaker 2:Silly your favorite flavor of ice cream. But then you can get throughout the experience. You can set up questions where you understand where the audience is coming from as a presenter, and then also more evaluative, formative and assessment style questions throughout to understand where everyone's starting and also if you delivered the information and the understanding they were hoping to.
Speaker 1:I love that and I love the use word audience because a lot of the trend in HR and recruiting is to the audience has been changed. I talked to oh this early this week. I got a podcast with a TA global head of TA and she said listen candidates. And then she quickly said the audience. They're changed their expectations. They want the entire hiring process to be done soup to nuts in 21 days and I'm like some people have a hard time responding in 21 days but their audience they're finding like beneath their feet, the audience is shifting and so I think, poll everywhere. What's really interesting and fascinating to me is this is a way for you to kind of always have your finger on the pulse of what's going on with your people.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, we've seen similar things, both with the shift to. I think some realization that even as people return to office in some capacity, there's a large number of people that aren't returning to office five days a week doesn't seem like in most industries where that's not required, it doesn't seem to be a thing that's going to happen. So that connection part, I think, is something that's missing and I think that's part of what has shifted the audience itself and the conversation about how to meet that audience. I like that.
Speaker 1:Does it need to be? Does the data need to be integrated into any other kind of systems? Once we've learned what we needed to learn, you use onboarding as a kind of on the front side of onboarding. There's some things you can do to get your audience to interact and then maybe afterwards you can find out how the experience was, et cetera. There's several different kind of use cases there. Does that data need to go anywhere else, or have you been asked by your customers to take the data into other systems?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. We like to think of ourselves as something that should enable these interactions and improve that connection with the audience, but should also enable this kind of data exchange. An example here is we're using Zoom and you could obviously start a quick poll in Zoom, but one difference there is that we can be integrated into how you're already presenting with something like PowerPoint and also into how you're already evaluating how those sessions are going or evaluating something like performance in an educational context, with the learning management system, with other internal data management systems that we integrate, with quite a number of software like that, including other things like Microsoft Teams or Slack as well. So being able to connect with people wherever they are in your organization, where they spend time and how they choose, like which mediums they choose to communicate with, I think is pretty important to connecting all the dots and how we work.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you about Slack because I can see especially people that use a heavy users company that are heavy users of it, that they wouldn't want to go somewhere else but they'd want it to be there inside of wherever they're working. But do you have other things other than Slack and Teams? Is there any other kind of collaborative software that you're getting? Your customers are probably requesting you to be in.
Speaker 2:Well, please, we are in a couple of other places. We partnered with Cisco WebEx, as one example, as part of their App Store. Yeah, I'd say that's the biggest one that we haven't mentioned. We do connect with the slide where it's not just PowerPoint, things like Keynote and Google Slides as well, but in terms of like demands or interest from customers, we've definitely had some interest from customers using Zoom and we don't currently have that as part of the suite. The main reason has been that, the way that Zoom apps have been integrated, we just weren't sure we could deliver the quality of experience we wanted to.
Speaker 2:I think that may have changed really so we are looking at it again.
Speaker 1:From your because you've been in business for a little while and I love the fact that you're lean and profitable. There's so many stories of companies that kind of came to market, raised a lot of money and then not here because the market is pretty tough right now. But I wanted to ask you a question around the market itself. For you, are you a domestic, are you multinational, global, multilingual? Tell us a little bit about the market that you're addressing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are global in terms of customers, though the majority of our customers are still in the US. I'd say we have majority US and then significant presence in Europe and parts of Australia and Asia, and expanding some of that is definitely interesting to us. We have some minor support and delivering other languages in certain parts of the app, but not throughout. It's another place that I think is on the roadmap for us in the future.
Speaker 1:And so who do you sell to? Who's the person that buys poll everywhere? What's that kind of a title, or array of titles?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is definitely an array of titles. We find ourselves frequently in an HR context, so we might sell to someone that's leading an HR organization or to someone that's leading the onboarding part of that organization. We also see quite a bit in just learning and development and in a corporate context, and the titles vary there a lot everything from something related to learning and development to perhaps someone in charge of digital tools or digital culture at an organization we see pretty frequently. And then we also have buyers at higher education institutions. Those vary quite a bit depending on, really like, the scale of who we're selling to in the organization, whether it's university wide or sometimes even just a professor for their particular semester.
Speaker 1:So have you all ever been to ASU GSB the conference?
Speaker 2:We have not. We definitely have gap in our average.
Speaker 1:The last couple of years. Yeah, the thing is, you run a profitable company. You don't really need to think about these things, but because you can play with higher ed and with talent, that's a conference that's just based on that. So it's the intersection point of K through 12, higher education and then corporate, and so y'all would thrive because the entire audience fishing in a barrel, so to speak. But that happens in April. I would look forward for next year because it's your people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually heard about it a little bit. Somebody asked me if I was going to be there this year, and when I looked into it I had the same intuition that you presented. But we actually got together as a team around then on the revenue side of the org and so we were unable to shift plans.
Speaker 1:Yeah, next one, I think just because it's a concentration of folks that would care about this on all levels. I think it's just be fun for you. The other thing that I'm seeing a lot I don't know if you're seeing it as much but the development of EX employee experience. So we've talked about candidate experience for 20 plus years but we haven't really talked about employee experience that much. But last year was kind of a high watermark of people putting technology, putting budgets together around the employee experience so I could see titles in the future of people that have EX types of titles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I agree that we will expect to see that part of the market develop. I think In many ways that's part of where I think the market for our product segment is going to grow in the next few years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and again it's that finger on the pulse, understanding what's working, what's not working, giving people the freedom to answer and getting being heard. It's just. All this stuff lines up really well with what you built. Are there any industries that y'all have a dominance with?
Speaker 2:Dominance is strong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably should. I'll dial that back a little bit. Is there any industries that y'all? Just? You wake up seven years later and you're like wow, you have 2,200 customers in healthcare, whatever. Because there anything that where you see some density.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. We see a number of concentrations. We really began as a very horizontal product, more tailored toward individuals, and so that horizontal view I think is still part of the company today. So even as a more enterprise software company, we still have a broader appeal than I think you typically see develop. But we do have big concentrations in higher education, as I've mentioned, but also on the corporate side, industries like finance, like healthcare, as well. As you see, pretty significant things for us in the software and technology. I think that's partly just a cultural fit. It's easier to roll out technology solutions and cultures that are technology savvy and interested.
Speaker 1:So two things before we get to some buy side stuff. What are we displacing or replacing? Is it Post-it notes? Is it surveys? What are we displacing with Poll Everywhere?
Speaker 2:So I think this is maybe the most exciting time to answer that question for us, because for years, when we talk with the founders about this, the answer was we do have some direct competitors, but really what we're replacing is someone sitting in a room and asking the people in the room raise your hand, if, and then some question yeah, and the reason that's so exciting is in a hybrid context, right, if some people are not in the room and they're on Zoom and there's a couple of people with you, you really can't do that anymore Right, you can, it's just you do it at your own peril.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and it's an exclusive thing to do in that context. Right, try it, that's right.
Speaker 1:You can get good data or you can get horrible data. Why leave it to chance? How fast do we stand up poll everywhere? When asked a question by a prospect, they say I love everything. Check, how fast can we get started and that type of stuff. What does that look like for folks?
Speaker 2:I think in a very per organization, and what getting stood up means, I think, for somebody to use it in a meeting and see if it suits them. If they like it, it really could be 10 minutes before the meeting. I get something simple set up low stakes and try it out in their slide deck. We certainly have seen people do that and maybe, if you're less comfortable with technology, maybe you want 30 minutes or an hour to get it prepared. In a larger organization where things like you need agreements about data privacy or things like single sign on, of course that process is a bit longer, but we typically try to get people on board as quick as we can and those technical dominoes go pretty quickly. I would say rollouts are usually a couple of weeks to maybe four to six weeks on the longer end, depending on mostly the timelines that our customers need for checking on the box Right and some of that's like said data privacy, security, you bring in IT, they want to make sure everything fits a certain guideline, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Let's do some buy side questions for a second when you get to, on the occasion that you get to show people pull over what's your favorite part of the demo.
Speaker 2:I think that's remained pretty constant. For us it's still. The most exciting thing is to see someone recognize how they could use the technology. And there are a lot of contexts where we get used. And there are a lot of contexts where we get used where, quite frankly, we're going to get used by someone that's doing it for free, whether that's in a community organization or it could be at their church or even as a professor at a university.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we, for a long time, we're worried about oh we see all these email addresses that aren't from these higher education institutions that are using us on education accounts and we're like is this fraud? It turns out a lot of times it was people using their work emails to do volunteer work like teaching, for free. So we never did stop that and we're excited to see it. I think part of what we want as a group out of building this product is for people to connect better with those audiences. It's nice to be a part of something you can feel like, at the end of the day, had a positive impact on people.
Speaker 1:I love that. Two questions left. One is questions that buyers should ask, pull everywhere. Again, this might be something new to them in terms of purchasing, it might be something that they're acquainted with, et cetera. If you could script the questions that prospects should ask you, what would some of those questions be question? Well, it only took me 30 minutes, robert.
Speaker 2:I've heard that saying that's a good question. Obviously I've been for time, oh no that's exactly what I do.
Speaker 1:That's my pause. That's a fantastic question. Right there, the other part of my brain is trying to work out an answer. Just give me a sec.
Speaker 2:It's apparently also uniquely somewhat American Hold on recently.
Speaker 1:That's a great question.
Speaker 2:So what should people ask? I think it does depend a bit because we have such a horizontal customer base where they're coming from. They might need to ask a bit different questions if they do have things like data privacy concerns. But I think from our point of view, the product really sells itself if you can get traction in using it. So I think what are the ways that we've seen? Maybe people with a similar organization succeed in rolling out the product and just making sure that, if your presenters and your audiences are getting better connected, and then how frequently should we expect you to be demonstrating that value? Is this a product that you want to use with your CEO for a monthly town hall? Or is this something where you want a couple of hundred presenters to ask room-sulu people things many times a day? And I think then the rollout strategies and some of the things you'd need to do and how we could support you would be a bit different.
Speaker 1:I love that you mentioned adoption because, again, it comes down to when you buy software, especially enterprise, hr work, tech software, future work, whatever you want to call it. It comes down to usage. At the end of the day, people can make great purchases or not, but if people use the software, then they'll get some form of ROI. But if they don't, a lot of these business cases are built with the assumption of 100% adoption, which never happens, and so I like the fact that I'm asking questions and leaning on you and your expertise of saying, hey, you've seen this rolled out to however X number of clients that you have.
Speaker 1:How does it work? Give us some guidance like where are we so we don't make some of the rookie mistakes? I love that because I think practitioners and partners vendors should work well together in that regard. Listen, we don't do that many implementations you all do or we don't do that many rollouts you all do. Help us and more consultative, again towards everybody's best interest is adoption, consumption and usage. So I love that. Success stories that you love and you don't have to use brands or names or that type of stuff, but just kind of some of your go to success stories around poll everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a broad range of things we could talk about. I think I'll leave off on education because I think that was the easiest to understand without thinking about it. But we have seen, honestly in my time, I think, the most exciting. I did a customer interview a long time ago with someone that was getting together groups of people that were in populations, of people that had maybe had difficult experiences and they were sharing those experiences.
Speaker 2:And one of the things Poll Everywhere enabled was you don't ask that, raise your hand if question, because it's not the sort of thing that you would ask that question and expect people to volunteer in any kind of public sense.
Speaker 2:But Poll Everywhere enabled that question to be asked and answered anonymously, but also that people could see on the screen that they were in company that understood their experiences, that had some of the same experiences, and that it enabled some connection that the presenters really didn't believe could occur otherwise, and hearing that story directly has always stuck out to me. Another similar story would be someone internally that now is running sales for us just had a moment in the back of the room on one of their first days at the company that they volunteered something in an internal Q&A and one of the founders immediately picked it up and it got upvoted by people in the room and it got addressed and it stuck with them their whole time here. So it's part of how they've sold the product, because finding and elevating a voice in the back of the room of someone that's brand new and gets an idea heard by the founder of the company is just a really powerful experience.
Speaker 1:It drops my walks off stage. Robert, that was wonderful. Thank you so much. I love what you all are doing. I love the way you're running the company as well, and again, giving voice to everyone, which I think is the just A it's just the right thing to do be leveling the playing field where the certain voices don't have more power than others, so I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, William. Thank you for all the great questions. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 1:And thank everyone for listening. Until next time.