Innovation In A Box: Recollective Case Study

We're delighted to have Brent Schmidt, CEO of Strategic Fuel, contribute to our blog this month and share his case study of their very first Recollective-based project.

Clients: Juice Inc. and Strategic Fuel

Juice Inc: Is a corporate training company that believes energized and engaged employees fuel great customer experiences and better business results. That’s why the organization places a focus on ideas, skills and tools people can put to use immediately. Strategic Fuel: Driven by the challenge of bringing leaders, teams and customers onto the same page, Strategic Fuel takes a creative and collaborative approach to craft an insight-driven shared focus and direction for organizations and teams. Juice Inc. is a client of Strategic Fuel. Challenge: There were a few different challenges in play. 1. Juice Inc. was looking to engage past graduates of their 'Innovation In A Box' training program. Juice’s goal was to utilize a nimble online survey platform to not only gather feedback from past graduates to improve their innovation training program and toolkit, but also foster a sense of community and spur on a spirited conversation at the convenience of their busy clients. 2. Prior to the experience with the Recollective platform, Strategic Fuel utilized traditional research methods (telephone interviews, live focus groups and online surveys) to gather customer feedback and insight. Recollective was the first discussion forum platform implemented by Strategic Fuel. Strategic Fuel wanted to feel confident that their first discussion forum would be a success. Their priorities for an online platform included:

• ease of setup and use
• modern design to reflect the organization’s brand experience
• responsive support before and during the forum
• low cost
• a variety of methods available to engage participants

Solution: After exploring a number of online research platforms, Recollective was chosen as the platform as it met all of the criteria Strategic Fuel and Juice Inc. were looking for. A three-day discussion forum was determined to be the ideal length to allow participants enough flexibility to engage in a variety of activities and discussions, without losing too many participants due to forum fatigue. Setting up the forum took only a few hours with the support of the training videos and live support staff. The morning of the first day an invitation was sent out and within minutes participants signed on and began engaging in activities and discussion topics. Participants completed a variety of activities over the three day period including a complete the sentence exercise, a drag and drop ranking of innovation tools using a Good, Better, Best framework, and using the marking up tool to provide feedback on a prototype of a new website for Innovation in a Box. Discussions were actively used to provide input into strengths, weaknesses and areas to improve the program and toolkit. Participants also engaged with each other, sharing experiences and asking for further details on discussion posts. Results: Success! Over the three day discussion forum the 15 participants invited engaged in 42 completed activities, 140 discussion posts and 60 ratings and comments. Juice Inc. is utilizing the insights to improve the Innovation in a Box program and website messaging. A report of the key comments was produced and shared with all participants. Quotes:

Strategic Fuel “It was a new experience and it was critical that the experience went well. The Recollective team provided a link to a library of short training videos. They were fast and interesting to watch. They made set up fairly straightforward. We did need some support to work through a few areas and the ongoing support (even as late as 11 p.m. one evening) was more than helpful to check that the setup was correct. Everything went smoothly and we found the platform was easy and fun to use.” Juice Inc. “Our experience of Recollective was heavily influenced by the attention of our partner - Brent at Strategic Fuel. He did a great job of leveraging the flexibility of the Recollective platform to really tailor the 3-day “Insight Forum” with our customers to reflect the Juice brand. This is a roundabout way of praising the platform itself. It allowed us to incorporate our content (in terms of formatting, text and images) in a way that made the experience very “Juice”. While we expected it to be flexible to our needs, and user friendly, our real "eureka!" moment came when we realized that it was enabling us to launch and facilitate a focused time-limited (and therefore scalable) “Community of Practice” style dialogue with our customers and between customers.”