Introduction
We recently sat down with Obi Santos, Head of VoC Insights at Vivobarefoot, to discuss her experience as a power user and early adopter of Chattermill's newest features - Observations, Highlights, and Ask Lyra.
During our conversation, Obi shared practical examples of how these new additions to the Chattermill platform have fundamentally changed the way her team works with customer feedback, from how they analyze insights to how they share them across the organization. As one of the first to explore these new capabilities, she offers an exclusive look at the impact they have had on business decisions.
Key Takeaways:
- Exclusive insights from beta testing: As one of the first power users to test Observations, Ask Lyra, and Highlights, Obi provides an inside look at how these features work together to transform customer feedback into strategic business decisions.
- Practical applications across the business: From product development to website UX improvements, Obi shares concrete examples of how her team uses these tools daily, moving from insight to action in hours instead of weeks.
- Fundamental shift in how teams work: The new features have transformed how teams interact with insights - Observations quantify exact customer issues, Ask Lyra lets stakeholders self-serve answers without technical expertise, and Highlights provides instant, trustworthy summaries to share.
- Real impact on decision-making: Obi's team saved hours of manual work and can now prioritize which customer issues to tackle first based on quantified data.
Vivobarefoot's journey to becoming customer-centric
Q: Obi, could you tell us about your role at Vivobarefoot?
Obi: Hello, I'm Obi Santos. I am Customer Voice and Experience Lead at Vivobarefoot. Vivobarefoot is a natural health and wellness brand that specializes in footwear. I've been working there for the last two years, and we've been partnering with Chattermill for the last year.
Q: What challenge were you facing with customer insights before Chattermill?
Obi: Prior to Chattermill, we had a big problem: lots of data, no actual insights. We were very good at collecting customer data across our different platforms, but we couldn't turn it into meaningful actions.
Chattermill has been revolutionary in helping us piece together a holistic view of our customer feedback and sentiment. Now we can prioritize actions across the board - not just within customer experience, but different stakeholders throughout the business can prioritize their roadmaps based on the insights we've uncovered.
Using Observations to quantify specific customer issues
Q: You've been an early adopter of our new Observations for a while. How has it improved your ability to identify specific customer issues?
Obi: Before Observations was launched, we could understand the sentiment of a topic. Take sizing, for example - we get a lot of sizing queries in the footwear business. Typically, customers want to go into a store and try shoes on, but when shopping online, you can't always gauge your size accurately. We could see negative sentiment around sizing through Chattermill, which was already valuable.
But Observations took it to the next level. Now we can quantify how many customers are saying "the sizing's too big" versus "the sizing's too small" - and that distinction is crucial.
Observations allowed us to quantify the verbatim feedback and drill down to identify the root problem. We can see exactly the number of customers who have each specific issue, so we can tackle the right problems with precision.
Q: You mentioned sizing - what's another area where Observations have made a difference?
Obi: Another area where we've extracted granular insights is around colorways for our footwear.
When customers say they want "more variety," we can now pinpoint what that actually means through Observations. We can quantify the number of customers requesting lighter colors versus those requesting darker colors. We can see how many love our current colorways versus those asking for different options - and importantly, those who explicitly say different colorways would drive them to purchase more products.
Observations have been a real game-changer in helping us quickly quantify these qualitative insights. This level of granular analysis would have required significant manual effort to achieve. Now, Observations do it automatically, giving us instant access to these detailed breakdowns. Observations do it for us out of the box.
How Ask Lyra enables self-service analytics for everyone
Q: As one of our beta testers for Ask Lyra, how has it changed the way your team and stakeholders interact with customer insights?
Obi: Ask Lyra has been pivotal in changing how stakeholders across our business engage with customer insights. They can now input their exact questions directly into the platform and get immediate answers. This has really humanized our insight extraction - we have many more stakeholders actively using the tool or requesting insights to answer their most important business questions.
The efficiency gain is remarkable. Before Ask Lyra, you'd work with filters to extract the insights you needed. Now, simply type your question, and Ask Lyra calculates everything automatically, returning the insights instantly. From a time-saving perspective, that's a game-changer.
Q: Having had early access to Ask Lyra, do you think this new tool will change how your organization works with insights?
Obi: Ask Lyra impacts how we operate as a business because stakeholders can now self-serve. Whereas before they might have needed our team to navigate the platform, with Ask Lyra being so intuitive, stakeholders can go in themselves and input their immediate questions to generate reports.I think this will change the way we work.
Chattermill helps humanize insights - historically, insights have been seen as intimidating, numbers-based, and too technical. Ask Lyra bridges that gap by creating a conversational interface between stakeholders and the data they need. It's an effective way to introduce people to insights while enabling them to become self-sufficient.
Q: You've also been testing our new Highlights feature alongside Ask Lyra.
Obi: Highlights have been equally pivotal. Once we've used Ask Lyra and have our insights displayed alongside Observations, we can click to view Highlights and get an instant dashboard. I've honestly never seen anything as quick as that.
It's a presentable dashboard you can share immediately. Others can quickly read and digest that information, which is a time-saver for my team. But equally important, the format really helps other stakeholders across the business engage with insights.
Q: You mentioned that these new features have "humanized" feedback. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?
Obi: When I say Chattermill and these additional features have helped us humanize feedback, it's in two ways. First, how our teams engage with the platform - it's more intuitive. We're all naturally curious and inquisitive, and Ask Lyra feeds into that brilliantly. Second, the way feedback is presented is more emotive, putting story and emotion behind the numbers.
At Vivo, we've historically had lots of data that's been heavily quantitative. Ask Lyra helps us put qualitative, emotive insights behind those numbers to understand the why. That's what our teams relate to - not just the number, but the why behind the number. The suite of tools that Chattermill now has is helping us uncover the why.
Practical applications: from product development to website UX
Q: How have you operationalized Chattermill at Vivobarefoot, especially incorporating these new features into your workflows?
Obi: We're focused on being efficient with our insights, both in analysis and distribution across teams. We've leaned heavily on automations, serving dashboards automatically to various teams, whether weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
To make those dashboards engaging, anything we deliver has to be compelling. We've been able to add snippets from Observations, which have really brought the insights to life. Teams can see snapshots of what customers are thinking or feeling. They relate to those words and feelings, which become a stronger motivation to take action.
Q: Can you share how different teams are using these insights to drive action?
Obi: Take our product team and styles, for example. If customers are making requests like "we would like to see a sandal that looks like this," our team can see through Observations that many customers want sandals that feel very light but also have a certain style. Our team takes that and uses it in their product development roadmap to produce something that will resonate with our customers.
They know it will resonate because it's based on verbatim feedback, as opposed to quantitative analysis that merely states, "100 people want different styles." That doesn't land as well. It's about how the feedback is being digested - the new tools within Chattermill make the feedback more digestible and relatable for our stakeholders.
Q: Can you share a specific example of how you've used these new insights capabilities to improve your website experience?
Obi: Using Chattermill and Observations, we're able to understand how customers navigate the website and what they find frustrating.
Observations showed many results about filters - that the filters for navigating the website weren't providing the best user experience. We could then understand why our naming conventions for categorizing products didn't match how customers want to search for them.
This allowed us to look at the architectural structure of how we organize products, describe them to customers, and enable search, making it align with their expectations rather than how we would internally navigate. Chattermill is very good at showing "this is what the customer wants, this is why they want it." The new features make it quicker to drill down into that why, which is great.
Q: What kinds of specific questions are your stakeholders asking through Ask Lyra now that they have this capability?
Obi: Our stakeholders across the business have been very good at asking questions. Marketing, for example, asks: How have campaigns landed with customers? Are they resonating with our new brand slogan, "Free your feet"? What does that mean to them?
We can directly query how customers feel about our brand and understand the sentiment and descriptions customers are using.
That's working really well at Vivo. Another example is returns - we input direct questions like "how can we improve returns experience," and it pulls through all requests where customers say "I wish Vivo would do this." It's been a real game-changer, saving hours of manually reviewing verbatim feedback. We can now do that quickly by plugging in our questions.
Best practices for using Observations, Ask Lyra, and Highlights
Q: As a power user who's been beta testing all three new features - Observations, Ask Lyra, and Highlights - what advice would you give to other companies that are getting access to these tools?
Obi: To make the best of Chattermill - specifically Observations, Ask Lyra, and Highlights - I'd say understand how to use the three in conjunction.
They work really well together. Observations enable you to quantify verbatim feedback, which is powerful to add to dashboards shared with stakeholders, allowing them to understand what customers are saying and how many are saying it.
That acts as your first layer. If you want to delve deeper into any Observations, you go to Ask Lyra with follow-up questions. For example, if you see through Observations that sizing is too big, you can ask Lyra "why are customers feeling the size is too big?" Observations become a springboard for deeper exploration.
Then Highlights makes everything shareable with the touch of a button. Once you've used Ask Lyra and have your insights with snippets, you click "view Highlight" and instantly get a dashboard you can share. It's a full circle - you start with a question, see the Observations, delve deeper with Ask Lyra, then share insights with stakeholders through Highlights.
Q: Looking at your overall experience as an early adopter of these new features, what would you say is the biggest impact Chattermill has had on Vivobarefoot?
Obi: One thing I absolutely love about Chattermill, especially for us at Vivo, is how it's enabled prioritization.
We have a lot of data, and Chattermill helps us with insights. But having data and insights isn't enough when you can't do everything. Chattermill has enabled us to strategically determine which issues to tackle first, based on what will have the most significant impact - whether on our NPS metric or net sentiment metric. It enables us to prioritize intelligently, work smarter and faster, and reprioritize based on customer needs. I truly believe that's all because of Chattermill.
Learn more
Want to hear more success stories from our community? Visit chattermill.com/community to discover how other companies are transforming their customer experience with Chattermill.
Ready to see Observations, Ask Lyra, and Highlights in action? Book your personalized demo and discover how you can turn your customer feedback into actionable insights in minutes, not hours.
.png)
