How Bower Collective uses Lyssna for sustainable growth and customer insights.

Bower Collective, a rapidly growing startup based in Bath, UK, is on a mission to reduce plastic waste by offering innovative home and personal care products. Founded in 2020, the company has developed eco-friendly formulas and a reusable pouch system, promoting a circular economy and minimizing packaging waste through responsible recycling.

As the company continues its strong growth, it’s prioritizing how to gain a deeper understanding of potential customers who are on the brink of making sustainable choices. To achieve this, Fiona Cliffe, Head of Product, needed a robust, affordable, all-in-one research tool.

Fiona shares how they leveraged Lyssna to conduct primary market research, refine their positioning, test prototypes, and optimize onboarding processes, all while being resource-efficient and maximizing opportunities.

Challenge

When Fiona joined Bower Collective, she quickly recognized that the company had a wealth of knowledge about its current customers, but lacked insights into potential customers who hadn't yet discovered their eco-friendly products. 

"We needed to find a way to reach people who were aware of the importance of sustainability but hadn't made the leap to choose our products yet," she explains.

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The challenge was to identify and understand these prospective customers, their motivations, and the barriers preventing them from making sustainable choices. 

Additionally, as a startup, Bower Collective needed a cost-effective and efficient way to conduct reliable research.

“If you're just sending emails or social media messages out to your current customers, there's a big question mark over how unbiased and how non-leading that research is.”

“One of the things I noticed was that we're not all customer researchers. It's such a skill to be able to ask questions in a non-leading way. So one of the reasons why I think it's important to use a tool, as it can guide you a little bit.” 

For Fiona, having a tool that could help support her and the Bower Collective team through this research, and help them ask the right questions, was a priority. 

Solution

After using Lyssna in a previous role, Fiona was already familiar with its capabilities. Our intuitive platform and flexible credit system allows Bower Collective to conduct research on an ad-hoc basis, fitting their budget and workflow perfectly.

The ability to segment and target specific demographics when recruiting research participants was also a huge draw-card.

"We have a very specific target market. They’re female, 40+, and with a specific household income. It was super easy to set up this demographic and be able to save it to use again,” mentions Fiona, referring to our saved demographic groups feature.

When Fiona first organized customer interviews using Lyssna she was amazed by how easy it was to set up. “We got the test invitation live on a Friday, and by the time I came in on Monday we had everyone set up and ready to go. So it was super, super quick.”

Another test that Fiona uses often is Figma prototype testing. According to Fiona, the tests are easy to set up and gather iterative feedback on product designs. 

Fiona has also started using card sorting to understand the perceived value of their products compared to cheaper alternatives. For example, supermarket bleach can be as cheap as 50p, and Bower Collective’s toilet cleaner is around £3.49.

“We're quite interested to learn about what is actually important to people and therefore what we should be focusing on. What should we really be talking about when people land on our site?”

This feedback will help refine their website content and email campaigns to highlight what customers value most.

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Results

The insights gained from using Lyssna have led to tangible improvements in Bower Collective’s product offerings and customer engagement strategies. Fiona shares a few key results below.

Enhanced product development

One of the significant findings had to do with the effectiveness of eco-friendly products. Customers have shown concern that sustainable cleaning products aren’t as effective as traditional cleaning products. This finding led Bower Collective to focus on improving the efficacy of their products and better communicating their effectiveness to customers.

For instance, they're launching a new laundry product based on customer feedback, and emphasizing its fragrance and efficacy. “How the fragrance lasts on the clothes when they're dry and you're putting them away – that beautiful smell that you get from clean laundry,” Fiona adds.

Improved customer onboarding

Another area of focus was the onboarding process for new customers. Many prospective customers were unsure about which products to choose and how much they'd need.

“We've really focused on those key concerns that we were hearing from customers to help guide them, for example, suggesting ‘this is how much you need for a household of four people.’ Or, ‘these are our best selling products,’” shares Fiona. 

“That only went live recently, so we're testing and seeing how that's going to go. And we'll iterate based on other feedback that we get.”

Building a customer-centric culture

Lyssna's user-friendly platform also played a role in fostering a customer-centric culture within the company.

“It's enabled me to get everyone in the team on board and understand why it's important to speak to customers and start getting them to think from a customer-centric point of view,” shares Fiona.

“Without a tool like Lyssna making it so easy for me to reach out to customers, it would have been a lot harder.”