Smart testing, big savings: How STAYERY potentially saved millions by testing with Lyssna.

In the heart of Berlin's startup scene, STAYERY, a leading serviced apartments company, is making waves with its unique blend of hotel-like amenities, homely comforts, and the added benefit of community spaces. 

“I think if you're coming to a new city and you don't know anyone, then booking in a STAYERY is a great way to meet people,” shares Eveline Moczko, Head of Product at STAYERY.

“​​A lot of the customer journey inside the property is digitized. So, you check in on your own, and we communicate with you through digital means, such as email, WhatsApp, and text messages.

“I think what we're doing differently from other serviced apartments is keeping human touch. There's still hosts in the actual property so it's not completely anonymous,” adds Eveline.

With a decade of experience in product roles, spanning across various industries such as education, ecommerce, and food deliveries, Eveline’s commitment to user-centered design and rigorous testing has been instrumental in setting up STAYERY for growth and, in turn, led them to Lyssna. 

We spoke with Eveline about her experiences using Lyssna in the quest to help STAYERY achieve their ambitious growth goals.

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Challenge

Eveline points out a common issue she’s noticed within the travel industry: the reluctance to conduct thorough user testing for real-world experiences. 

“If we put a $30 million property there, we better do user testing to know what people actually need. Anything else would be foolish," she remarks.

“For me, it was always obvious that we have to do user testing before we commit to big ticket building projects.  Especially now that our biggest challenge is that we want to grow.”

STAYERY is preparing for a hyper-growth stage, wanting to grow from seven properties in Germany to expand across Europe. 

This requires replicating the current model across multiple locations. However, they want to make sure the customer journey and design are optimized before scaling up. 

"Before you replicate a customer journey, you want to get it right," Eveline emphasizes. "Fixing it afterward gets expensive." 

Eveline and her team were looking for quick, reliable, and actionable user feedback before expanding into new properties. They needed to understand the preferences and expectations of potential guests thoroughly. 

Solution

Eveline and her team leverage an array of testing methodologies to make sure that each aspect of the customer journey and design is optimized for scaling. 

“We're doing preference tests all the time, just quickly getting feedback on copy, or an image test for our OTA (online travel agencies) presence, like booking.com and AirBnB, to see what photos and design are perceived well,” explains Eveline.  

As well as the comprehensive selection of test types, Eveline has found the quality of the testers from the Lyssna panel to be truly beneficial in offering deeper insights. “In all our preference tests, we never just got a clear winner and went with it. It was the qualitative feedback that helped us arrive at better solutions than the two preferences we initially tested," shares Eveline. 

From this feedback, Eveline and her team were able to delve into the nuanced opinions and preferences of their target audience. This depth of insight helped the team make informed decisions that enhanced the overall guest experience.

Using Lyssna has even gone beyond the product team. As Eveline explains, the marketing team caught wind of the tool they were using and wanted to use it to test the copy of an out-of-home campaign for one of the new cities where they were opening a property.   

“I showed my colleague the tool at 10:30am and by 4pm we had the results. It was just that quick and that easy to be able to explain to him how it works. He created the test and within 15 minutes, we had the feedback from our 25 testers.”

Results

One of the most impactful results came from a survey focused on the future of access control, which explored how people enter the buildings and their rooms and the type of electronic lock they preferred. This element is crucial within the industry, given the range of options available, from pin codes, to key cards, to mobile apps. Getting this right was key for Eveline and the team, before making any big commitments.

Why? Because a single electronic lock can cost around €1,000. So, for a property with a hundred apartments, that's already a hefty €100,000. Now, imagine this cost across multiple properties during an expansion plan.

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Eveline further explains the survey they decided to run. "We wanted to understand how people prefer to access their accommodations because in terms of return on investment (ROI), that's the biggest thing to cheaply test. To run a preference test versus the millions we would have to spend [on locks].

“Instead, we paid €200 for the pro version of Lyssna and we recruited our own guests as testers.” 

By testing preferences inexpensively and effectively with their target audience, STAYERY avoided making a costly mistake and wasting a significant amount of money.

Eveline's approach to user research, combined with Lyssna’s platform, has positioned STAYERY for success as it scales its operations. The ability to conduct rapid, cost-effective tests and receive high-quality feedback hasn't just saved STAYERY significant resources, but also enhanced the overall guest experience, ensuring that each new property lives up to the brand’s high standards.