Remove silos and speed up qualitative analysis.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
As a solo researcher at our startup, we use Dovetail to store all of our customer research. Before Dovetail, all research was stored on my Google Drive or in a shared drive, which made it a very manual process to look up past research. Implementing Dovetail allowed us to store all user research in a central location that anyone in the company could access. The search allows cross-functional teams to easily see what data we have from our customers on any subject. It has removed the silo that used to be a barrier to customer insights. Our biggest use case of Dovetail is the repository and search. The AI is getting a lot better, but still has some ways to go.
Pros
- Dovetails search is amazing! It allows our teams to jump into Dovetail, ask questions of ALL the data we have there, and provide amazing summaries. This is really great for getting a high-level overview of a particular subject matter. It also provides links to transcripts that verify the summary's source.
- Speaking of summaries, the AI's summary of a question is amazing. Again, it highlights parts of the transcription that validate the summary. This is an awesome tool for high-level summaries of any research question.
- I love the tagging for research analysis. The tags are project-specific, so not across your entire data set, but still incredibly helpful. I can review calls and transcripts, highlight and tag any text relevant to the research questions I'm trying to answer. And look through all data for a specific tag, and much more easily spot trends or patterns. This is my bread and butter as a researcher with Dovetail.
- Lastly, I love the collaborative aspect. Anyone in our organization can log in to Dovetail and review data. I will often share clips directly from Dovetail with stakeholders, who can easily view them. Overall, the collaborative effort has been a huge help in getting more team members into Dovetail.
Cons
- I think one of Dovetail's biggest challenges is discoverability. They are constantly shipping new features and adding more functionality, but I find the help articles and videos do not go deep enough or even provide enough help to get started. I'm sure I'm not utilizing the platform to its full potential, and I think better training or onboarding across all tiers would help us get more out of Dovetail. Its hard to even know what you're not using or what you don't know.
- On the Enterprise plan, you get a dedicated account manager who can handle your onboarding. That's the only plan with an account manager. And it's a little unfortunate. When you write into the help center, they direct you to a help article, which again does not go deep enough. I wish there were more opportunities for training and enablement for lower tiers.
- I think Dovetail is amazing for qualitative research, but I find it very frustrating and lacking for quantitative research. I don't think it makes survey analysis very easy. I would be looking for something closer to a Sheets or Excel for quant analysis, but Dovetail is pretty crude in what it allows you to do with survey results.
Return on Investment
- The first biggest ROI is the time savings. As a research team of one, there is only so much that I can do with my bandwidth. Dovetail allows me to close out research projects much faster than doing it manually. I can upload video interviews, highlight and tag parts of the transcript that relate to research questions, and easily summarize. Highlighting allows me to get the perfect soundbite for a research readout, and overall, Dovetail has helped me move faster and with greater accuracy.
- Another huge ROI for us is the improved productivity. Product managers, designers, and other colleagues can easily go into Dovetail and ask the chat/search for answers to questions they are trying to figure out. All of this without having to reach out to me, the solo researcher. This saves me a ton of time in Slack messages and meetings.
- The value of the repository itself is huge. Since all of our research is stored in Dovetail, we can easily search previous research to ensure we are not duplicating efforts or even missing key customer information that may have come up in a separate study. This gives our research a longer shelf life, making it even more valuable.
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Usability
Alternatives Considered
Marvin
Other Software Used
Slack, Anthropic Claude
