The employee as beta-tester

The first people who have been to install Tesla solar tiles in their homes have been company employees, who for some time will be in charge of reporting any problems. The same approach has been taken with the new Model 3: the company began delivering the first vehicles to employees, asking them to provide feedback on condition they did not resell them at a profit .

Tesla is not alone: GM has just announced it will use the Cruise fleet of autonomous vehicles it acquired last year for a group of employees, that will be able to use it for free to move across San Francisco. The Cruise system works just like Uber or Lyft: you tell an app where you want to go and wait for a vehicle to pick you up. By law, all vehicles will still have to have a driver behind the wheel for possible emergencies, but will be in self-drive mode most of the time.

The idea of using your employees as beta-testers is not especially novel, but it is a growing trend and seems to make sense in the case of disruptive services and products before final deployment. In addition, employees get bragging rights on an aesthetically acceptable solar roof, a battery accumulator with associated savings, drive a vehicle for which there is a waiting list of almost half a million people, or experience autonomous driving before anybody else. There is also the additional benefit of closing the circle: of seeing the fruits of your work in design, manufacturing or admin, providing a feeling of ownership, of a closer tie with the company, of internalizing the strategy.

For the company, testing products out on employees brings the additional benefit of preventing information leaking to the media, as long as the workforce is committed to the success of the launch. Tips? Let your employees know what you expect from them, the importance of their role, the need for the information they provide for the success of the launch and the reduction of possible future costs, as well as the opportunities for innovation that may arise in the future. In addition, manage the mix properly: not all employees involved in the process should necessarily be those most familiar with the product or service. At the same time, be transparent when deciding who has the right to participate: you do not want to generate misunderstandings or privileges that could be interpreted as discrimination, and you are interested in collecting as much variability as possible while staying reasonably close to the characteristics of the group the product or service is targeted at.

Try to provide employees with an experience as close as possible to what consumers would have: this can be difficult, such as when the product or service is intended to be marketed indirectly, but it is advisable to think about how such factors could affect opinions, and therefore, consider them as an important variable. Finally, be generous, albeit in a measured way: the opportunity to participate in this type of test should be seen as a privilege, as an opportunity to access a product or service that would normally involve considerable financial outlay, at the same time, it should not be free, because that suggests a lack of worth, as well making it less likely people will register problems. It’s not an easy balance, but it’s one that if carried out properly, can bring important benefits.

(En espa?ol, aquí)