Houseparty Uses Instabug to Strengthen Its Connection With Users

Houseparty is a group video chat application that has brought friends together online more than 500 million times. Just a year after launch, Houseparty sessions were already averaging 51 minutes per day.

“Houseparty is all about bringing people together and delivering meaningful connections, which is really important in this age,” Kimberly Kalb, Head of Marketing at Houseparty, told us.

Objective

“At Houseparty, we’re all about making human connections and making people happy. That’s why we believe we need to connect directly to the people using our product,” Kalb explained.

Kalb is in charge of all marketing efforts related to Houseparty, plus what they call “Trust and Safety”, or user support.

Driven by Houseparty’s vision to empower human interaction through technology, the team knew that connecting with their users would be a priority.

Challenge

In addition to being a user-centric company that values excellent customer service, Houseparty is also very conscious of the specific needs of its user base.

The application aims to offer a safe environment for all of its users as Houseparty’s guidelines place respect first and foremost and warn that any violations will result in a user being kicked out of the service for life.

As part of this emphasis on respect and safety, they believe in having a direct support channel for their users to communicate with the company.

At the same time, they wanted to allow their users to give feedback without leaving the app. Thus, they needed a direct feedback tool that wouldn’t drive people outside of the application.

Solution

“Instabug’s SDK offers a really simple flow for our users. Two steps and they can report and send us feedback and they feel like they’re communicating with us. ”

With the Instabug + Slack integration, the Houseparty team is always updated about incoming issues reported through Instabug. And with the Instabug + Front integration, Houseparty’s Trust and Safety Team can receive, sort, and address all Instabug reports.

Results

“We take all of our reports seriously,” Kalb told us.

Upholding their commitment to user trust and support, Houseparty responds to each and every report received via Instabug.

They also aggregate user feedback collected with Instabug and use those insights to help improve the application’s technical quality and inform product development.

Inspired by Houseparty’s dedication to its community, we asked Kalb to share a few best practices when it comes to user support. Kalb recommends addressing each user’s concern directly with tailored replies -- not form responses -- and to respond as quickly as possible within 24 hours.

“Connection is now more important than ever,” she explained.

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