At scale it can be incredibly difficult to sort customer feedback into actionable trends. If you have an active ideas portal and a large number of organizations, then you need another tool to help group similar organizations together and identify common themes.
Segments are an account-level record in Aha! Ideas that do exactly this. Create as many segments as you need to gather insights about a particular type of customer — such as organizations with more than 10,000 employees who use your flagship product, or organizations in a specific location. Use pre-built reports to analyze their most valuable feedback and requests, or create your own comparative reports to see which segments you are already responding to — and which ones need more love.
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Add organizations
Organizations are a way to group multiple contacts' feedback into one place, and segments are a way to analyze the feedback of multiple organizations. You can structure organizations and segments in any way that fits your use case, but for this article we will think of contacts as individual people, organizations as companies, and segments as ways to group particular organizations together to analyze their feedback, priorities, and trends.
Since segments group organizations together, you first need to add a few organizations. You can import organizations by CSV, add them manually, import them through the Salesforce integration, or add them automatically through proxy votes or by email domain.
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Add custom fields to the organizations custom layout to track internal information such as plan type, size, location, or anything else that helps you gain a deeper understanding of each customer. Start simple — you can always add more later.
Once you have added custom fields to the organization custom layout, start filling them out with the CSV import or manually. The segments we will create next will rely on this data to appropriately filter organizations in or out of a given segment.
Use CSV imports to add this data in bulk.
Create segments
Time to create a few segments! To do this, navigate to People → Segments (Ideas → Segments in accounts integrated with Aha! Roadmaps), then click Add segment. You will need to be at least a contributor to do this, though viewers can view existing segments.
At its heart, a segment is a way to filter your existing organizations. In fact, if you are used to reports and filters in Aha! Ideas already, this will be a familiar process.
Click Add filter to add an organization filter. You can select any standard or custom field on your organization custom layout.
Select field(s) to add a filter or filters.
After you have added a filter, click it to provide filter values. This is important — the values you provide here will create your segment.
Select Advanced to create an advanced filter.
Click Add filter to add more filters.
For example, let's say you wanted to see feedback from your largest premium-plan customers. You could add a filter for a custom field called Size, and another for a custom field called Plan type. Click the dropdowns to select organizations with "> 10,000" employees, and organizations who have access to your "premium" plan.
Once you are done, click Create segment. Your segment's drawer view will open, and you can give your segment a Title and see the initial results.
If you want to adjust any of the filters you added, you can find them at the top of the drawer in the Organization filter section. Click that section to re-open the Filter modal, then click Save to save your changes.
If there are more than 1,000 organizations that meet your filters, this tab will show a sample of 1,000 organizations (and the segment charts and reports will use data from that sample).
Segment walkthrough
Let's start with a tour of your new segment.
On a segment's detail or drawer view, the segment's Title and Description are at the top — use them to describe your segment.
In the Organization filter section, you can see the filter(s) you used to create your segment. Click anywhere in the section to re-open the Filter modal, then click Save to save your changes. Any changes you make will be reflected immediately.
In the Charts section, you can see two charts.
Ideas by status shows you a breakdown of all ideas that your segment's organizations have created, voted on, or subscribed to, broken down into idea statuses. This gives you an overview of how often you have implemented feedback that is important to your segment. Hover over any slice of the pie chart to see the exact percentage and status name.
Votes by month shows you the number of votes per month for the last 12 months for all ideas that contacts in your segment's organizations have voted on. Use it to get a sense of how active your segment is in your ideas portal. Hover over any column in the chart to get an exact vote count for that month.
Below these charts, there are two tabs.
The Organizations tab shows a list of organizations in your segment, based on your segment filters. If there are more than 1,000 segments that meet your filters, this tab will show a sample of 1,000 organizations (and the segment charts and reports will use data from that sample). Click any organization's name to open its drawer view and see or adjust details.
The Ideas tab shows a list of the top six ideas that organizations in your segment have submitted or voted on. Popular ideas ranks ideas by the number of organizations that have voted for an idea — not the number of contacts — so more populous organizations cannot skew the segment. Recently voted on ideas shows the six ideas most recently voted on from your segment. Recently shipped ideas shows the six most recently completed ideas.
Analyze segments
In addition to charts, segments come with pre-built pivot reports to help you uncover what your segment organizations need.
On the Ideas tab, there are three Analyze links beside the three ideas sections. Click these to generate pre-built reports:
The Popular ideas report shows you a pivot table of that segment's top ten ideas by status, votes, and organization. Click into any idea for more details, or customize the pivot to adjust fields and sorting.
The Recently voted on ideas report shows you a list report of that segment's ideas, sorted by the most recent vote. Click into any idea, organization, or contact for more details, or customize the list report to adjust fields and sorting.
The Recently shipped ideas report shows you a pivot table of the last ten ideas that you have completed for that segment — by date, vote count, and organization ID. Click into any idea for more details, or customize the pivot to adjust fields and sorting.
The Top ideas by segment pivot table enables you track the number of companies that requested an idea by segment to get a sense of what different groups of customers care about the most. Drill into each segment for deeper insights.
These reports default to your current segment, but you can always add more segments for a comparative view. To do this, open the Segment name filter at the top of the report and add additional segments.
These pre-built reports will help you analyze ideas by segment, but of course you can also make custom reports and charts to continue your analysis.
Use the Change view type dropdown in the upper left of any pre-built report to change between List, Pivot, and Chart views.
Create your own segment reports! To do this, add the Ideas record type, then Organizations, then Segments.
Best practices
Segments can be as focused or as broad as you need them to be — they are your window into your organizations' feedback. To get started, here are a few tips and tricks:
Want a quick start? Skip the custom fields. Create a segment that filters by Organization name and handpick ten or so customers. This will give you visibility into what a segment could look like, and you can back your way into sophisticated custom fields later.
Large segments are not necessarily helpful. If you are running into the large segment notification in the Organizations tab of your segment, try to tighten up your segment filters at the top of the page.
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Your business strategy will ultimately drive your segment creation, but if you need some inspiration, here are a few potential filters you might want to use (which of course you can use in conjunction with each other):
Account size
Plan type
Product
Expected revenue
Account age
Geographic region
Segment analysis includes powerful pre-built reports. Turn them into comparative views by adding additional segments in the Segment name filter.