Leavebot
Automated vacation management for remote teams.
I have my first customer interview for PTOBot scheduled this week.
I’m hoping to learn more about the pain points for users and what they would need to be able to better coordinate and manage their teams time off in a remote setting.
I’ve also got a WIP of the sales landing page up and running at: ptobot.com
What are some good questions to ask in the customer interview?
Also if you manage a remote team would you be willing to do a 15 minute call? I’d love to talk to you too! Feel free to reach out to me :)
I've launched my sales / landing page for PTOBot (even though it's still definitely a work in progress). You can take a look at it here and feel free to send me feedback and suggestions:
The why
The idea for PTOBot is based on my own need. I manage a fully remote team spread across every time zone you can imagine (US East, US West, US Central, Central European, APAC, etc.)
It always a challenge to keep track of who is out on vacation (or just observing a national holiday) and who is working. Also, some countries require that you track time off (even if you have an unlimited time off policy) to make sure that employees are getting enough time off.
Lastly, I try to encourage a healthy work-life balance and so reminding team members to take enough time off on a regular basis can be quite challenging.
PTOBot is meant to solve these challenges with a couple key features:
- Automated approvals for time off requests so that team members are not waiting on a manager to approve
- Reminders for the team and manager when a team member is going to be out
- Shared team calendar so that everyone is aware of who is available and who is not
- Vacation reminders that automatically remind team members to take time off if they haven't had a vacation in a while
- Much more
An ask
Right now, my focus is on speaking to potential customers to better understand their pain points when it comes to managing a remote team, and specifically the challenges with managing and tracking time off / vacations.
If you are a manager of a remote team or if you know anyone who is, I'd love to have a chat to learn more about how you handle this? Feel free to reach out to me here on Indie Hackers or on Twitter!
8 Comments
I’ve done over 100 customer discovery interviews in the past two months. It gets easier the more you do it. The Mom Test is definitely the resource to look into. My tips:
Example:
Me: “gotcha, so you said that you manage PTO for your team with a big excel spreadsheet and that updating it is time consuming...”
Interviewee: “yeah, it really is, like I carve out time every Monday morning to go over it...”
Good luck! The interviews are fun! Sometimes you don’t get much out of people, that’s ok. There’s always more people to talk to!
Wow, this is super helpful. Thank you for sharing this insight. I will make sure I try to let folks talk and see where the conversations go... I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts here...means a lot.
Do not lead them in anyway to your solution!
Gotcha, will do!
From Startup School https://youtu.be/MT4Ig2uqjTc
Will give it a watch!
If you haven't already, read "The Mom Test" or watch this for a general gist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LwbFZkyRKk
Thanks, I'll check it out!