How Tillo uses ProdPad to Gain Better Visibility and Make Smarter Choices with Customer Feedback

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Eddie Sawyers is a senior product manager at Tillo, a Brighton startup which was formed in 2016 to create a global gift card network. Tillo aims to make it easier, cheaper and more valuable for companies to offer rewards, gift cards and cashback to customers.

When I looked at what Tillo needed, I found that ProdPad fitted perfectly. Also, the support from ProdPad is brilliant, and the support team is very responsive, second to none. It’s really important and often gets forgotten in SaaS products.

Tillo was formed to automate what historically has been an environment dominated by unconnected and manual systems, says Eddie. It sits between companies who want to buy gift cards and the brands (Amazon, Debenhams, Spotify and so on) who sell them, so companies buying cards can integrate with Tillo through a single API connection rather than have to integrate with each individual brand offering a card. The Tillo Card network enables companies to buy hundreds of gift cards from different brands in real time, at open value, as opposed to the old slow-moving email and spreadsheet systems and processes which have traditionally dominated the gift card buying process.

In addition, gift card usage is changing and Tillo also aims to open up new channels and help its brands expand their reach: the “gift” part is not necessarily relevant all the time. For example, you may want to cash out your crypto-currency onto a gift card, or put cashback, or even virtual points like Airmiles that have a value onto a gift card. “It started with employee benefits and rewards,” says Eddie, “and it’s moved into things like cashing out virtual balances, as well as insurance settlements. We also now have companies that allow you to exchange your crypto-currency for gift cards. Crypto-currencies are notoriously hard to spend so it’s a way for people to use them for everyday purchases. New channels and use cases are coming through all the time. It’s really not just about gift cards any more, it’s more like a type of branded currency.”

Eddie has the distinction of introducing ProdPad both into Tillo and his previous company, a travel money software supplier. He chose ProdPad because it worked well and was easy to use and because it continues to evolve. It also appeals to the non-technical people in the business. So how is he using ProdPad and what difference it has made to the business?

Eddie used ProdPad in his previous company to solve the problem of people leaving ideas, requirements and feedback in many different places – on emails, spreadsheets, and so on – and he introduced Prodpad to put it together in one place where it was accessible to everyone.

Greater Visibility

He found very similar issues when he arrived at Tillo: “When I looked at what Tillo needed, I found that ProdPad fitted perfectly. Also, the support from ProdPad is brilliant, and the support team is very responsive, second to none. It’s really important and often gets forgotten in SaaS products.”

ProdPad has given the team a Tillo more visibility. Prior to introducing ProdPad, everything went into Jira, Eddie says. “It’s a great tool but it’s not used by everybody and it’s not somewhere where you want to put loads of ideas which may never see the light of day.”

By contrast, he finds ProdPad much more accessible and simple to use. It allows and encourages everybody to express their ideas, comments, feedback, and “helps us get a wider view of what we should be doing as a company”.

In addition, he finds ProdPad’s Slack channel of highly engaged product managers a hugely valuable resource and a great route to information. But his favourite ProdPad feature is Jira integration. “Having the ability to just press a button to move something into Jira so that the devs can start working on something is brilliant.”

The Importance of Feedback

Feedback is crucial to shaping the decisions over what goes onto Tillo’s roadmap, and ProdPad’s feedback collation has made the process much more straightforward. Now Eddie can easily copy and paste feedback from wherever it has been left, or get people to enter it directly into ProdPad. “Then once we’ve released the idea we know exactly who to contact to let them know we’ve actioned their idea.” For example, Tillo recently released a raft of changes on tools that help its customers to service their own customers. Says Eddie: “Every single change we’ve made was because our feedback pushed us in that direction. If it hadn’t all been collated in ProdPad I don’t think I would have been able to make the arguments for the changes to be made. ”

It also has made him much more inclined to give feedback, because he can see how important it is for product managers to understand who they are building for. “The feedback loop makes you feel like you’re being listened to.”