>> We´ve been able to help get the product into the hands of these nonprofits so that they can deliver on their missions. That´s been the icing on the cake. >> Technology is a powerful tool for creating social impact. But how do we get it into the hands of the organizations at the front lines? Hi, everyone. My name´s Jameela Roland, and I´m reporting for Microsoft Digital, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms the company. Microsoft Tech for Social Impact is connecting nonprofit
and humanitarian organizations with the Microsoft technology they need to accelerate social good. These offerings include free seats to Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Power Apps, and Azure credits, all at a steep discount and with training on how to best use them. Yet, despite the steep discounts, nonprofits weren´t signing up for the program. The Tech for Social Impact team was perplexed. Customers were visiting their website, but they weren´t completing the registration process. Something ne
eded to change. >> What prompted the change for us was really seeing these low registration completion rates and high drop-off numbers, so we wanted to really understand what was happening so we could address the issue and really smooth out that experience for customers. >> The cross-disciplinary team that included Microsoft´s Tech for Social Impact team, the Microsoft Office team, and Microsoft Digital broke things down to figure out what was wrong with the registration process. The team used t
elemetry to better understand the customer experience page by page, which helped them pinpoint where applicants were getting stuck or bailing on the form. >> The business clearly saw the need and the value to run with usability studies and really kind of get into the shoes of our customers and hear from them directly exactly what the friction areas were. In the registration flow, we do ask for the nonprofits to provide their mission statement. And you could see, like, where they may just be gett
ing stopped there. >> This lead to improvements in the "get started" page, which is the entry point to filling out the form. As they say, "Data talks." At the start of the fiscal year in June 2020, the team was seeing a far-too-low 38% completion rate. Then, the story began to change. >> When we deployed the new registration in December, we noticed that the month after that, so in January, the conversion rate jumped to about 47%. So we still have some ways to go to bring this up, but we´re seein
g that as definitely a good sign of improvement. >> Post-deployment, they used Microsoft Clarity, which is an application that can be used to run usability tests and see how users interact with the site. Angelica says grounding the team with the goal of creating a customer-centric experience has helped them when it came time to have hard conversations, like deciding which fields in the form should be optional and which need to be mandatory. This allowed them to reduce the number of steps from 9
to 4. >> We would then go back to the first piece of data, which is, "How was it being currently used in the experience?" and then "Does it make it easier or harder for the customer?" And so that approach helped us with a lot of tiebreakers, if you will, across the different teams. >> Really take a moment to consider and fully step into the shoes of your customers and really empathize with them, and take it from there. >> And don´t forget to bring in your privacy and legal teams from the very be
ginning. >> If you wait and you bring privacy or legal in later, then a feature you may think was pretty much done, suddenly isn´t, and there´s a lot more considerations. >> Improving the registration process is only the beginning. Next, the team is going to rethink how it supports customers after they buy and are looking to get started with Microsoft technology. As a part of that, they also want to help them find community with other nonprofits. At the end of the day, Emily and Angelica believe
this project exemplifies digital transformation at its best. >> We´ve really optimized our engineering processes, and we´ve delivered a better user experience at the same time, so I´d say we´ve really moved the dial on digital transformation. >> If you´re a nonprofit that´s interested in applying for discounted pricing on a suite of Microsoft products, visit aka.ms/NonProfitGetStarted. To learn more about how Microsoft is improving its nonprofit registration process to accelerate social good, c
heck out aka.ms/InsideTrack.
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