GrandPad is a product and service business based in Orange, CA. They help connect seniors with their loved ones, providing a tablet and the companion software for families to call, share video, and send messages to one another. The GrandPad product reduces the risk of isolation by empowering seniors through hardware and software designed specifically for their needs.
Isaac helped co-found the company in 2014 and has supported the team’s rapid growth as they adapt to meet the needs of their unique demographic. Isaac works tirelessly to lead employee experience and innovation, making sure the team can function at their best, is updated on new developments, and can find documentation on processes and customer questions.
The Need
GrandPad has grown quickly in just over 5 years. The company started as Isaac’s brainchild when he noticed that Skype conversations with his grandmother presented challenges for her in regards to accessibility and reliability. GrandPad emerged as not only a service to reduce isolation for seniors, but a product that was explicitly created to address the unique needs of his client base. Supporting both hardware and software is a feat in and of itself, but this challenge is magnified by the fact that GrandPad primarily offers support over the phone.
“The majority of our inbound Support is over the phone, so it’s important for us to find that information quickly.”
These phone conversations require that customer support reps have quick and seamless access to up-to-date information. They were initially able to manage this with their customer communication and help desk software, but they soon ran into problems because the rest of the company did not have access to these knowledge docs.
Pain Points
GrandPad needed a single source of truth for their entire company. As their infrastructure, tools, and client base grew, the team began to realize just how much information was getting lost in multiple silos. While the Support team used Zendesk, Engineering used Confluence, and other teams used Google Docs or locally hosted files. This left the team feeling disconnected and lacking confidence that the internal documentation they were referencing was up to date and uniform between different departments.
“We needed to find a new knowledge base tool we could use for everybody and not just support.”
This lack of a common ground was challenging for the whole company. As the company grew, the problem only intensified.
Solution
After using Tettra for a year, Isaac has seen a major shift in how his employees document information and processes. They rely on a number of integrations, including those with Slack and Google Workspace. GrandPad was one of the first teams to use Google Groups permissioning when it launched, making their onboarding process more efficient:
“The Tettra-Google Groups integration helps us further automate and streamline the onboarding process, ensuring everyone has access to all the information they need on day one.”
The team has consolidated all of GrandPad’s knowledge into a single source of truth. This allows employees to self-serve when they have questions, quickly finding information directly from Tettra or Slack. This has helped them continue to delight their customers and answer questions quickly and accurately.
When someone at the company doesn’t know the answer to a question, it’s become second nature to check Tettra before bringing a question to the broader team. The switch to Tettra has also helped the team gain confidence that their internal documentation is the same from department to department. Now his Ops team can house permanent information like their office wifi password while their Design team is able to update their latest brand guidelines on a weekly basis. None of this information gets lost, and everyone feels confident that they’re viewing the most up-to-date information.
“Very quickly after launching, the number of redundant questions decreased. Managers direct people to look in Tettra first, since the answer is usually there.”
Isaac has also encountered some unexpected benefits to using Tettra’s wiki software. The GrandPad team recently launched a new public recognition tool called “You Earned It”. Typically, Isaac prefers to be with his team in person for such a large launch, but he realized he’d be overseas during this time. Instead of pushing back the launch, Isaac decided to prepare a Tettra page with content and video that answered the questions his team might ask. When it came time to launch, Isaac pushed this notification over to Slack so the entire team could take a look.
“Typically I’d want to be in the office for a launch like this…but the launch went super successfully. I wasn’t overwhelmed with questions while I was away. It worked great if not better than trying to launch something in a meeting format without having that documentation.”
The launch turned out to be super successful and Isaac wasn’t distracted by any questions while he was out of the office. This sort of launch would have typically been done during an all company meeting, but the team was able to launch asynchronously without a hassle. Plus, the context around the launch is documented, so future hires can learn about it as well.
With good documentation, the GrandPad team has been able to grow and thrive together. We’re honored to support them as they solve this pressing need for a massive population.