Sonder scaled Dovetail fast across every Product Manager, Designer, and Researcher

In the early stages of Sonder, design teams conducted research on an ad-hoc basis using various tools like Google Docs, Confluence, and notes, storing them as slide decks. This approach worked when the organization was small but became unsustainable as operations matured and the company transitioned from start-up to scale-up.

With Dovetail, the team built out their research operations and democratized research across the business. Initially starting with the design team and later including product, they onboarded members by sharing Dovetail’s educational video content and leveraging guidance from senior internal researchers. Team members began as observers, took notes, and collaborated on tagging, highlighting, and creating insights, often experiencing 'aha' moments when sharing these insights with stakeholders. From one to fifteen, all product managers, designers, and researchers now confidently contribute to the Dovetail repository, transforming their research practice from ad-hoc to process-oriented and creating a rich library of user feedback.

With the old systems, collaboration was complex, and research stayed within silos, making it difficult to share findings with stakeholders outside the product circle. Since implementing Dovetail, collaboration across teams has improved significantly both within and outside the product. Team members can now pair and collaborate on multiple projects, cross-share insights, and work more efficiently. This sharing experience has extended to departments like marketing and sales, who appreciate being exposed to more customer feedback. The team uses specific tags for different departments when analyzing data, allowing them to share precise and relevant insights. Overall, Dovetail has injected more customer empathy into the organization, with highlight reels showcasing real users' needs and pain points, reinforcing the value of their work and emphasizing empathy as a core organizational value.