Here’s a story from my MBA school. One of my batchmates had joined the MBA program only to improve her English written and oral communication. Her undergraduate degree in engineering was not in English but yet she was able to successfully graduate from Cornell University’s Masters in Statistics program in the US with flying colors. She had told me that she was great at her job but most of the time the credit went to other people because she wasn’t able to articulate her work properly. We had many written assignments in our MBA program and she used Google Translate to write her papers. I was really impressed with her resilience to improve her communication and the commitment to the MBA program. So, I obliged her request to review her papers and presentations. I wish that Grammarly was there with all the features back then. It would have really helped her immensely.
I was introduced to the free version of Grammarly a few years ago when I used to see messages like “There are 4 critical errors – Upgrade to premium to enable advanced fixes”. With my company enabling Grammarly in different browsers and Microsoft suite, I was exposed to the premium features as well. There are many product lessons to be learnt from Grammarly.
LearningÂ
Learning #1 – User pain points are key
The founders had built a product to detect plagiarism “MyDropbox” – This was used by universities and students to ensure content authenticity and citations whenever needed. The founders already had their IN with a very big segment of users who write every single day!Â
Identify different writer segments
They realized that there are several opportunities to help “writers” and not just students or academia users. There are many different types of writers – Journalists, technical writers, millions of job applicants (Resumes and cover letters), HR etc. Their YouTube channel is full of videos that cater to these different segments with millions of views per video!
People with writing challenges
- My batch mate, for instance, had said something pertinent that I remember – “I think in Chinese and then translate it in English. That is why I need software to ensure that what I am writing is sensible.”. With students, who had limited exposure to English, joining universities, there was a huge market for checking grammar, spellings, plagiarism etc.
- Helping dyslexic people to be more confident with their writing was one of the segments that Grammarly found.
Corporate clientsÂ
Apart from individual users, Grammarly has identified several opportunities in the corporate world as well.Â
- Internal communication – As the concept of remote work has taken off, especially in the post COVID pandemic world, it is important for employees to be able to communicate effectively. Besides, many companies are also global, and so even without the remote model, written communication is even more important.
- External communication – Teams interact with clients and prospects as part of their daily business. You also need to maintain your brand as you communicate externally. With Grammarly, it is possible to standardize some of these aspects.
Learning # 2 – Make it easy for the user to find you!
Initially, Grammarly was available to use on their website. Users had to copy-paste text on their website and then copy-paste the results back. As technology evolved, Grammarly invested in extensions on popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc. They made the “Add-on” available for Google and Microsoft suite as well. It opened up millions of users for them! As of 2022, they have about 30 million active users.
Learning # 3 – Evolve your business model with time
- Grammarly’s initial customer base was academia and students in their initial years. They had a paid offering, which made them profitable. However, they didn’t stop there.
- They discovered other user segments and made their offering available on their website. They found ways to discover their premium customer base by allowing all users to access it but offering advanced fixes for a premium. That way the tool could be known to more users.
- They have broadened their corporate partnerships so that different functions within the company like sales, marketing etc. can improve their communications with their clients.
Learning # 4 – Investing in technology (data analytics and AI)
Ever since their inception, Grammarly has used technology to amplify their reach to their users and improve their offerings. They have made it easy for users to find them by offering extensions, plug-ins on both desktop and mobile. As of now, they also provide analytics to the teams using their product and offer trends over time as to how the team is improving its communication. This is very useful for especially customer-facing teams such as support, sales and marketing.Â
They also have a new algorithm for “Tone Detection” so that the sender can understand how the email or message can be perceived by the recipient. The investment in technology is key to understanding your users and identifying opportunities.
Closing Thoughts
Grammarly has hit upon one of the key aspects of human behavior – Communication. Thinking 30 years ago, phone was perhaps the most commonly used form of communication. In the early 2000s, the email and chat form of communication became common. The usage of cloud based documentation like Google Docs, Atlassian tools like Confluence and JIRA are used for business purposes.Â
As we live in a global world, it is important to communicate in a written and oral form so that we can develop meaningful relations with people. Grammarly seems to be doing that continuously by trying to engage more with their users and using data analytics and AI to identify opportunities is a very smart move. It will be interesting to see what Grammarly’s next move will be.
Learn more about Grammarly – https://www.grammarly.com/blog/grammarly-12-year-history/