You’re opening a new escape room and you only have one opportunity to beta test it. You can either bring in a team of family and friends who generally like the idea and enjoy puzzles, or you can bring out a hardcore escape room enthusiast, say one who solved an escape room in every state in under a year. What do you do?
Invite your friends and family. Why? Because they’re the ones more likely to resemble the 99.9% of customers you’ll be aiming to please. They’ll get stuck on the difficult puzzles and maybe even break the props without the proper guidance, which is exactly what you want to see before you fully release the design to the general public.
Of course, such a limited constraint is rare, and you’ll probably have a chance to have both kinds of testers. The value of your “average” group is clear- you can get a sneak peek at how the groups work through the room without having to worry about upsetting paying customers with any experience gaps. But what can you get out of talking to an enthusiast or “expert”?
–DON’T go out of your way to please an enthusiast. Enthusiasts have preferences just like anyone else. One particular example is that a high number of enthusiasts seem to despise conventional locks, while the majority of players may actually appreciate the tactile satisfaction of spinning the right combo into a dial.
–DO ask which puzzles and details the enthusiasts liked the best. As fellow puzzle lovers, the enthusiasts will share an appreciation for the work you’ve crafted, and you can get a sense of comparison between what the average customer sees as “wow” moments vs. someone who’s seen more rooms.
–DON’T tweak puzzle difficulty based on anything you see from an enthusiast. In one particular example, I came up with an unorthodox way of solving a puzzle earlier than I should have while beta testing a room. Several years later, no one else has ever used this same solution. Since enthusiasts aren’t your normal customers, you shouldn’t tailor the experience toward them.
–DO ask questions about similar themes or puzzles enthusiasts have seen elsewhere. It may be that the enthusiast has visited another business that solved a challenge you’re facing, and an enthusiast can share those details in objective terms.
–DON’T pay for good reviews. If you care enough about your customer experience that you’re deferring opening until you’re confident it’s going to satisfy customers, that probably means you’re more than likely deserving of a high review score and shouldn’t have to worry about this. And if you do happen to encounter problems upon launching, it’ll show up in your survey averages regardless of how many good reviews you start with.
–DO ask to spread the word. Enthusiasts often have puzzle-loving friends or social network connections, and this can be a good early way to get the message out for your business especially when you’re opening a new room. Advise the enthusiast which sites you most need reviews on; they’re more likely than the average customer to follow through with describing their experiences on sites like Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor.
If you’ve designed or implemented an escape room, you know a lot about what makes for a neat experience, and you don’t need an enthusiast to comment on what you should or shouldn’t be doing. As part of a larger series of tests, though, getting some experienced players can offer you some advantages you wouldn’t have otherwise.
I always love to connect with escape room owners and am always willing to beta test anywhere in the country (time and travel permitting)- if you’re interested in having my team go through your room, please reach out to me.
Also, as someone who managed the analytics team responsible for quantifying and measuring the performance of Discover Card’s JD Power award-winning customer service (“We treat you like you treat you”), I’m passionate about finding the right ways to capture the data that tells you what customers really think, so if you’re interested in chatting about how to set up a program for customer feedback, in beta testing or otherwise, please let me know.
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