User Tested E-Book

Janelle Estes

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 276

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

An insightful discussion and practical guide on how to put customers back into the center of your business model With so many digital experiences touching our lives--and businesses--it's understandable to feel like you're drowning in data. There's a dashboard or chart for just about everything, but data alone can't help you understand and empathize with your customers. No amount of it will take you inside their heads, help you see the world through their eyes, or let you experience what it's really like to be your customer. Only human insight from real people can do that. User Tested gives both individual contributors and executives an approachable, pragmatic playbook for stepping beyond standard business metrics and infusing real human insight into every business decision, design, and experience. In this book, you'll: * Learn how businesses became obsessed with data--but disconnected from their customers--and why that's not sustainable * Get the basics about how to capture human insight through user testing, including how to find the right people, ask the right questions, and make sense of and act on all the insights you uncover * Dive into a detailed playbook that shares real-world examples of how you can collect and scale human insight across the teams in your organization--from marketing to product, and beyond * Learn how to evangelize the power of human insight throughout your organization, so every department can create a culture of customer empathy and share a firsthand understanding of customer needs * Find out how companies like Microsoft, AAA Club Alliance, HelloFresh, and Notre Dame's IDEA Center solidly connect with and elicit meaningful feedback from customers in friendlier, faster, and more direct ways Perfect for any industry, User Tested: How the World's Top Companies Use Human Insight to Create Great Experiences was co-authored by the chief insights officer and the CEO of UserTesting--a SaaS company fundamentally changing the way both B2B and consumer brands find out what real people think and feel. The book reflects the authors' commitment to helping you position the customer squarely in the center of your business model by weaving their true voices throughout your company's decision making.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Preface

Meet the Authors

What to Expect from This Book

Note

PART 1: The Challenge: Understanding Customers as Humans, Not Data Points

CHAPTER 1: Competing in the Experience Economy

When Did We Start to Value Data Over Human Connections?

Great Experiences Are Derived from Deep Customer Understanding

But … You Can’t Always Take Customer Suggestions at Face Value

Decisioning on Metrics Alone Puts You at Risk

Integrating Human Insight into Decisioning Is the Way Forward

Notes

CHAPTER 2: The Missing Dimension

Existing Customer Data Sources Don’t Give Us the Full Picture

Why Human Insight Should Be Included in How Companies Assess Their Experiences

User Testing Leads to Human Insight

Human Insight in Action

Why We Overlook or Dismiss Human Insight

Human Insight for the Win

Notes

PART 2: The Solution: Human Insight Powers Customer‐Centric Actions

CHAPTER 3: What're You Trying to Answer?

Understand How Your Question Relates to the Business

Consider How and Where You Plan to Apply Your Learnings

Don’t Ask Leading Questions or Go in to “Prove” Your Hypothesis

Keep It Focused

Keep Your Question Top‐of‐Mind

Ask Questions with the Intention of Sharing with Others

Always Ask Why

When You’ve Formulated a Decent Approach, Reuse It

Notes

CHAPTER 4: You Are Not Your Customer

You Are Not Your Customer

Your Professional and Personal Networks Aren’t Your Customers

The Patrons in Your Local Coffee Shop Aren’t Your Customers

Who Are the Right People for Your User Test?

How to Connect with Your Perfect‐Fit Users

Do It Right—and Then Build and Manage a List

Notes

CHAPTER 5: Capture and Analyze

Bias Is Everywhere

Our Fallible Human Customers

Three Key Human Signals When Sifting Through Your User Tests

What Does It All Mean and Where Do We Go from Here?

Notes

CHAPTER 6: Take Action on Human Insight

The Types of Human Insight You’ll Get from User Testing

Build a Shared Understanding Through User Testing

Tracking Learnings Over Time

PART 3: The Playbook: How Human Insight Fits into Your Business

CHAPTER 7: Product Development

Human Insight for Product Development

Solving the Right Problem

Building the Right Solution

Building the Solution Right

The Path to Launch Should Be Fueled with Human Insight

Notes

CHAPTER 8: Marketing

Recognizing a “Problem” and Having an Interest in “Fixing” It

Researching and Comparing Solutions

Choosing a Company or Solution to Solve the Problem

Human Insight for Building Awareness and Gaining Customers

The Customer Journey Continues …

Notes

CHAPTER 9: Every Team Owns the Experience

The Path to and Point of Conversion

The Initial Experience

Ongoing Use and Adoption

Customer Support Interaction

Human Insight for the Holistic Customer Journey

PART 4: The Culture Shift: Applying Human Insight at Scale

CHAPTER 10: Bottom Up

If You’re Working in an Engineering‐Centric Culture …

If There’s a Team That’s Protective of User Testing …

If Your C‐Suite Is Reluctant …

Notes

CHAPTER 11: Top Down

Tip 1: Build the Customer into Your Lexicon

Tip 2: Maintain a Constant Campaign for Customer‐Centricity

Tip 3: Create Ways for People at All Levels to Connect Directly with Customers

Tip 4: Link Customer‐Focused Actions to Performance Standards

Tip 5: Enable Teams with the Right Solutions

Tip 6: Ask About Customer Input and Feedback

Constantly

Tip 7: Put Yourself in the Customer’s Shoes for

Real

Notes

One Final Note

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Preface

Begin Reading

One Final Note

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

FIGURE 1.1 Customer Understanding Trends Over Time

Chapter 2

FIGURE 2.1 Effectiveness Shown with Big Data and Human Insight

FIGURE 2.2 Ease Shown with Big Data and Human Insight

FIGURE 2.3 Emotion Shown with Big Data and Human Insight

FIGURE 2.4 Human Insight Provides Multiple Human Signals

Chapter 3

FIGURE 3.1 Mapping Your Question to a Topline Business Driver

FIGURE 3.2 The Design Thinking Framework

FIGURE 3.3 Too Many Broad Questions in a User Test Can Overwhelm

Chapter 5

FIGURE 5.1 2x2 Matrix to Prioritize Issues Uncovered in User Tests

Chapter 7

FIGURE 7.1 Jen Cardello's Product Development Framework

Chapter 8

FIGURE 8.1 Using Human Insight to Inform Your Marketing Efforts

FIGURE 8.2 Empathy Map

Chapter 9

FIGURE 9.1 Using Human Insight Across the Holistic Customer Journey

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PRAISE FOR USER TESTED: HOW THE WORLD'S TOP COMPANIES USE HUMAN INSIGHT TO CREATE GREAT EXPERIENCES

“This book highlights that we're all living in the Age of the Customer—and that crafting exceptional customer experiences starts with listening to your most important stakeholders and turning feedback into true human insight.”

—Zander Lurie, CEO of Momentive.ai

“The real magic to designing truly customer‐centered products is less about understanding what people do and much more about why they do it. In this book Janelle and Andy provide tools, methodologies, and, most importantly, a mindset that will help you uncover the why behind the what.”

—David Schonthal, Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management and Author of The Human Element

“As a product leader who prides myself on being strong analytically, there is no stronger lesson I've learned than you can't spend enough time listening to your users. User Tested not only explains why but gives you the tips and tools to do it effectively.”

—Ashish Desai, VP Consumer Product, Handshake

“Explodes the myth that you need more statistics to become smarter—especially in a world where customers are changing the rules.”

—David Howland, Chief Marketing Officer, Earnix

“This is not another book about business. It's about humans and how you can reimagine your business with them at the center.”

—Katrina Alcorn, Leading Design Executive

“The ‘experience economy’ is about a new era of buyer behavior. Much like the industrial revolution transformed the economy of the 1900s, we're entering a customer‐driven revolution that's changing the way companies interact with consumers.”

—Jonathan Perera, Chief Marketing Officer, Highspot

“User Tested is a great reminder that while no business leader in their right mind would say that their company doesn't prioritize their customers, many consumers feel misunderstood and unvalued. Janelle Estes and Andy MacMillan break down the underlying disconnect between businesses and what their customers actually experience, and then explain what to do about it.”

—Tom Krackeler, Chief Customer Officer, Zuora

JANELLE ESTES | ANDY MACMILLAN

HOW THE WORLD’S TOP COMPANIES USE HUMAN INSIGHT TO CREATE GREAT EXPERIENCES

Copyright © 2022 by Janelle Estes and Andy MacMillan. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data

Names: Estes, Janelle, author. | MacMillan, Andy (Andy P.), author.

Title: User tested : how the world’s top companies use human insight to create great experiences / Janelle Estes and Andy MacMillan.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2022] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021045160 (print) | LCCN 2021045161 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119844631 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119844730 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119844723 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Customer relations.

Classification: LCC HF5415.5 .E77 2022 (print) | LCC HF5415.5 (ebook) | DDC 658.8/12—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045160

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045161

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Images: © Rubber Stamp Text: © Tetiana Lazunova/Getty Images, Check Mark: © Giorgio Morara/Shutterstock

This book is dedicated to the visionary individuals and organizations that have been studying and championing the importance of human insight for decades across the fields of cognitive science, human factors, ergonomics, and human‐computer interaction. Their work on merging and maturing the practices of user‐centered design, human factors, and user experience has paved the way for our work, including what we've written here.

These trail blazers all embraced the belief that things should be designed to suit humans, instead of forcing humans to adapt to poor design. This belief was important in the early days of aviation; influential during the age of manufacturing and physical experiences; and is became absolutely critical in the current economy of personal computers and digital interaction.

Darrell Benatar and Dave Garr, UserTesting's visionary founders, belong on the list of thought‐leaders, and this book couldn't have been written without their commitment to genuine customer‐centricity. These two recognized the need for fast, reliable human insight way back in 1999, and have been advocating for its inclusion in all business decisions ever since. By helping companies experience what their customers experience, Dave and Darrell have changed the face of business. For the better. And we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

List of Figures

Figure 1.1

Customer Understanding Trends Over Time

Figure 2.1

Effectiveness Shown with Big Data and Human Insight

Figure 2.2

Ease Shown with Big Data and Human Insight

Figure 2.3

Emotion Shown with Big Data and Human Insight

Figure 2.4

Human Insight Provides Multiple Human Signals

Figure 3.1

Mapping Your Question to a Topline Business Driver

Figure 3.2

The Design Thinking Framework

Figure 3.3

Too Many Broad Questions in a User Test Can Overwhelm

Figure 5.1

2×2 Matrix to Prioritize Issues Uncovered in User Tests

Figure 7.1

Jen Cardello's Product Development Framework

Figure 8.1

Using Human Insight to Inform Your Marketing Efforts

Figure 8.2

Empathy Map

Figure 9.1

Using Human Insight Across the Holistic Customer Journey

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of the individuals and organizations that helped make this book possible.

First, thank you to our customers who let us share their stories and bring the power of human insight to life.

Thanks to everyone at UserTesting for the work you do every day.

Thanks to Richard Narramore and Deborah Schindlar at Wiley.

Thanks to Ethan Beute at BombBomb, Laura Baverman at Pendo, and Dan Steinman, Robin Merritt, and Nick Mehta at Gainsight for your guidance.

Huge thanks to Sally McGraw for your expertise, guidance, and support throughout.

And finally, thanks to our families, who gave us the encouragement, space, and time we needed to dedicate to this work. We love you.

Preface

Imagine…

… You sit down to your annual company meeting and before the CEO even speaks, you’re captivated by a video of your very own customers talking about how much they love the experiences you provide. And suggestions on how to make the experience better …

… Your company launches a new product and everyone at your company has access to customer feedback through a shared Slack channel. In the channel, you can watch real customers using the new product and sharing their perspectives …

… Anytime you’d like, you’re given the opportunity to connect with customers yourself. You can ask for their opinions and get input on any aspect of your work quickly and easily …

… Your organization has an internal app that streams curated videos of customers using the experiences you provide. Employees can subscribe to channels: the most‐watched customer videos, feedback from specific customer segments such as “top spenders,” and a competitive intelligence channel …

… Your customers can opt in or volunteer to provide these rich perspectives, and freely do so because they’re invested in the experience you provide and want to make it better …

… Once a month, you’re asked to weigh in on what customer segments should be tested or which questions should be asked when customer perspectives are gathered. For example, you get to upvote competitive testing or downvote testing of a new ad campaign depending on what will help you most …

… You get to the office in the morning, grab a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and you are immediately enthralled by a video of a customer on a flatscreen above the coffee maker. You get to watch a real customer as they view and react to a recently launched marketing campaign …

… Every Friday, you get an alert on your phone reminding you to watch this week’s most commented‐on video of a customer using one of your competitor’s experiences …

And imagine this is all done in an effort to create a company‐wide, shared understanding of who your customers are as human beings, not data points, so you can make better, more empathetic decisions. So you can bring humanity into the business. And so you can do it in a way that enables everyone to build a true and meaningful connection to the customers they serve.

This shared understanding ultimately helps people at your company act with more urgency and with the needs of the customer infusing every discussion, activity, and decision. And not only is there a shared understanding, but there's also a shared desire to augment that understanding so the business can continually learn about and improve upon the experiences it provides.

But this is not how businesses have traditionally operated. For far too long, we have relied on understanding our customers—who they are, what they do, what they need—in the form of big data, analytics, and surveys. And while this information is valuable, it's incomplete. We're missing a critical dimension. We're missing the human perspective.

What is it actually like to be my customer? What is it like to see the world through their eyes? Walmart founder Sam Walton is famous for “walking the aisles” at his stores to get an on‐the‐ground look at his customers and how his business operated, but most teams don't have access to this perspective today. That will change. It has to.

We're living in an age where customers are in control, yet we're simultaneously losing touch with them. As the world continues to digitally transform at lightspeed and tech continues to physically separate us from our customers, the divide between our teams and the customers we serve will continue to grow.

So what do we do? How do we fill this gap? The answer is simple. We need to bring authentic customer perspectives back into key decisions. We need to pair the myriads of data we have at our fingertips with the literal voice of the customer. We need to connect with our customers, human to human, so we can make decisions that deliver better experiences.

We need human insight.

Meet the Authors

Janelle Estes, Chief Insights Officer

I've been fascinated by human behavior my entire life. My mom has said when I was about three years old, she'd take me to the grocery store, wheel me around in the front of the cart and watch me observe everyone around me with a keen eye. Then, a week or more later, I'd say, “Mom … that guy at the store in the red shirt? Why was he buying four boxes of Cheerios?” She marveled both at my ability to retain detail and my questioning mind: Why was I thinking about these things? Why did I care?

It's because people are amazing and quirky and utterly intriguing, and I've always wanted to better understand them. So I studied the fascinating intersection between cognitive science, human factors, and design. I worked at Nielsen Norman Group and Forrester as a researcher and UX specialist, often running lab‐based user testing that took weeks to complete. (Translation: I was deeply nerdy about this stuff long before it had any cachet.) I decided to move to UserTesting when I saw more and more companies adopt remote user testing solutions, and I've seen a massive shift in how companies connect with their customers—through tech‐enabled solutions—to meet the speed and scale required for business today.

Regardless of how this work is done, I have seen the “lightbulb” go off time and time again when people observe user tests, and it never fails to inspire me. As someone who has always believed in the importance of human insight, it's been amazing to watch my field of expertise grow from a little niche superpower to something that many companies see as hugely valuable and business‐critical.

Yet there is still so much untapped potential; we can grow exponentially from here. My passion for bringing humanity back into business decisions hasn't waned, and I see this book as the perfect way to engage an even wider audience.

Andy MacMillan, CEO

The importance of customer feedback especially resonates with me because I've spent my entire career in software product development. As a former product executive at Oracle and Salesforce, I saw firsthand the critical role that customer understanding plays in creating great experiences. Technology does amazing things but it's where technology meets people—the customer experience—that makes technology most valuable to us as individuals. And I've learned that the secret to doing this is putting the customer and their interests at the center of every decision.

As the CEO of UserTesting, I genuinely love giving companies the ability to find and interact with their own customers in a way that facilitates human insight on any aspect of the experience they provide. And I know that ability is a critical one in the modern marketplace, as the speed of technology has often eclipsed the quality of the human interactions with that technology. Putting your customers at the center of your experiences can change that.

What to Expect from This Book

We've structured this book to be as approachable and pragmatic as possible.

Part 1 offers some background on how businesses became obsessed with numbers, stopped talking to customers, and why this trend can't persist. It is illustrated with plenty of great case studies and examples.

Part 2 is about the basics of capturing human insight through the practice of user testing, including how to find the right people, how to ask the right questions, how to make sense of what you capture, how to build a shared understanding, and how to take action based on your learnings.

Part 3 is a detailed playbook that walks you through a wide variety of ways to collect human insight and how they can be pulled into various parts of your business, including marketing efforts, product development, and beyond.

Part 4 is about spurring that all‐important culture change within your organization to incorporate human insight everywhere, all the time.

Our hope is that, in reading this book, you'll help us build a better, brighter, customer‐focused future. It'll be one where companies pull human insight into their everyday work and decision‐making, organically and consistently.

That's the future we envision, and it's well within reach right now. All we have to do is commit to deepening our understanding of our customers by truly observing and listening to what they're telling us and using that to make well‐informed, customer‐centric decisions.

It's difficult to predict the technologies and experiences that will emerge in the coming years, but one thing is certain: Human insight is the key to staying connected to our customers in the Experience Economy.1

Note

1

   This term is gradually entering common use, but was first coined by Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in a 1998

Harvard Business Review

article titled, “Welcome to the Experience Economy.” It's fascinating, and well worth a read … though we'll explore many of its high points in chapters to come.

PART 1The Challenge: Understanding Customers as Humans, Not Data Points

CHAPTER 1Competing in the Experience Economy: Many Companies Succeed Despite Sub‐Par Customer Understanding

Are customers at the heart of your business?

No business leader in their right mind would answer, “No,” but the sad truth is that many of us in the corporate world have been paying lip service to customer needs, ideas, and feedback without deeply understanding and taking action on them.

This inertia is, in part, created by the speed of innovation. As the digital world has emerged and evolved, it's enabled businesses to reach size and scale faster than ever before, and to do so with smaller initial investments and fewer people.

Instead of sinking tens of thousands of dollars into a neighborhood gym full of costly equipment and overhead, we can spend a couple hundred bucks on designing a fitness app that helps people slim down and build muscle mass.

Instead of attempting to build an entirely new academic institution, we can compile expertise and information into an online learning platform.

Instead of spending two years scouting locations, finding suppliers, and negotiating contracts to launch a brick‐and‐mortar retail business, we can spend two days tweaking our ecommerce infrastructure and supply chain.

The acceleration rate is dizzying. You know this already.

You also know that the ability to go from zero to profit in record time has triggered a tsunami of businesses, many of which offer nearly identical products. In this teeming marketplace, the key differentiator and driver of loyalty has become the customer experience.

Does the customer feel understood and valued? Can they set up a new account without any friction? Is the initial experience using the app easy and enjoyable? Are the new offers that appear in their inboxes anticipating their needs and helping them feel connected to the company?

Today's customers expect great experiences with the products, services, and brands that they support. Many of the businesses that have achieved phenomenal success in this market are the ones that know this and prioritize the creation of above‐and‐beyond customer experiences.

Take Spotify: Personalization has always been central to the music streaming service's brand and market presence, and in the summer of 2021, Spotify kicked it up a notch by launching its “Only You” campaign. This dedicated in‐app experience leverages user listening data to highlight the artists, songs, genres, and listening patterns that are unique and important to each listener.

Like the service's popular and personalized year‐end summary, Spotify Wrapped, Only You content is easily shareable across social media. The Only You content joins Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and Daily Mixes in the app's Made for You hub, the title of which underlines Spotify's dedication to making each user's experience feel personal, bespoke, and special.1

Spotify has become one of the most successful on‐demand music platforms globally, with more than 320 million active daily users and more than 144 million paying monthly subscribers as of 2021,2 while competitor Pandora has shrunk to 55.9 million active monthly users and 6.4 million subscribers.3 This focus on the almighty listener has clearly contributed to its success, and more and more people prefer and expect to receive personalization at this level.

And their expectations continue to rise as they compare experiences, not just within the same category, but across all of the products, services, and brands that they consume and support.

For example, when consumers purchase clothing online, they may compare their ordering and store pick‐up experience with the experience they have booking a restaurant reservation via a smartphone app. The intuitive and fast reservation experience doesn't resemble the retail transaction, but the consumer doesn't care. They've come to expect the same level of ease and integration from both.

Nailing this mix of canny design and well‐timed emotional ephemera can set a company apart from its competitors. Far apart. Think trillions of miles.

It's all borne out in the stats. Research shows that customers consistently convert for companies who offer them delightful experiences, and that they remain loyal to those companies once a connection is made. Even if another company offers similar products or services at lower cost or delivers them faster, people prefer the company that delivers the best experience and makes an authentic connection.

Take air travel as an example: Overall, airlines consistently rank as one of the top five most hated industries in the United States,4 so the bar is set pretty low. The advent of fees for things like checked bags and more legroom has continued to sour public opinion, in part because when customers have to pay for something that used to be free, they interpret this as a personal loss.5

And yet the U.S. Travel Association found that 60 percent of travelers would welcome additional fees dedicated to improving efficiency and choice.6 During the COVID‐19 outbreak, surveyed travelers said they would pay up to 17 percent more to fly on airlines that blocked the middle seat,7 and when Delta continued the blocked‐seat policy after other airlines rescinded it, Delta ​​rose to number one in the American Customer Satisfaction Index.8

This is a single example, but it isn't unique. Brands with superior customer experience rake in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors who lag behind,9 and 73 percent of customers say that good experiences influence their brand loyalties.10 And since every MBA knows it's far more costly to acquire new customers than it is to keep loyal ones happy, this is news worth noting.

Yet far too many business leaders note it and are paralyzed by the prospect of trying to please these hordes of tech‐savvy, highly discerning consumers. Either that, or they pour company money into analytics, surveys, and customer databases and assume an influx of data will help them rise as a market leader.

It won't. Not by a long shot.

Many companies spend billions of dollars collecting, sorting, and interpreting customer data, but still don't fully understand the people those data represent.

They may formulate potential new products or features to solve a customer problem, but do so without understanding how the problem arose or why it's a problem worth solving.

They may segment the living daylights out of their customer lists but still struggle to understand drivers and motivating factors.

They may sit inside dashboards watching app downloads and conversion rates, but they don't know why people are opting to download a competitor's app instead of theirs or dropping out of the purchase funnel.

A whopping eighty‐four percent of customers say their interactions with organizations fall short of their expectations,11proof that we're missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.

The missing puzzle piece is a view into authentic customer perspectives: the ability to stand in the shoes of a customer, to see through their eyes, hear what they have to say, and understand what it feels like for them to interact with a company.

The missing puzzle piece is human insight.

When Did We Start to Value Data Over Human Connections?

Before we dig into the mindset shifts and strategies that will help you transform your business through capturing human insight, we need to understand how we got here.

What caused so many businesses to stop talking with and observing their customers? When did we lose sight of the importance of seeing the world through our customers' eyes? Or did we ever really have these things in the first place?

Here's a quick summary of how companies have shifted their customer understanding efforts over the last century or so, mainly in response to new tech and manufacturing advancements.

FIGURE 1.1 Customer Understanding Trends Over Time

Source for dates and era names: Forrester Research, Inc., Competitive Strategy in the Age of the Customer, October 201312

So we've arrived in the Age of the Customer in the Experience Economy, an era in which consumers desire experiences and businesses respond by explicitly designing and promoting them.13

Business consultants B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore first defined the Experience Economy in Harvard Business Review back in 1998, and their definition has become increasingly relevant as the world has become more and more digitized.