How Do We Grow and Innovate by Focusing on the Customer Digital Experience?

While there are a lot of uncertainties as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is one thing I am certain of: businesses that focus on the customer experience stand a better chance of weathering the storm than businesses that don’t. A sustained focus on the customer forces businesses to think about how to deliver greater value. Perhaps more importantly, it forces them to be agile.

As a result of the pandemic, more people rely on digital experiences than ever before. This massive shift in behaviors impacts all businesses—not just those that traditionally rely on in-person interactions. And, despite the differences among industries and business models, success is based on more than luck or cash flow—it’s dependent on aligning the business with customer’s behaviors, motivations, and goals.

Grow and maintain a business that is already digital

If your business is already functioning in the digital space—online software or mobile apps, for example—you’re undoubtedly concerned about growing and maintaining users or subscriptions. This is the time to understand how you can deliver added value to existing customers. Their needs today may be starkly different than what they needed three months ago. And those needs may continue to evolve for the foreseeable future.

Move a brick and mortar business to the digital realm

Maybe you’ve been forced to replace activities or services that were previously conducted offline into the digital realm. Panera Bread, for example, quickly pivoted to address customer needs by providing delivery of not only soups and sandwiches but groceries, as well. For some businesses, the shift may be temporary. For others, it may be part of a larger strategic vision. Museums, for example, may consider ways to simulate off-line experiences. One of Voice+Code client’s, for example, recently examined how to re-create an experience you might get being led around by a museum curator.

Disrupt an industry

Perhaps you see the opportunity to disrupt an industry. Many industries have been on the precipice of change and the current circumstances could be the nudge that makes those changes permanent. Whenever you are moving traditionally offline experience into the digital space, you’ll need to be constantly testing and iterating with customers to validate your assumptions and ensure a seamless experience.

Regardless of your business model and business goals, while we are in a holding pattern of great uncertainty, you can do some things that will help you to make more informed decisions. Which leads us to the following customer experience research methods:

Leverage analytics and make sure you have the right metrics in place

If you have a digital product already, you have a head start in being able to track what users are doing or not doing. This can often give you clues of where to explore improvements in the user experience. For example, if you see that users are dropping off halfway through completing an application, you can conduct additional research (like a usability study) to understand why.

This is also an important time to ensure you are gathering meaningful, product-level metrics that can help inform user experience decisions. To improve its search experience, Zappos asks users “Do these items match what you were searching for?” after they enter a query. This gives Zappos the data it needs to improve its search functionality and pinpoint issues that require additional research.

See what customers are saying about you and your competitors

Get access to unsolicited (i.e., unbiased) customer feedback by reading what people have posted about your or your competitor’s products. For example, gather and analyze posts on product or special interest forums, online reviews, or places like Reddit. It is especially important now to compare posts pre- and post-COVID-19 and to monitor feedback periodically. While we don’t recommend relying solely on online research, it is often helpful in providing clues to either potential user experience issues or opportunities that can be explored through additional research.

Analyze customer service data

Your internal team members often have a treasure trove of useful customer feedback. In some cases, you can access large amounts of customer service data, which can be analyzed to uncover customer pain points. If your organization doesn’t have this data, interviewing sales or customer service team members can often uncover useful information that comes directly from customers.

The key here is to get as close to customers as possible. Hear their pain points in their own words. While this is free, easily accessible data you should be tracking regularly anyway, it’s particularly important to analyze this data pre- and post-COVID-19.

Observe and/or talk to current or potential customers

What the previous research methods lack is direct access to your customer. Analytics tell you what (as long as you are measuring the right things), but not why or how to fix it. Online research and internal research don’t allow you to ask follow up questions to gather more details about customer’s challenges. That’s why there’s no replacement to talking to or, better yet, observing customers.

Current circumstances pose challenges for in-person research. Generally, we recommend clients observe customers in their own environment to gather the most impactful insights. But remote research is far better than no research at all. For example, if you’ve noticed through analytics that users are dropping off at a certain point, moderated remote usability studies conducted using video conferencing software allow your team to watch customers use your product. Because they are moderated, you’ll be able to ask follow-up questions to better understand what issues their having and gain the insights to fix them. Usability studies are particularly well-suited for pinpointing issues that users have a hard time articulating in online forums or in customer service complaints. So, if you’ve noticed complaints about a particular feature, for example, a usability study can usually uncover what the issues are.

If you’re reimagining an experience previously conducted offline, one-on-one video interviews or diary studies conducted via online software can help you understand how users are conducting tasks offline, what their needs are, and what can be facilitated and accounted for in the online experience. Similarly, if you’re in an industry that is ripe for disruption, interviews and diary studies will give you a competitive edge in developing solutions. First, this research helps validate your assumptions about what to build. Second, you’ll get answers to questions you never even thought to ask—paving the way for new features or products.

Keep in mind that you’re not asking users to tell you what products or features to build. In fact, customers aren’t very good at predicting what they will do in the future, particularly during a time when no one can be certain what the future holds. Instead, you’re gathering data about users perceptions, goals, behaviors, and pain points so your team can develop better, more informed solutions.