Everyone knows the expression “the customer’s always rightâ€, and that couldn’t be more true. In today’s digital economy, it’s crucial to understand what customers want and how they behave to deliver a great digital experience, says Alfonso de la Nuez, co-CEO and co-founder, UserZoom.
The customer, as they say, is always right. It’s a maxim that’s never been truer — we all know we can learn more from our customers than any other source of information out there. And in today’s digital-first world, there are more opportunities to discover what our customers want, as well as how they behave and how to design experiences that delight more than ever before.
COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation by up to seven yearsOpens a new window , making seamless, convenient and beautiful online experiences more important than ever. We all know how fragile customer journeys can be. It doesn’t take much to frustrate the customer and send them elsewhere.
Every company is a digital experience company. So, what can marketers do to help? You’ve likely embraced user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) already, but now you need to go one step further. We’ve entered the era of experience insights management (XIM), the combination of processes, strategies and technologies that allow businesses to manage the gathering, analysis, and sharing of experience insights across all customer touchpoints and business functions.
Learn More: Customer Success as the Flywheel of Corporate Growth and Profitability
As you build out your digital experience strategy in these rapidly changing times, here are the three biggest pitfalls to look out for along the way.
1. Struggling to Measure Digital Experience
Marketing measurements are about more than just Facebook followers and PPC. You need to define a system of digital experience measurement that is easy to interpret and translate into positive action for your future marketing efforts. UX should be connected to business KPIs so you can see the correlation between your customer and user experience efforts and how this benefits the business.
Shockingly, 43% of digital experience professionalsOpens a new window say they don’t have these metrics to hand. 59% of executives admit they don’t have the data needed to prove UX and CX’s impact on their business. If this is you, then you’ll want to remedy this as soon as possible. Connecting your user’s needs to your business goals may be the secret to weathering global instability. The Harvard Business ReviewOpens a new window says: “Progressive companies stay closely connected to customer needs — a powerful filter through which to make investment decisions…but adds substantially to sales and profits afterwards.â€
Don’t: Ignore measurement — marketing has always been about knowing what speaks to the customer. Don’t keep investing time, money, and talent into your digital experience if you don’t have the metrics to support your decisions and your team.
Do: Adopt the user research and testing programs that will provide you with the relevant metrics to measure your digital experience across multiple sources throughout product development to give digital experience teams greater confidence and validation, as well as greater confidence in customer satisfaction.
2. Ignoring ResearchOps
Ok, so now we know that data needs to be measured, let’s talk about getting that data in the first place. So, how are you getting your data? If this is a thorn in the side of your grand plan, you’re not alone. Many organizations are struggling to find a solution for insights management, collaboration and sharing.
ResearchOps is set to change that. Designed to give the tools and resources needed by everyone involved, a ResearchOps program keeps data protected while also making it easily accessible to teams who need it. In short, ResearchOps will save time and improve productivity.
Designed by Kate Towsey of Atlassian, ResearchOps is about managing the people and the process involved in user research, seamlessly slotting in alongside DevOps and DesignOps. Consolidating five key areas of research into one program, ResearchOps governs:
- Workflows
- Budget control
- Knowledge management
- Responsibilities
- Building UX advocacy across the entire business
Digital experience measurement is made simpler by the ResearchOps program approach, letting you understand which metrics should be reported on, how they impact the business and how they measure up against historical data. This can be invaluable insight when crafting your next campaign.
Don’t: Ignore the increasing importance of a ResearchOps program or create obstacles within the business when it comes to introducing one. ResearchOps can transform your processes for the better, but the keyword is transformation, i.e., there will be change, a lot of it.
Do: Make ResearchOps a priority for the business, ensure the key decision-makers are on board and fully understand and transmit the long-term benefits of the program not just with your UX teams but with marketing and beyond.
Learn More: 3 Practical Ways for Brands To Build up Customer Empathy
3. Dangerous Data Silos
Silos are bad news. Without easy access to ALL data, insights will be missed, and decision-making will be compromised.
You can break the silos by ensuring everyone is up to date with your experience insights — it makes sense, right? Consider this statistic from Clare-Marie Karat, principle UX consultant and former IBM researcher: For every $1 spent to fix an issue in the design phase, $10 would have been spent to fix it in development, and $100+ to fix it after release. It makes you think, doesn’t it?
By gathering and sharing experience insights with the business at large, you can create new products that are optimized to the user or customer needs (for optimal marketing potential), ones that work and won’t run the risk of needing to be recalled and redesigned after release. You can spend more time making the next key decision than fixing all those little things that haven’t worked with the last one.
Don’t: Leave it up to individuals to measure data how they see fit and tuck the data away so that every department is working with information that is fragmented and confusing, i.e., not valuable.
Do: Create a centralized system for your data where it can be conducted, recorded, compared, shared and measured. Ensure it supports your research methods through every stage and via any platform. This is your one source of truth, accessible and digestible to all who need it.
A New Experience Awaits
The market is set to change, and so must your toolset as a marketer. In the digital era we live in, the experience is the brand, and UX is now your business strategy. Equip yourself with UX and CX insights and enjoy some of the most powerful tools you can get to create businesses that succeed, products that work and customers who rave about you. The opportunities are there for the taking — but only if you act fast.