Sincere Attention
Peer closely into the needs of the customer
Crafting the approach for a research department intent on answering the core questions product teams ask every single day.
Why are we needed here?
What parts of the experience are we responsible for?
What exactly do we do?
Currently what do we need to assist the user with better?
Are we missing anything?
What parts of the experience are we not seeing?
How do we know we’re helping?
Is there a measurable improvement to the users actual experience?
Up Close.
Personal.
At UNFI I quickly realized our customers would never fail to share with us where we were not meeting their expectations; however their frame of reference was missing. Without it, we would never be able to serve them the future they deserved. We didn’t know what we didn’t know — we needed to become the foremost experts in our customers context.
Therefore, I started going to our customers place of work and observing them using our software. This was eye opening. While in-person, glaring frustrations were exposed, unexpected behavior sprung up, and opportunities to serve the customer of the future started to shine.
Over 18
months:
I planned and led
In person field studies in 4 different states
Engaged in
Hours directly exposed to customers
Managed
Unique individual customer interviews
Contributing to
Increased sales across 2000 customers
How it Worked
Observations
From the moment the customer thought about us to when we left their mind we tracked it. All digital interactions were marked.
It became clear what the customer thought we're responsible for. The rest was opportunity.
Emotions
We drew attention to the softer side of the experience by tracking frustration, joy, and more. Direct observation showed us how the customer was feeling before, after, and during the experience.
What wasn't working quickly came into focus for improvement.
Blinders
An analytics only view using our digital tracking tools was overlaid to understand the extent of what we could and couldn't see in person. All interactions in the flow not seen by analytics were marked off and blocked out.
We found we continued to miss the majority of the experience.
Measures
We also tracked what led up to a decision, what happened after it, and how a user reacted to create unique scenarios.
Indicators of what directly affects customer behavior, satisfaction, and efficiency became signals to watch increasing our certainty of a positive impact on the customer experience.
Small Gestures, Big Impact
Game Ready
Pillars of the experience was the framework used to understand impact. Showing a team exactly where they played before they decided how to win never was easier.
Technology Second
The needs of the customer had never been clearer allowing us to freely choose how to meet expectations. No longer was the current hardware a box we were forced to think in.
Cost Sensitive
From one field study alone we were able to identify the exact point within the ordering experience that was costing our customers over $10mm/yr from frustration and friction.
Fuller Perspective
This approach supported any team wanting to take an important deeper look. The focus was on witnessing how we influenced the life of the customer. We quickly found that what matters to our users was lacking attention, what didn’t was getting priority, and where opportunity in the industry existed was unclaimed. The customer had never gotten this level of attention.
Tomorrow's Reality
Take a peek into the future we see for independent grocery ordering.
