My boss asked me to work with the product and UX/ research teams in designing and preparing customer interviews of a customer portal. Learning a new system (totally different from the one I’m leading and the opposite end of user journey) and about customers are very exciting to me. However, for several team members, interviewing customers is outside the norm. They felt uncertain and even anxious.
I created the customer research plan and materials, e.g. interview guide, customer segmentation and selection, information tracker, roadmap, team cadence, etc. and explained the process and documents to team (multiple times). I designed the interview assignment with a ‘pair’ approach: two people, one with product knowledge and the other is familiar with user research or comfortable with customer, will do 2 interviews together then switch partner. The benefits of the design are (1) people get familiar with the partner and support each other in the interview, e.g. one ask question and the other take notes; (2) pair can swop roles in the second interview; (3) switching partner allows people to learn from different people and styles. I assured people that customer interview is not difficult, we want to listen and understand what works, what is a pain point, and what would make bigger impacts. We’ll learn and adjust as we go.
I led the first interview and my partner observed and took notes. We synced before the call and de-briefed afterwards. Overall it went well yet we noticed the Customer Rating part was a bit tricky for customer to do in the session and share screen. Partially due to the coordination between two interviewees and partially because they don’t use all functions. We decided for the next interview, to ask customer to fill the rating prior to the call then share our screen and talk it out with the customer instead.
It worked. The second customer not only provided rating and comments live in session but also asked two of his power users filled the rating prior so we got three feedback at once. More importantly, in the second interview, my partner felt comfortable to take the lead. We swopped roles; he asked questions while I supported by taking notes. He did a nice job and felt good about how he did. Two other team members, observing the call, complimented him as well as feeling more “assured and relaxed” that customer interview wasn’t scary. They were eager to start…
More interviews and learning to come….I look forward to understanding customers’ goals, desires, and behaviors to help design a system that better serves the needs as well as encouraging team to ‘stretch’ and grow.