Sincere Attention
Peering closely into the needs of the customer
How I set the approach for our research department intending to the answer core questions product teams ask every 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?
Do we know we’re helping?
Is there an actual improvement to the users 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 experts in their personal context.
To do this, I started going to our customers place of work and observed them using our software. This was eye opening. While in-person, glaring frustrations were exposed, unexpected behavior sprung up, and opportunities to define the future were revealed.
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
Charting the Unexpected
Observation
From the moment the customer thought about us to when we left their mind we tracked it. All digital interactions were separately marked.
It became clear that what the customer thought we're responsible for we were not paying enough attention to.
Emotion
We drew the human side of the experience by tracking frustration, joy, and more. Direct observation allowed us to see how the customer was feeling before, during, and after their experience.
What was making our customers lives worse quickly came into focus.
Blocking
To understand how much we truly knew about our customers experience, an analytics only view was overlaid. All interactions in the flow not seen by analytics tools were marked and blocked off.
Our expensive digital tools were shielding us from the entire story.
Measurement
To find patterns in our customers behavior we tracked what led up to an event, what happened after it, and how a user reacted to create scenarios.
Events that affected customer behavior became signals to watch for when assessing impactful changes.
Thinking Outside the Cost
Meaningful Context
We framed our findings around the entire in-store lifecycle. Other teams could see where their contributions were felt before they decided how they wanted to improve.
Creative Freedom
The needs of the customer became clear allowing teams to finally choose how to meet expectations. Current solutions were no longer a box we were forced to think in.
Worth Every Penny
Observed friction and frustration inspired new ideas. From one field study alone we identified the exact point in the ordering experience costing customers $10mm/yr.
Full Perspective
This approach supported any team who recognized the importance of a deeper look. The focus was on witnessing how we influenced the life of the customer. We quickly found what matters to our users was lacking attention, what didn’t was getting priority, and opportunity existed in the industry unclaimed. The customer had never gotten this level of attention.
Tomorrow's Reality
Now take a small peek into our vision for small independent grocery starting with daily ordering.
