How can you improve the customer experience for your product?

Follow the customer through the whole journey--what makes them sign up or trial your product, and what happens next? What makes them come back to your product and make it a habit? There's a big difference in how you'd design a product that must be used (like the 911 software Kimberly Kapustein, CTSM, CMP mentioned) and a product that is discretionary (like a video game) but understanding the customer journey is key. Early on, when you may have only a few customers, and lack sophisticated tools for tracking behavior, just ask and watch. Qualitative data, surveys, and simple observation can help you learn. Don't wait for the "perfect data analytics and tracking solution" to incorporate customer input.

Hi Felicia, excellent curation. I 100% agree that personalization can add the most delightful customer experience. My recent struggle with weekly food subscription is that the system always defaults my recurring order to my 1st purchase list. I had to spend more time browsing and finding my favorite order again each week. In this case, AI-driven personalization can use machine learning and deep learning to understand my order history, determine my most repeated or favorite orders, and add a more personalized recommendation.?

For a more accurate demonstration of the 911 software, we ask the 911 operators to “drive” through a call. The screens are similar to their workstations and using the product to notify fire, police and others who might be needed in an emergency situation is essential to them discovering the ease of use and increase speed to dispatch. Time saves lives and using that catch phrase holds their attention when leaving the booth. Also asking key customers their pain points and then writing or creating a short video of us hearing their need and offering a solution is well received.

I recommend a minimum of a threefold approach to understanding customer experience and improving upon it. 1) Have great usage tracking - what pages are visited, buttons clicked, features ignored? This live journey mapping will give you great insight into what is working and where there are weak spots and informs where you focus on the next step steps. 2) Perform live usability testing. Have users perform tasks, obverse how they interact. Use gaze tracking to know what they're paying attention to or what parts of the product never get noticed. Listen. 3) Ask for feedback. Live within the app, via help screens, or via survey or user studies. Get feedback directly from the user on their experience. Ask why they aren't using a particular feature. Ask where there are pain points. As you listen, then you can test revisions and repeat the cycle.

The trick is to learn as fast as possible from customers. Show them your product. Watch them use it. Prototype changes with them to find the version that they'll love. Dig on key behaviors to understand the why behind them. Ask them about their backstory and really listen, because pain points are emotional and complex. Become invested in their success. Do this enough times and the path forward becomes clear. The moment that you can stop guessing what will make your product great and work from real knowledge is when everything changes.