How to Get the Best Data Insights on Our HX Products and How to Measure Success?

Part 3 - key learnings from our Jan. 25th Webinar

Our Coaches who currently lead HX: Oen Michael Hammonds (IBM), Lina Stern (Stash), and Nina Maldonado shared their insights on researching and co-creating new experiences, working in Product Teams, how to get data, and shared experiences/tips on product development, prototyping, etc.

In this article we address the data side of HX Product Development – where and how to get the best insights and what to measure overall (topics in bold below).

???????How do I move from an idea to a new product or service?

???????What do I need to know & do as a Product Owner?

???????What is a Prototype? What is an MVP? How can I best manage a Product Backlog?

???????What does a Product Development roadmap look like?

???????Where & how do I get the best data insights and ensure I'm identifying the right problem(s)?

???????How do we measure success?

Where & how do I get the best data insights and ensure I'm identifying the right problem(s)?

1-???Look first at insights you are already collecting. Our companies collect a lot of data from employee engagement, productivity, help desk inquiries, onboarding and exit interviews, ServiceNow and other HRIS feedback. Also C-Sat, NPS, Ease of Use scores are helpful. You want to zero in on the problem or challenge that you're trying to resolve e.g. what is driving dis-engagement or turnover.

2-???Gather both qualitative and qualitative data. Analyze any text questions you have to see what themes appear more than others and who is saying them e.g. First year colleagues talk about X while colleagues in years 5-8 say Y. Segment themes into User Groups or Demographic groups to get a picture of what different segments value in a particular experience.

3-???Start with business metrics and work backwards e.g. if your business goal is growth or market share, identify what actions are needed to reach those goals and link them to things your teams and people do. Look at what impacts those metrics in your HX design. Look at existing OKRs, or KPIs that your company measures e.g. time of product to market and tie the experiences you're building to those KPIs.

4-???Identify where you have gaps in data and integrate a way to address gaps in your Research Plan so you’re not continually going back to employees and asking them the exact same questions that they've already been answering and giving them the feeling that ‘They're not listening to us.’

5-???Spend time with Users. Research methods from Design Thinking, Service Design and User Experience all center on being with, observing, interviewing and empathizing with End Users and taking their perspective. Field research is priceless. Getting a wide variety of data points, creating a Research Wall, organizing them into Empathy Maps and Persona Maps, etc., helps us ensure we are focusing on the right problems and therefore the right solutions. We teach these tools and methods in our Learning offerings e.g. our HX Champions Bootcamp and our HX Research & Analytics programs.

6-???Use Experience Maps to identify Touch Points and Moments that Matter. We recommend mapping also front and backstage actions – the support actions of those people touching an experience and what they are doing behind the scenes. Look at how well key touchpoints and Moments that Matter are being supported.

How do we measure the business impact of our new HX Products?

This is always a big question. For somebody who designs new products and brings them to market - both internally and externally, for the business and also for the customer. There are ?different ways to look at how we measure success that speak to different initiatives, whether they're large or small.

1-???Engagement metrics are what we’re more familiar with – something to do with adoption and engagement of a platform or process. For example, when you roll out a large initiative, like a platform for recognition and engagement inside the organisation or a platform to a customer, you want to identify what visualizes adoption of the platform. This kind of metric includes traffic numbers, NPS scores etc. You’re looking something that indicates an increase in participation and how people engage with it.

2-???Experience Metrics are a more useful kind of metric related to HX are experience-related metrics. We mentioned touchpoints and Moments that matter. For example, all new hires are getting their laptop set up and sent to their homes prior to day one - a very small moment, right? We want to understand how that impacted them - are they able to onboard faster, are they expressing that this is a delightful moment? Are they feeling more connected and valued?

3-???Think about what you want to measure, why it's important and what will give you insights into things that will ultimately drive business performance while helping people feel important and valued, more committed. That's what we mean by Experience metrics.

4-???Tie to the Problem you want to solve and link to business goals. Design Thinking research helps us identify the problems people are trying to solve. When we map Personas, we note their preferences, where they go for help, the goals or outcomes they’re trying to achieve with a particular good or service we provide. When we map their experience with that good or service, we note the Problem to solve for each touchpoint. Linking the Problem back to the business goal helps us see the connection to business impact.

5-???Focus on Emotions. Understanding how a touchpoint or interaction makes people feel is so important. Emotion helps us determine how strongly we value something and in turn that drives commitment, engagement and productivity. Think about a customer experience that made you feel elated or upset and how that impacted your loyalty.

In the end, HX not only improves the experience and commitment people have, but also helps us prioritize on the activities that provide most value. where we want to spend our time, resources and money. We want to be able to quantify how we've been able to reduce time, reduce costs, how we've been able to create efficiencies. This is why in companies with strong HX practices, this way of working resonates strongly with senior leaders.