UX: user experience, CX: customer experience, PM: product management
I gave what turned out to be a really fun talk organized by Hello Meets and this blog is a more succinct, written version of that presentation. The topic came to me when I realized how much of my PM role was happening at the peripheries of the product versus in the actual product! The impact of these product-adjacent features in some cases was remarkable — thus leading me down the train of thought of how important the end-to-end customer experience can be to the overall journey of a user experiencing your product. Let’s get to it.
- What comes to mind when we think of UX?
- Defining user experience
- User and customer personas
- Identifying user and customer touchpoints
- Onboarding
- Product Documentation
- APIs and Integrations
- Community Interactions
- Feedback Loops
- Wrapping it up
What comes to mind when we think of UX?
The traditional view of UX tends to revolve around the parts of the product users see and touch the most. This includes
- User interface: how your app looks and performs on web and mobile, the features using which the user interacts with the app
- User research: identifying who the user is and building user personas, conducting user interviews, seeking qualitative and quantitative feedback while designing the app, A/B testing various design options
- Wireframes and mockups: documenting the user journey through various screens and interaction in low and high fidelity
- Content and copy: the language used in the app, guiding users to complete their jobs to be done
I’m using the term app here loosely to refer to a piece of software]
While all of this is necessary, it is not sufficient.
Defining user experience
I looked around for a definition of user experience that more closely matches my own experience mapping out a customer’s journey and this quote seemed very apt.
“User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”
By Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen from the Nielsen Norman Group
If I had to break this definition down even further, I would say user experience is
- Interaction of users directly with the product (everything I captured in the section above about the traditional view of UX fits here)
- Interaction of users indirectly with the product and its services or customer experience
User and customer personas
The main difference between a user and a customer in my mind is that a user uses the product, and a customer pays for it. In some cases, the user and customer are the same person, and in some cases, they aren’t. What helps is to introduce the notion of a persona. As PMs, we need to cater to user and customer personas, even if both roles happen to be played by the same person.
This distinction of personas is important because personas can have different motivations. For example
- I love how easy Twitter is to use, but I’ve heard its platform for advertisers leaves a lot to be desired
- Employees love Zoom (for the most part) but employers are concerned about privacy issues
Freemium B2C products can also have persona shifts. A good example here is the gaming category. You can play a mobile game as a user for free, but if you want to unlock advanced features or skins, you need to pay. At this point, the user becomes the customer. In freemium B2B2C (Slack, Zoom), employers become the customers once the users are ready.
All this to say
- Both user and customer personas need to be considered for a product
- You can’t ignore customer experience for any class of product
- What I’m calling customer experience is really just user experience extended outside the core product itself
Identifying user and customer touchpoints
With that being said, here are the five touchpoints throughout a user/customer’s journey that are key to creating a seamless end-to-end customer experience.
1. Onboarding
Key things to think about include
- Guides to get users started
- Product trials
- Invitations
Guides to get users started
Slack does an awesome job onboarding new users especially with its use of empty states i.e. giving hints about what a user can expect from specific parts of the product. The activity panel on the right that is currently empty gives you information about what you can expect to see there when there’s real activity. The Slackbot is also very fun and handy. I certainly prefer this slow and steady onboarding approach to an exhaustive tour of every feature which some products tend to do.
Product trials
Product trials can be so important for B2C or B2B2C products. In general, I’d say that the lower the barrier to entry for signing up for a trial, the better but this is a strategic choice. If you’re looking to have groups of highly-qualified users at the top of your funnel that are likely to stick around, maybe mandating a credit card to sign up for a trial is a good thing. On the other hand, if you think users will pay for your product immediately after they see the immense value they derive from it, then getting them started with the product as quickly as possible without a credit card is the best move. When designing a trial, think about
- Making it the right duration (not too long or short)
- Making it as easy as possible to try (duh)
- Limiting features and usage to just the right amount (you want users to see value, but not give away too much for free)
Invitations
I’m honestly tired of seeing this product all over my Twitter feed, but thought I’d call it out as a good example of creating artificial scarcity to generate hype for your product. A tried and tested method, it can really really pay off if you do it well. Social pressure and FOMO are real.
2. Product Documentation
Often overlooked and typically used to check a box, product documentation is one place where the time, attention and love you give your product really shows. Well-written product documentation can be a pleasure to read and by the time your user gets here, you can assume they’re already stuck or otherwise frustrated with your product. The goal is to ensure they find what they need quickly and easily.
Characteristics of good product documentation
- Up to date with version control
- Clean organization and navigation
- Searchable and SEO optimized
- Video guides to supplement written content
3. APIs and Integrations
The holy grail for APIs is that they are
- Easy to use and performant, plus have code and use case examples
- Come with easy to use plugins and integrations
Easy to use and performant + have code and use case examples
Stripe is in the business of APIs, and their APIs and API documentation are a thing of beauty. Syntax highlighting, great level of detail, examples; it’s all there.
Come with easy to use plugins and integrations
The Zoom/Outlook integration is obvious and yet adds a tremendous amount of value to users of both products. And there’s many magical integrations like this that products can leverage to keep their users happy whether that’s integrating a GIF keyboard in a chat app or providing an API for users to access their own data (Goodreads for instance).
4. Community Interactions
Key touchpoints in the community are
- Social media
- Support forums
- Blogs, newsletters, emails
- Platform to showcase users
Social media
You want your company/product to be present where your users are. Depending on the nature of your product it could be places like Twitter or Reddit or for more technical products, you might be on Stack Overflow. Not only is it important to have an active presence, you also want to have a distinct voice, that’s consistent across channels.
Support forums
Wordpress has an excellent customer support portal, that is staffed by a mix of employees and volunteers. Getting volunteers that are highly engaged users to participate helps build true community around the product. Customer support and social media is also a great way to get feedback from users and gauge user sentiment with your product.
Blogs, newsletters, emails
Blogs that add real value to your users can really become a point of differentiation for your product. Intercom, Hubspot are examples of companies that not only provide great software, but are also thought leaders in their space. They also benefit from organic search traffic that the blog brings to their product.
Emails are a really powerful tool of keeping in touch with your user, but they are often very poorly used. Wrong emails at the wrong time, broken templates in your phone inbox, links that don’t work; these are some of the common flaws with product emails. If you go down the email route, you have to do this really intentionally and diligently, especially since our inboxes are now practically sacred.
Platform to showcase users
Case studies and customer spotlights that highlight how your users are using your product successfully is a good incentive for them and for you.
5. Feedback Loops
The feedback loop in its simplest form is bidirectional, either the user tells you things, or you tell the user things (explicitly or implicitly).
Some of the most important feedback loops include
- Reporting bugs, making feature requests
- Visibility into product roadmap
- In-product feedback
- User analytics
Reporting bugs, making feature requests
I really like this example I found about a user’s experience with Google. Someone complained on the Google Play store about a change in Google Maps that made the traffic line indicators on the map too thin and difficult to see. Typically, you expect your review to go nowhere or receive an apology at best. This user actually received an update a few weeks later (see screenshot above) that Google Maps had fixed the problem! This is a great example of closing the feedback loop, and keeping users engaged and involved with your product. At minimum, responding to reviews and criticism of your product is a good thing to do.
Visibility into product roadmap
VMware has a large support org as you might expect and typically that’s how our users will report bugs. But often, users will have feature ideas, and Aha! has proven to be a good way for users to input their ideas, and get feedback from product managers about their proposed features. Our power users come up with exceptionally good ideas, so it’s a win-win on both sides. It also gives users visibility into the product development process which can feel like a black box, especially for enterprise tech companies.
In-product feedback
In terms of in-product feedback, you want to collect input from the user in the product itself, when it’s fresh. You can always supplement it with surveys and other forms of feedback collection (NPS and CSAT come to mind). Important questions to consider are when to ask, how to ask, and where to ask. You might want to wait before seeking feedback until the user has used a specific feature, taken certain actions, or a reasonable amount of time has passed.
User analytics
And finally, even if the user is not explicitly giving you feedback, there’s important metrics to infer from analytics that will help improve your product. I really like time to value as a user metric that tells you how quickly the user is able to complete their job to be done on your product. There’s a ton of other insights you get from data that is practically a book on its own so I won’t go into that here, but suffice to say that user analytics are a valuable source of information in this feedback loop.
Wrapping it up
To summarize the key takeaways
- There are various product touchpoints other than the user interface to consider when creating a holistic end-to-end experience
- These include but are not limited to onboarding, product documentation, APIs and integrations, community interactions and feedback loops
- Creating an integrated, personalized experience across touchpoints can make or break a product
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