Who’s got time to improve their user experience or customer experience? You do. Here are 5 ideas on how to improve UX that you can set up this month. And here’s a bonus: They won’t blow your budget, either.
Does the idea of improving your User Experience or Customer Experience feel like a voyage into the unknown? This is common for companies with UX or CX debt. But here’s the thing about UX improvements: They don’t have to be huge or time-gobbling projects. Small wins add up. So let’s talk about 5 ways you can improve your UX (and thus your CX) within the next 30 days.
How to Improve UX in 30 Days or Less
Traditional user testing may or may not be feasible within your 30-day deadline. What can you do this month to improve your user and customer experience?
Talk to frontline employees
Nobody knows the many ways customers complain like your frontline employees—particularly anyone in customer service. So if you’re seeking clarity on how to improve your UX or CX, start by talking to these workers. Find out what causes customers the most friction. Read through a day’s (or an hour’s) worth of tickets. Ask what CS employees personally would recommend changing. Consider sitting with them as they open emails or answer calls. Not only will this surface recurring problems that may go overlooked, it will also help you with your next mission.
Support your support team
By “support”, we don’t mean “onboard” and we’re not limiting it to “train” (although that’s vital, too). Discover what the customer support team needs to respond effectively. It could mean workshops in active listening or empathy, but it could also mean giving them more autonomy in dealing with common issues. The faster tickets are closed, the better the user experience will be. The secret sauce here is finding out from your customer service employees what they need.
Implement or evaluate feedback loops
Feedback loops—which involve collecting customers’ opinions and then using that information to shape decisions—are gold for improving CX and UX. We’ve covered feedback loops extensively in How CX by Design does feedback loops, so check that article out for more details. Our best tips for effective feedback loops include:
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Keeping the feedback loop relatively short, i.e. no longer than two weeks. The fresher the insight, the greater the impact.
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Don’t just use closed, multiple-choice questions. Open questions (e.g. “What did you like about your visit to our office?” “How did X impact your online experience?”) allow users to express their feelings.
Establish a shared “pain point” repository
Friction points tend to stay with the teams that handle them. Sales teams might hear about feature–need mismatches, while customer service teams might know more about malfunctions and design flaws. Rarely do the teams spontaneously share that info. But unless they do, a complete picture will never emerge.
You can’t fix data silos like this overnight, but you can start to circumvent them. The easiest way to create a company-wide pain-point repository. This could be a Slack channel, a shared spreadsheet, or an Asana card (to name only three of many possibilities); the only criteria is that employees have access to it and know how to use it. Then they can log a quick summary of any complaint (e.g. “Customer said the sales tax was being calculated at 8%, not 6%”). Assign someone to monitor this with an eye to identifying and reporting patterns. Soon, you’ll have a good idea of what pain points are happening when, where, to whom, and how often.
Focus on the Big Three
If time and budgets are tight, you need to focus on the UX improvements that matter most. We’re talking about critical, high-usage, high-value things. For an e-commerce company, that might mean examining the sign-in experience, the search functionality, and the checkout process. For you, it’s your customers’ three or four key pathways. Take the most popular user/customer journeys yourself and note any issues you find. This is called a “red route analysis”, and it’s a time-limited way to analyze those areas that can quickly kill the user experience. You can prioritize issue fixes by time, cost, and criticality using our Now-Next-Later framework.
Improve Your UX This Month? Done!
Good UX doesn’t just happen, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It has to start somewhere; a small start is just as valid as a complete overhaul and it’s a lot easier to do. Try one or two of the above suggestions this month. You’ll begin to see ways in which you can improve your UX. And that momentum will keep growing.
If you’d like some expert advice on how to improve your UX or CX, that’s what we’re here for. Contact the CX by Design team for a free 30-minute consultation and we’ll help you pick a path to better UX and CX!
