Customer research is typically hard to do for companies who build enterprise softwares, where the development cycle and customer feedback cycle can be long, and also it is relatively hard to find targeted customers to study. Here, we want to share our stories about how we collaborate with other customer-facing departments within the company to schedule customer interview sessions, what kinds of research deliverables we provide, and how we communicate the results to influence product roadmap planning and feature prioritization.

1. Enterprise Customer Insights Research:
How To Make an Impact?
Meng Yang & Lindsay Li
Customer Insights at NetBrain
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020

2. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
I. Difficulties of Enterprise Customer Research
II. Three Research Philosophies
III. Collaborate With Other Customer-facing Departments
V. Communicate the Insights
IV. Two Effective Research Methods & Deliverables
Agenda

3. I. Dilemma of Enterprise Customer Research
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
I. Difficulties of Enterprise Customer Research

4. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Enterprise Softwares:
• With complex flow and complex user interfaces
• Need domain knowledge
• Need to be integrated into existing workflow
Enterprise Software Users:
• Admins vs. Power Users vs. End Users
• Hard to find candidates to interview
• Buyers are different from users
Why Is It Difficult To Conduct Enterprise Customer Research?

5. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
What Does NetBrain Do?
Network Management Tool for Network Engineers
• Build network topology maps automatically
• Automate network troubleshooting

6. I. Dilemma of Enterprise Customer Research
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
II. Three Research Philosophies

7. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
UX Research is Business Research
Libby Maurer, VP User Experience at HubSpot https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-ux-research-business-libby-maurer/
“We started doing UX field work and the business loves it.
Here's how we got traction.”

8. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
2. Go After WHY
Tell a story, as detailed as
you can
1. Aim for Impact
Guide your product strategy
with customer research
3. Pursue to Understand
Listen first, put show or sell to the end
Three Research Philosophies

9. I. Dilemma of Enterprise Customer Research
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
III. Collaborate With Other Customer-Facing Departments

10. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Support & Services
Biweekly Meetings to Review Feature Requests
Hold Regular Meetings With Other Customer-facing Departments
Marketing
On-demand Catch-up Meetings
Pre-Sales Engineers
Monthly Meetings
Customer Success Managers
Participate Their Meetings on a Monthly Basis

11. I. Dilemma of Enterprise Customer Research
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
IV. Two Effective Research Methods & Deliverables

12. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Usability Testings
Ethnography Research
In-depth User Interviews
Customer Feature Request Case Analysis
Surveys
Analysis of Customer Real Documents
User Research Methods We’ve Used

13. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Usability Testings
Ethnography Research
In-depth User Interviews
Customer Feature Request Case Analysis
Surveys
Analysis of Customer Real Documents
2 Most Effective User Research Methods

14. I. Dilemma of Enterprise Customer Research
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
1. In-Depth Customer Interviews

15. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Finding Customers to Interview
1) Remote Research is fine
• Better if the customer agrees to share his screen
2) Leverage the help of other customer facing departments
• Build relationships with people
• Hold regular meetings with people
3) Set specific goals
• For instance, 2 one-on-one sessions with internal people and 1 customer session every 2 weeks
4) Leverage already scheduled customer meetings, if appropriate
• For instance, regular customer review meetings, product demo meeting and user training meetings

16. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Prepare a Customer Interview
1) Get as much background about the customer as possible
• Review their opened cases
• Talk to sales/services/customer success managers beforehand
• Have an internal pre-interview meeting to align the goals
2) Have no more than 2 people to interview in the meeting
• Avoid to be a focus group study
3) Prepare a questionnaire including both generic and specific questions
4) Make it a win-win situation
• Prepare a customer feature request case summary

17. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Example Feature Request Case Summary

18. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Conduct Customer Interview
1) Ask the customer to share his screen
• Record the session
2) Understand the customer’s job/teams, and tools used
3) Ask the customer to walk through one or two typical usage scenario
4) Ask lots of WHYs

19. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Example Deliverable - Customer Profile & Use Case Report

20. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Example Deliverable - Persona Use Case Summary

21. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Example Deliverable - User Flow

22. I. Dilemma of Enterprise Customer Research
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
2. Customer Feature Request Case Analysis

23. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Analyze Feature Request Cases in Salesforce
• Quantitative trend analysis
• Build the dashboard in Salesforce or export to excel
• In-depth qualitative research for certain problem areas
• Identify top problem areas that you hear from the field
• If the case isn’t well-stated in Salesforce, ask for more details from the person who opened it

24. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Example Deliverable: Case Trend Analysis
Fake numbers just to illustrate the concept

25. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Example Deliverable: Specific Area Deep Analysis

26. I. Dilemma of Enterprise Customer Research
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
V. Communicate the Insights

27. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
• Include one-page summary, especially in the email
• Distribute to wider audiences
• Can send out regular email newsletters
• Have a centralized place to store all reports/deliverables
Best Practices of Communicating Insights

28. Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
• Aim for impact
• UX research is business research
• Go fo depth:
• Detailed use cases or stories are much more useful than generic personas
• Collaborate with other customer-facing departments
• Build relationships and hold regular meetings
• Remote research is fine
• No more than 2 people to be interviewed at one session
• Ask the participant to share the screen, and walk through scenarios
• Ask a lot of WHYs
• Analyze Salesforce feature request cases
• Quantitative trend analysis and/or qualitative problem-area analysis
• Communicating in a one-page summary
• For those people who don’t even want to download your full report
Summary of Key Takeaways

29. I. Dilemma of Enterprise Customer Research
Boston UXPA Conference, Oct. 23rd, 2020Enterprise Customer Insights Research
Questions?
Meng Yang meng.yang@netbraintech.com
Lindsay Li lindsay.li@netbraintech.com