Understanding the Goal
Gaining a better understanding of user thoughts at different stages of the customer journey is vital for a company, as it helps identify users’ pain points and uncover new potential revenue streams.
Developing a survey strategy that targets key areas of the customer journey is essential for gathering this vital data.
Project Team
As Head of UX, my role was to not only define the strategy but to build capability within the cross-functional project team (consisting of 1 UX Designer, 2 UX Researcher, and 2 Content Specialists).
I personally mentored and guided the team through the complex UCD process. A key success was providing additional, targeted mentorship to the UX Designer and Researchers on best-practice customer journey mapping and building out surveys along key points of that journey. This focus not only delivered the project but upskilled the team to handle future optimisation projects independently, securing long-term performance.
Research &
Empathy
Gaining a deeper understanding of users and how they interact with the product.
Survey pain points
The company’s approach to surveys was highly siloed. Multiple teams were sending similar surveys to the same students, causing significant customer frustration from repeated questioning and damaging the company’s reputation.
Mapping out the journey
This reveals the different blockers and pain points customers are experiencing as they progress through the various stages with the company.
This mapping also helps to construct more robust personas for internal teams. These personas allow teams to better understand the customer’s needs at each stage, ensuring we provide the right service at the right time.
Ideation
Creating Ideas and concept that could help remove the pain points of the users based of the data and feedback
Gathering ideas
For each key mapped area, we determined the most relevant survey questions to avoid frustrating users with irrelevant queries. We tasked the team with researching suitable questions for each stage and evaluating appropriate survey platforms.
Removing Siloed Surveys
We also needed to look at how we communicate internally better about who and what we will be surveying. I started by setting up meetings with the wider team so that we were in the same room together and setting out a plan of action for our surveys going forwards.
Designing a survey
We focused on the company’s key user questions at each journey stage, aiming for concise surveys of around 10 questions, which were primarily multiple-choice. While some questions were left open-ended, they could be refined based on future user feedback. To encourage participation, we offered an incentive: the chance to win Amazon vouchers.
Survey Plan
In designing the survey plan, we focused on three key areas of the customer journey that required greater insight: ‘closed lost’ leads, new enrolments, and users who had completed their course. We scheduled one of these surveys each month, allowing a fresh pool of users to accumulate over a three-month cycle. Crucially, each user group was to be surveyed only once.
Other channels, such as the website or social media, required a different survey approach. Offering incentives is more challenging here, and users at these stages are less likely to dedicate significant time to a survey. Therefore, these surveys needed to be shorter, quicker to complete, and highly focused on a particular area.
Prototyping
Prototyping is the process of creating a mock-up of a product/process that you want to test and refine ideas on before delivering a final product/solution
Building a survey
With the questions now finalised, the next step was to build the survey for deployment to the selected user group. Since some questions were designed to gain deeper context with follow-up questions, we ensured the survey tool supported branching logic based on the user’s previous response.
Data creation
We needed assurance that the collected data would be presented in an easily digestible format for the entire team. We compiled the survey findings into a presentation to share with the wider team and imported the data into Power BI. This allowed us to progressively build detailed user personas as more data was collected over time from the target user type.
Testing
Testing is a validation of your ideas to see if they solve the pain points that your users were having
Sending the survey
Before deployment, we had other teams review the survey content and ensure all branching logic functioned correctly, confirming it was ready for the user.
The deployment and subsequent data analysis allowed us to continuously refine subsequent surveys and the questions directed at that specific user group.
Refinements often involved making surveys quicker to complete. For instance, open-ended questions could be converted into multiple-choice options based on the common answers received. We also utilised AI to review open answers and provide a cohesive overview of the responses.
Survey Data
The survey data has proven valuable to the company, having already been used to resolve user pain points and introduce new potential revenue streams. We will continue to deploy surveys and build upon the persona data being collected; this information is available to all departments to help them gain a clearer understanding of the user at each stage of the customer journey.
Survey review
We eliminated the siloed survey approach by implementing monthly survey review meetings with teams requiring user data. These meetings allow us to plan which surveys will be deployed each month, a process significantly supported by the master survey plan. Each team member can now easily view the current status and progress of all monthly surveys.
The company is looking to build upon the success of the initial plan and roll out more ways of capturing user data.
