Challenges & solutions for UX research in a B2B environment — Part 2
Learnings and tips after 6 months working in a fast growing company and starting its UXR team from scratch
This is the second part of this series of 2 articles after having worked for 6 months in a B2B UX design team of a fast growing company like Glovo. This is a list of the main difficulties (and learnings, and recommendations) we have encountered along the way. You can find the first article in this link.
In the first part I listed 3 challenges that have to do with having many user profiles and having many user segments, and also the fact that my team’s users work in an always hectic environment. It was also explained how we faced those difficulties and what I recommend in each case. I admit again that the tips I am giving may seem obvious to you if you have a lot of experience in research, but they are quite useful if you are starting your team and processes from scratch, which is our case.
The other 3 challenges we have encountered so far — and how we solve them and what I humbly propose to do — are as follows:
Challenge 4: We don’t only have external users
Glovo’s structure for managing Partners stores, their product listings and the detail of those products, includes people who work precisely on creating, maintaining and managing that content. Those people (Glovo employees) work with a different digital product and, therefore, are also considered users for our team, with their own characteristics, objectives, tasks and pain points.
How we face this challenge:
Understand the value of planning: although it may seem very obvious, the prioritization that we establish with our stakeholders (mainly with our PMs) about the projects we are going to work on and the consequent planning of them (in terms of objectives, segments, target, type of users, deadlines) is key. In that planning we include the fact of learning how is the product we have to research, while taking advantage of the fact that the recruitment process should be easier because they are users who are employees of the company.
My suggestion:
Take the time to get to know the product you need to research in order to understand the experience of your users (Nielsen heuristics are always a good exercise to know the product more or less in depth), considering that the product that these internal users work with should also respond to the business needs of the external users. Crossing information (tasks, workflows, experiences) from both profiles could be a good solution to this kind of problems.
Challenge 5: Multiple buying and selling cultures
Being an international company, we as a design & research team need to deal with the fact that the culture in each country is different and therefore also the buying and selling habits of customers and stores. Together with the rest of the UX research teams across the company we are aware that this is a very important challenge for us, to try to provide the best experience to partners, customers and riders anywhere in the world.
How we face this challenge:
For now, as a team in development, we are relying on the different teams available within the company to reach those countries / cultures we are interested in. For example, we know that stores that sign up to work with Glovo anywhere in the world have a team of agents that help them during the onboarding process, so we can reach out to those agents and ask them to be a sort of interlocutor with those partners where the language barrier is a blocker and thus run studies in other latitudes.
When it is necessary to extend the boundaries of the study, a recommendation would be to define the appropriate research method and to do so in a user-centered way.
My suggestion:
Again, my suggestion is defining the scope, the user segments and the user profiles for the project. When it is necessary to extend the boundaries, the recommendation would be to define the appropriate research method and to do so in a user-centered way: this means taking into consideration your users context and characteristics. For example (and only as an example), an interview might be more complicated if you do not speak your users language, but a survey could eventually be more effective if you want to reach more people in a shorter time, and it will be probably easier for your users to answer multiple choice questions in an asynchronous mode (when they can or want to do it).
Challenge 6: Long & complex recruitment process
Everything mentioned above has a direct impact on the user recruitment phase for our projects, which tends to be inefficient and complex due to all the factors and people involved in the process.
By documenting, we are at the same time mapping and measuring our process, so we are be able to compare information about our projects and have the opportunity to learn from mistakes and identify areas for improvement.
How we face this challenge:
The value of documentation: being part of a new-born team means that everything is still to be done, so there is a great learning opportunity in documenting everything in the best possible way. By documenting, we are at the same time mapping and measuring our process, so we are be able to compare information about our projects, their timing, objectives, results and ways of working, so we have the opportunity to identify areas for improvement, learn from mistakes and come up with more efficient next steps.
My suggestion:
It may seem simple, but mapping the whole process takes time and demands finding the right documentation tool/method at each step. Again, when you map correctly what you have done you will realize the points you can improve and work on ideation to solve those problems. Regarding the recruitment process in particular, I will be sharing a very satisfying experience for our team in a following article :)
Conclusion
The first part of this series describes the other 3 challenges I have encountered so far along the way, which have to do with having many user profiles, many user segments and the fact that our users work in an always hectic environment.
After having overcome the challenges mentioned in these articles, I can say that the main actions to execute in this environment, as well as in any UX research team starting from scratch, are:
- Understand and document the context of your users.
- Document and map the processes to compare them project after project and to know which points can be improved.
- Take care to define correctly (together with the project stakeholders, especially PMs) the user profile for each project.
- Find the right incentive, and try to build your community of users!
We know that the impact of all the things we are learning will be reflected in the improvement of our products and, of course, of our users’ experience.
Thanks a lot for reading :)
