How do UX researchers partner with Strategy & Operations at DoorDash?
In a previous article, 3 unique things about being a researcher at DoorDash, I mentioned that working with Strategy & Operations (S&O) is something I really enjoy about my role. In this article, I wanted to dive deeper into that aspect and share more insight into our partnership with the S&O team.
What does the S&O team do?
In the early days of DoorDash, there were mainly three groups of people — engineers, sales, and “everything else”. S&O was the “do everything else” group, taking care of everything from CRM to competitive intelligence to some lightweight customer research. Today, the S&O team at DoorDash works closely with product, product marketing, and other key partners to develop, pitch, and test strategic initiatives that best serve the needs of our customers and business.
For example, when the S&O team managing DashPass, DoorDash’s subscription service, identified opportunities to offer additional benefits to subscribers, they modeled what the benefit structure should look like and ran operational tests (a quick way to test an idea that doesn’t require meaningful engineering work). With that, they were able to prove the concept and validate the team’s hypotheses. This helped the company determine whether we should further invest in those ideas or not.
How do researchers partner with S&O?
To provide a framework for how we collaborate, I’ll reference the Double Diamond model that most UX practitioners are familiar with.
The S&O team’s process can roughly fit into this model.
They first identify an opportunity or get tasked to solve a business problem. Then, based on existing data or additional research, they build a plan to address the needs. To test if the proposed solution is viable, they run experiments (the “operational tests”) with a small set of customers. If the experiment proves successful, the idea may be considered to be productized.
Within this process, there are typically four scenarios where S&O and research can partner:
1. Identify the right problems to solve
This is where researchers need to be proactive and try to be involved early, as it might not occur to S&O that they can leverage research resources at this phase.
In my opinion, this is also where researchers can have the most impact, and what our team strives to focus on at DoorDash.
Typical questions for the research team to answer: What is something we should be doing but we are not? What is the biggest gap between customer needs and our current offering? What is the next big thing for us?
Example of partnership: In a segmentation study, the researcher identified picking up beverages (coffee, tea, juice, etc.) is a common use case for power users. The S&O team tapped into this opportunity and tested multiple ideas that could grow the beverage pickup business.
2. Inform hypotheses and plans
The hypotheses and plans S&O came up with can come from multiple sources — gut, personal experiences, research, behavioral data, etc. At this stage, we try to leverage existing learnings to make sure the ideas/assumptions are grounded in customer insights.
Sometimes S&O partners may request additional inputs to understand the opportunity size or gather customer stories to support a potential solution. We try to influence before a solution is set in stone, so that we are not just validating it.
Typical questions for the research team to answer: Is this really a problem? How big is the problem? How can we solve it?
Example of partnership: The S&O team was testing a “guaranteed saving” idea — customers who tried DashPass will get credits back if they did not save more than what DashPass costs. The initial messages for the campaign were something more generic. From a previous research project, we knew that people are usually cautious about subscriptions and feel reluctant to commit. With that knowledge, we worked with S&O partners to improve the messages, making them resonate more with customers, and address the concerns more effectively.
3. Gather feedback from experiment targets for quick iteration
Currently, this is when S&O partners usually come to us, to get complementary inputs from customers to support or further explain the experiment result. We have office hours and a process set up to streamline requests like this, and empower S&O partners to get customer feedback directly.
Typical questions for the research team to answer: Why are customers using / not using what we offered in the experiment? Does the offering work? How can we improve it?
Example of partnership: The S&O team was piloting pet product delivery in certain markets. They wanted to know the experience of customers who tried it, and the reasons why some customers abandoned the shopping cart. There was no researcher dedicated to this vertical. Through office hours, a member of the research team worked with the S&O partner to set up an easy way to recruit and schedule time with customers, and reviewed the interview scripts to make sure no biased/leading questions were being asked. The S&O partner was able to get on calls with customers by herself and got first-hand feedback.
4. Influence the go-to-market strategy and product experience
Not every operational test becomes a product. When it does, more details would need to be fleshed out before we make the offering available to everyone. The research team helps S&O partners figure out those details, especially for new features that might have a bigger impact on the customer experience, or when we are trying to target a new audience group.
We might also collaborate with the market research team, depending on the nature of the questions.
Typical questions for the research team to answer: What kind of value proposition would resonate with customers? Where and how should we introduce the product to customers? What should the end-to-end experience look like?
Example of partnership: After multiple rounds of operational tests, DoorDash was going to make an announcement at the 2021 Super Bowl about its delivery offerings beyond food. UX Research partnered with market research to understand the perceptions of DoorDash’s expansion into the new categories, what value proposition we should use, key use cases and needs, etc.
What does S&O think?
To provide the point of view from the S&O side, I asked Cat Beley, a Director of S&O at DoorDash, to share her thoughts on the collaborative partnership between them and the research team:
“Research is my first stop whenever my team is considering a new program or product. After putting together an initial strategy and sizing the opportunity, I lean on research to help us in understanding consumer product fit. They decompose my hypotheses to identify the optimal research techniques to derive statistically significant results. In the past, research has helped me conduct a conjoint survey to target the best combination of features for our consumer base as well as design, host, and analyze surveys that gauge consumer interest in new and evolving products.
“For me, the partnership between Strategy & Operations and research works best when research is closely plugged into the day-to-day efforts of the organization. As the lead of Consumer Value & Pricing at DoorDash, having research play an active role in the early development of new ideas increases our odds for success exponentially. Additionally, including research as the product or program evolves is also important to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our consumers and that we are innovating in new and competitive ways.”
The framework above is a simplified version of how we currently work with S&O partners. There are many other occasions where collaboration can happen. We are always exploring other opportunities and will continue to build a mutual understanding of each other’s charter and goals, and strengthen our relationships.
Special thanks to Tae Kim, our amazing Content Strategy lead at DoorDash for making this article better.
If you’re interested in joining DoorDash’s awesome UXR Team, check out the open roles on our Career Page.
