Conducting business-to-business UX research during COVID-19

During this uneasy time, what are the learnings to engage business users for UX Research? Here’s what we have learned over the past months.

Obviously, the past 2 months brought a very different life and new normal to all of us. Lots of learnings and insights have been shared across communities about how to adjust to a variety of challenges. In my group at Fidelity, users of our products and services include financial advisors, broker-dealers, and financial back-office associates. Large-scale geographic lockdown, combined with unprecedented financial market volatility, has made us question our typical user experience research practices with our B-to-B users. These were our top questions:

1. Can we still reach out to our users during these times?
2. Can we recruit users following our standard procedures?
3. Should we adjust our facilitation approach?

Here is how we addressed our 3 questions:

1. Can we still reach out to our users during these times?

Given extreme market volatility, our financial advisor users were heads-down on other priorities. We wondered if our clients might be too busy, distracted, or even too concerned to consider participating in research. During the early days of the pandemic, we decided to pause research activities. To determine when it was right to reach back out, we watched for our own adjustments to the new work-from-home schedules, and other accommodations to plan for uninterrupted meeting times. After 2 weeks into the quarantine, the market volatility was less extreme, and we decided to try engaging users for research. Users responded quickly and very positively to our research requests.

2. Can we recruit users following our standard procedures?

We made these adjustments to our approach:

• We rephrased our research email invites slightly to emphasize the value of “staying connected”
• We added a message about “understanding your needs during these times”
• We ensured that all research would be conducted virtually

Consequently, we were able to conduct research and made a few insightful observations. One that stood out for me was the level of empathy and genuine feedback of our users toward our research group. All conversations had a true sense of humanity and sincere caring on both sides (researcher and participant) that I have rarely seen in research before. It also made me realize that now is the time to learn quickly and easily about underserved needs and opportunities. Now is the time to understand which processes might be broken given current limitations. For example, we learned that our users have an urgent need to substitute in-person meetings with their clients with something that enables them to combine communication and collaboration. While transformations around ourselves happened quite rapidly — replacing physical hangouts with video-enabled chats — where do our users stand with their user experience needs in the context of the current conditions? The opportunity to learn now and to discover the unmet needs of your users is significant.

3. Should we adjust our facilitation approach?

We discussed this possible issue within my group and realized that our current facilitation approach was still appropriate, since even before the pandemic, all research with our business audience typically happens via remote moderated sessions. We will continue to ensure that the video chat platform we use is secure, password-protected, and accessible for our participants with no obstacles for them to join.

Our learnings when engaging business users to participate in UX research during COVID-19 times:

• Make sure invites are worded sensitively and mindfully: Address the concern about the user’s wellbeing as well as the appreciation of their time commitment. Honesty and empathy are core values that foster communities.
• Clients are thankful for the opportunity to stay connected: A conversation provides moments to see other humans outside of the smaller circle of social connections in the new normal. It provides the chance to interact — maybe even discussing the crisis with someone — and might help provide some sense of normality.
• In a couple of instances, we utilized common user recruiting platforms and realized that this could produce an inaccurate positive response rate. As some platforms offer lucrative incentives, we added additional screening questions to ensure finding the “right” audience and not individuals who might only be participating to get the incentive. Building some Quality Check questions into the screener that only a real user can answer could help in recruiting the relevant audience.
• Clarify that research will be conducted remotely via a secure virtual platform that is easy and commonly used. You want to avoid any possible blockers that could get prevent someone from participating.

Our best practices to execute UX research with business users during a global pandemic:

• First, when kicking off the interview, ask users how they are doing during these times and show a real intent to demonstrate that you care. How have they adjusted, how is it going with their team, etc? Thank them for carving out availability while they are juggling lots of other commitments like childcare, homeschooling, or caring for other family members.
• We’ve learned a great deal in our research sessions during the pandemic. Users could easily articulate and point to real examples where their processes or needs have been less satisfying or changed. Consequently, we were able to reprioritize our backlogs as we learned about shifted needs resulting from the current circumstances. Therefore, treat the time as a unique opportunity to gather rich insights. Shift your mindset from “research will not reflect reality” to “this is the time to understand how best to meet needs during a crisis.”

Deepen the relationship with users — send the message “We are here for you” and “We want to learn what you need most around product/service XYZ now.” While the message “We are here for you” seems widespread and perhaps over-used in all sorts of communication, advertising, and websites, showing empathy is a cornerstone of what UX research is about.

#FidelityAssociate