4 Tips to Help Your Ethnographic Studies Fuel UX and Build Customer Rapport
Ethnographic studies have long been a foundation of UX programs. At RingCentral, when we engage with customers, we not only look to observe how they work, but we see it as a sincere opportunity to connect and build rapport with them. One of the best things about RingCentral is that we have all kinds of customers, from entrepreneurs who own restaurants to enterprise hospitality companies. We are in the business of communications — cloud phone, video conferencing, team messaging, and how to best optimize customer call centers. We have a wide variety of businesses that rely on RingCentral to connect with their customers.
RingCentral’s diversity of customers means we need to pay close attention to our customer needs. That’s where ethnographic studies come into our strategy. These studies help us innovate and scale personas with the customers’ needs in mind.
Here are lessons from my first ethnographic study at a mechanical engineering firm.
1. Understanding your customers’ culture and environment
Before you set foot on a customer’s campus, make sure you educate yourself about their business. Who would we be studying? What solution have they deployed? This might require a call with your customer champion to understand who you can observe and their roles. This will also help your colleagues understand the value of conducting the study.
Recently, we had a local ethnographic study that was exciting, because the company we studied works with some of the biggest global brands. We could see the immediate impact on how they served their customers through their contact center solution. They built strong teams and harnessed our team-collaboration product to be efficient and to quickly find the root of the problem.
2. Including other perspectives
Once I have an understanding who I can observe, I will connect with our product owners to join us. This time, I asked our integration and contact center product teams to join us, because this customer ran integrations and contact center. Additionally, it was also helpful for our teams to cross-collaborate on how our colleagues gather insights and how they apply it to their practice.
For example, an interaction designer may focus more on workflow, and friction points, versus a product management owner, who may ask for the specific pain points, and business problems, then observe a workflow to try to solve a problem.
3. Share out the feedback internally
As I’ve had a long career in start-ups with great leadership, the real impact for me is sharing customer data beyond my team. It’s always best to share one or two slides that other teams can relate to, so they can see how the data will benefit their product. Often, I will reformat research findings to share with product owners, in order to highlight what is most important to them and their business.
It takes time, but I’ve found many of our business leaders want access to our research, so they can apply customer empathy to their initiatives.
Here’s some components that are best to share and have been found useful:
1. What is ethnographic research?
2. Executive summary
3. Brief summary of the customer leader of the group and their feedback
4. A few feedback questions that the customer gave to us (share solutions with the customer)
5. High-level survey findings they may find useful
6. Share design research, e.g. Workflows, prototypes, etc.
7. Customer persona workflows
4. Follow up and share with the customer!
Given today’s fast-paced work culture, it’s more important than ever that you circle back with your customers. By sharing the outcomes and insights with customers, you are organically building rapport with them. It means so much more in an era of virtual communication to hear a human voice.
Typically, I will set up a 30-minute call to discuss the findings, and do the same for internal stakeholders.
I provide them with:
1. Structure of the study
2. Executive summaries
3. Lessons in bullets, with examples
4. Collaboration Workflows
Post call, I have known customers to take the data and apply it to how they spend in IT. Customers appreciate the time and effort you put into making sure this data is not just about them but works for them.
Taking the time to invite other teams within your organization to join your ethnographic study, and then following up with your customers to share your findings is key to building credibility and showing the value of ethnographic studies. Spending that extra 90 minutes can yield you deeper comradery and trust with your customers and colleagues.
