CX Research Across Borders
Key Benefits & What to Consider for Success
What do a pigeon-infested attic, suspicious customs officials, and a city-wide power outage have in common? Each of these was an unexpected complication, which our team faced while conducting international customer experience research last year. Customer research may not get any easier when you take your efforts abroad, but the rich rewards more than justify the effort. The insights gained from testing internationally can revolutionize product development and dramatically reduce the risk of expensive missteps.
However, conducting CX research internationally isn’t a one-size-fits-all recommendation. The logistical considerations of testing far from home mean a greater investment of time and money, which must be weighed against the value brought to the specific business case. To help you decide if your research strategy could benefit from an international approach, we’ve collected some key benefits and lessons learned from our multi-national testing efforts in 2019.
Entering New Foreign Markets
When hair-care giant Clairol brought the “Mist Stick,” its popular, vapor-powered curling tool, to Germany, shoppers wanted nothing to do with it. The Clairol team was sadly unaware that “Mist” means crap in German. Globalization fails like this become business legends not only because they’re hilarious but also because there’s an important lesson to be learned. We’d all be wise to remember these cautionary tales when expanding to foreign markets. Approaching a new culture demands a reexamination of the customer experience at every level.
For the CX researcher, localization goes way beyond translations and branding. A holistic look at customer experience charts user journeys and identifies what problems, concerns, needs, and desires are unique to the people in a new place.
Approaching a new culture demands a reexamination of the customer experience at every level.
Customer experience research, including ethnographic studies taking place in the homes or workplaces of real users, illuminates obstacles early. This, in turn, will inform further product development and help stakeholders know the right time to go to market. By conducting well-designed research with prospective foreign customers, brands can dramatically shrink the risks associated with expansion abroad.
Improving an International Product
Whether an industry leader protecting market domination or a start-up hoping to grab market share, brands must constantly seek to improve the customer experience and user experience of existing products. When proposed product changes affect an international audience, it would be a mistake to assume this will impact customers in different countries in the same way. Due to the unique external factors of each place, what feels like a CX improvement to one national market could be problematic for your customers abroad.
It’s not easy to rebuild trust with your customers if you inadvertently “improve” a product they love into obsolescence.
To those tempted to cut corners by testing and evaluating changes in only one of your international markets, consider the value of your brand equity, market reach, and customer loyalty. It’s not easy to rebuild trust with your customers if you inadvertently “improve” a product they love into obsolescence. Being sensitive to these differences by holding parallel CX and UX testings for international audiences will protect your brand from negative customer experiences, deepen your understanding of these customers, and perhaps even unlock new ideas for innovation.
Learning from the Best
Checking out the competition is a business development fundamental that all marketing and strategic management teams will undertake to some degree. It’s also important in product development, UX, and CX design to benchmark the competition early on, in order to understand the conventions and best practices for a market and to track how your product progresses over time.
When you undertake a benchmarking study, one of the first questions you’ll ask is which competitors to examine. It’s worth considering that the most inspiring examples of product design, service design, or customer experience for a given offering may not be operating in your neighborhood or even your country. When a world leader in your product or service category is doing business abroad, international testing can be a CX game-changer. Seeing how customers interact with these power players’ offerings can be inspiring and formative for your product development.
In the case of benchmarking, a good candidate for international customer research should reflect the world standard for excellence with respect to a meaningful metric in your product category. To reap the most benefit, consider researching competitors with large market share and budgets since their customer experiences are likely informed by extensive research of their own. For example, if you’re hoping to improve your customer loyalty, you might seek a research subject based on the highest Net Promoter Score of major players in a large foreign market.
Lessons Learned
In this team’s experience, going abroad always brings along new and unexpected challenges. Even if a few surprises are unavoidable, the right preparation will reduce the number of difficulties you encounter and minimize their impact on your work. To help you along to way, here are some best practices and tips.
Draft a Dream Team
Working with experienced researchers makes all the difference. With a well-designed research plan, you’re sure to address the questions at hand in an informed, meaningful, and actionable way. This includes creating the right testing atmosphere, understanding the testing context, avoiding leading questions, considering bias, and testing for a single variable among other things.
Beyond your core research team, you might enlist help from professionals on location. If your team lacks fluency in the local language, you’ll need translation support. If you’ll be conducting UX research for digital touchpoints, you may also require the use of a local testing space to ensure a professional context for hosting research. In both cases, look for professionals with business references and experience in research scenarios.
Seek Snags Proactively
Once you’ve traveled to a foreign testing location, the clock is ticking. Avoid using your precious research time to settle snafus by questioning every aspect of your plan. Researching unknowns ahead of time supports testing success.
The well-known PESTLE analysis can be a useful framework for researching your testing destination and organizing findings. Here are some examples of topics to get you thinking:
- Political- Is the current political situation stable? What effect might the upcoming election have on research participants’ attitudes and availability? Is there a transportation strike planned?
- Economic — Is this area experiencing high unemployment or an economic downturn? How can we ensure our study participants are economically representative of the target market?
- Socio-Cultural — What role does the product play in social relationships? Which cultural expectations relate to this product and how can we be culturally sensitive? What ethical questions will we be confronting? This is especially important for ethnographic studies.
- Technological — Is our product compatible with mobile phones and computers which are in common use in this area? Will a service technician be required for an installation scenario and what are their requirements?
- Legal- What steps will be required to do business in this country and what documentation will I be expected to provide at the border? How will customs screenings affect shipping time and reliability?
- Environmental- Will the extreme summer temperatures affect the reliability of the power grid? Is this area subject to hurricanes or typhoons?
Always Have a Plan B
Book more study participants than you think you’ll need because some will cancel or miss a testing day. Know how you’ll get around your testing city, and have a backup plan. You’ve made your technology packing list and checked it twice. Now ask yourself how you’ll replace any of these items abroad in case of a malfunction. Research nearby electronics stores that stock what you might need. Look into an alternate testing location and translator open to short-term bookings. For anything else that might arise, consider booking a buffer day in the testing location.
Even after your planning and location research, unexpected things will come up. The ability to adapt to changing conditions is a crucial skill set for any effective research team. When confronted with the unexpected, keep your cool and improvise to make the most of the opportunity.
It’s true. Successful customer inquiry across borders entails quite a bit of preparation, but the return on investment is rich. With an international research approach, you can build products that never feel foreign to your international customers, protect your brand’s hard-earned reputation, and find the inspiration to compete with world-class players. We hope you’re inspired by these benefits and wish you much success in your research abroad.
If you have questions about international customer research, if you’re seeking support, or if you´re interested in working with us – we’d love to hear from you. → hello@cognitivelaboratories.com
The expert team behind Cognitive Laboratories is Mark Drexler, Alessa Kunert, Dr. Florian Sametinger, Sarah Lee Shepard, Chelsea Vandish, & Sara Ziskovic. Thanks to the team for sharing your research experiences for this article.
