Here is how I’ve done that as the first user researcher at Factual: I decided to launch a new Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey and establish a baseline customer-sentiment score. So I put together a proposal detailing the survey rationale and process and circulated it to our Product and Marketing teams. Our Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) responded enthusiastically to the idea and asked me to connect with our Head of Product Marketing and Marketing Operations Manager to discuss the content, design, and contact-list segmentation. I was excited about collaborating cross-functionally and set up a meeting with these team members.
We reviewed the design and tone of the survey to ensure that it was consistent with other client communications. Then we brainstormed ways of increasing the survey’s impact. To ensure maximal value, we decided to break out the results by geography, company type, and role. Finally, we discussed which clients to survey. Collectively, we created criteria for the respondents we wanted to survey, then our Marketing Manager pulled a list of relevant contacts. Working cross-functionally brought different perspectives to the table, and we were able to accomplish a lot more than I could have if I were working alone. My colleagues brought up things I hadn’t even considered, and they made several great suggestions on how to improve the survey. Sharing my initial plan more widely and gathering feedback and suggestions on who to consult were invaluable in improving this survey.
In addition to launching NPS, I’ve been working on collecting more product-usage data. At Factual, we use Pendo, which offers rich functionality and Salesforce integration, so we can conveniently surface our product-usage data to other teams who might not regularly log into Pendo. After setting up the technical side of the integration, I reached out to the Product and Marketing teams for feedback. What information is most useful to them? What would be valuable use cases for this integration?
We held a brainstorming session and came up with some really great ideas. The Product team let me know which data fields were most actionable, so I could focus on surfacing those in Salesforce. Plus, Marketing had great ideas about how to use the data. They suggested setting up alerts on particular fields, so if client usage dropped significantly, we would receive notifications and could proactively reach out to re-engage these clients. Marketing also suggested looking at our most active users to guide the focus of our outreach efforts. Finally, they realized that taking users’ respective titles into account when reviewing the product-usage data would help inform and validate our user personas. These were all powerful use cases, and I never would have thought of them on my own. When we all came together, our divergent knowledge and focus areas combined to generate some great ideas.
Marketing also suggested that I present our Pendo-Salesforce integration in our Sales team’s weekly meeting and get their feedback. I was still in the process of selecting which fields to push into Salesforce, so I thought this was a great idea. When I presented to the Sales team, they were very blunt about what would and would not be useful to them. This feedback was immensely helpful, and I saved lot of time and effort by not pushing certain fields to Salesforce that they would never have used.
