How is B2B UX research any different?
It’s been over two years since I shifted to an enterprise product organisation as a design researcher. With prior experience in conducting multiple research studies in the consumer realm, I was curious to learn about user centricity in the B2B space. Products in the B2B ecosystem are primarily focused on functionality, built in a manner to ensure that the desired jobs can be done. The hierarchy of introducing delightful features and additional easter eggs was unheard of.
While the methods and tools for user research as a whole remains the same, I learnt that B2B research is much more complex with multiple stakeholders and segmentations involved.
Given below are some of my key learnings as a researcher, working on the user experience of an enterprise product:
01 | Story of a decision maker, gate keeper and the end user
For most B2C solutions, there is just one set of end users. Usually, the user evaluating and deciding on a product during purchase is the same person who ends up using the product after purchase. What this implies for UX research is that, one has to analyse and understand the behaviour of this user, their needs pre and post-purchase.
On the contrary, B2B solutions involve multiple users. As mentioned by the Nielson Norman Group, multi-criteria decision making dominates B2B research. If an organisation purchases a specific product, it is not just one user profile that would be involved in the entire process. The one who is buying the product is not one who would be using it.
User roles that determine the adoption and retention of a particular service can be seen in three categories. The first is the decision maker, who comes into the picture pre-purchase. The second role is that of a gatekeeper, who acts as a bridge between the decision maker and the end user. The third role is that of end users, who use the solution hands-on. The most interesting aspect is that the background, needs and challenges of each of these three roles are very different from each other. This implies that researchers have to understand the other user roles and their challenges while interacting with the solution. A detailed end to end journey that includes the activities and contributions of all the user roles helps in accounting for all users’ requirements.
What does this mean for a researcher?
While planning research studies, ensure that all types of profiles are accounted for, based on the objective. Insights also should be communicated through the lens of these user roles.
02 | Connecting the micro-offerings for a seamless experience
Consumer based offerings are usually one stop solutions where it’s stitched into minimum touch-points possible. For example, in the case of an entertainment app, it is just one touchpoint for the customer to purchase, pay and use the app.
Enterprise solutions in general are complex with multiple micro offerings and touch-points. Every organisation has a series of products and services under it, that can be used individually or as a bundled package. Most times, each part of the solution (such as a specific tool or a platform) has a separate team of engineers, product owners, managers, researchers and designers. They work towards the improvement of this individual part and lose sight of the larger scenario of how it would be used. For an organisation purchasing a solution to achieve a specific job, they would have to switch between various tools and platforms. Hence, as a researcher in the B2B space, it is essential to zoom out of the individual experience from a specific tool/platform and understand how the collaboration between all the tools would occur. This is what accounts for ‘good user experience.’
What does this mean for a researcher?
Dig deep into how each micro offering is used by the customer and how they all come together to serve an entire use-case. This might involve cross collaboration between teams, unified research engagements and providing integrated journey flows.
03 | Business use-cases for the win
While individual user needs provide insights on a specific part of the offering, they do not solve for a large scale strategic change. This is where ‘business use-cases’ play a role. For most B2B research studies, understanding the business use-case, or in other words, ‘what the business is trying to achieve’ has been the key to solving their most crucial challenges and unmet expectations.
What does this mean for a researcher?
During interviews, begin with understanding the user’s role as well as their business challenge. This in turn becomes a filter throughout the discussion. The pain points, unmet expectations and needs have a more defined context through the lens of a business use-case. Post the interview session, synthesising the information to provide strategic roadmaps also gets simplified with an use-case based approach.
04 | Bursting the context bubble
As researchers, we are trained to understand the users’ emotional and social needs. We start with a discussion on their daily activities, hobbies and lifestyle choices. This aids in building a mental image of who the user is and what their behaviour towards the solution would be. We aim to build their persona based on their everyday choices and motivations to use a specific offering.
Contrary to this, the context of ‘decoding personal behaviours’ does not apply to all types of research topics in the B2B ecosystem. While the norm in B2C research is to understand the users outside of the immediate product context, B2B research narrows in on the requirements from their ‘work-life.’ B2B solutions are used during ‘work hours’, to complete very specific tasks. The level of proficiency with each tool mostly relates to users’ prior professional experience. While emotional and social needs of the users from their personal lives (other personal tools they use, ontologies they are familiar with) are still important, they are not the driving factors while defining user needs. Conversations are focused on the professional background of the users, their usual workflows and current barriers with respect to specific tasks at work.
What does this mean for a researcher?
Once the research goals are listed, plan the conversation using these as anchor points. Instead of the usual ice-breakers, begin the conversation with questions like ‘how does a typical day in your life look like?’ or what their work day entails. This would act as a bridge between the introduction and the specific questions.
05 | Organisation personas over user demographics
Researchers are habituated to look at users’ demographics and extract archetypes. This almost comes as an involuntary action while synthesising information from research studies. But are user personas required at every stage? Or even just the user demographics?
While user demographics and their behavioural patterns are essential, the real value also comes from understanding the customer organisation as a whole. An organisation is purchasing a specific solution. The requirements vary based on multiple factors like the size of the organisation, skills, assets, internal budgets, etc. This is where the ‘organisation personas’ come into play. They are classifications of customers based on their objectives and in-house resources.
What does this mean for a researcher?
Start with understanding customers’ immediate needs and later on expanding into their organisation structure, user roles, skillsets and resources available. Decode their motivations and barriers for using your solution to further detail the organisation persona.
06 | Every interview is an expert interview
Most of the enterprise solutions cater to user profiles who specialise in a particular skill. Hence, every interview becomes an expert interview for the researcher. The participant always has a deeper understanding of the domain, tools and terminologies used. They are usually senior professionals, with very limited time to spare for the interview.
The context of the interview would revolve around their workflows and preferences within their domain of expertise. They refer to existing solutions and short forms used. Imagine conducting an interview, trying to decode these short forms by repeatedly asking for clarifications from the participant. To avoid this and maximise the time available, a pre-read of these essential terms would help in directly diving into the research goals.
What does this mean for a researcher?
It is important to repeatedly immerse oneself into the domain context and study the common terms and solutions available. The researcher has to become an expert themselves. As the profile of the organisation differs, so does the participant/expert from that organisation. Hence, apart from familiarising oneself with domain knowledge, it is necessary to understand the background of the organisation, their existing solutions and offerings, prior to the conversation.
B2B user research is a complex web of dependencies and relationships. Decoding this to define roadmaps for a product is an exciting challenge for any researcher. The above mentioned pointers may just be the tip of this iceberg!
Further references:
- Markiyan Matsekh’s view on maximising channels for B2B research within an organisation
