Led a customer empathy initiative for interdisciplinary team of 35 people, together synthesized 20+ in-context QuickBooks Enterprise customer interviews to identify patterns and generate ideas.
Background
With a mix of people who have been working at Intuit 10+ years and others who started only months ago, the 35-person Enterprise team comprised of engineers, product managers, marketers, designers, and writers needed to connect to customers to develop the new product vision.
Goals
1. Get the team comfortable with leading and attending Follow Me Homes (customer site visits)
2. Empathize with customers and think about them as we develop the product
3. Get answers to questions related to six different strategic topics
4. Generate ideas that will inform the product roadmap
Approach
Trained team on customer interviewing techniques
Many of the people on the team had no prior experience speaking with customers and were excited to learn interviewing best practices. You can view my entire presentation on Slideshare.
Slides from my kick-off customer interview training.
Co-facilitated large group synthesis workshop
After a brief intro, we broke out into our six different research groups to tell stories and identify patterns and insights. Later we all gathered to share out and reflect on our experience together.
After a brief intro, we broke out into our six different research groups to tell stories and identify patterns and insights. Later we all gathered to share out and reflect on our experience together.
Interdisciplinary team came together to synthesize customer interviews.
Translated insights into a vision
I facilitated a follow-up synthesis session with the five other group leads to distill insights from all the wonderful post-its and drawings shared during the big team workshop. We communicated insights and prioritized initiatives for the coming year to broader team.
Debriefed with group leads to narrow on research insights.
Created a mandate to keep customers at the center of what we do
Core teams (Product Management, Design, Engineering, and Marketing folks) working on initiatives are responsible for maintaining customer-centric culture.
• On-going product development – Regularly speak to customers at key stages of projects, including when we are developing use-cases and validating solutions.
• Onboarding process – New team members are required to go to at least 3 Follow Me Homes their first month
• Quarterly one-day offsite – Visit customers in morning, synthesize as group and then debrief as a whole team
New projects based on research insights
In 2015, Intuit changed how it sold QuickBooks Enterprise. Rather selling premium features such as Advanced Reporting à la carte, Intuit began to sell a yearly subscription that includes these features.
We learned in our research that subscribers aren’t aware of what’s included in their subscription. Also, a higher subscription cost may mean that customers now have higher expectations and are more critical than in the past.
Subscription Experience
To ensure high retention, I created a proposal for how we might help subscribers realize their subscription’s full value. See early provocations below:
Early provocations to improve QuickBooks Enterprise's subscription experience to retain existing customers.
User Roles and Permissions
Based on significant customer feedback, we also wanted to improve the software's user roles and permissions.
Previously, permissions did not allow restriction of specific data that appears on forms.
The new design that I created enables common use cases:
1. Sales Reps can only see their customers
2. Payroll clerks can run payroll for all employees except company officers
This design would help small business owners protect their sensitive data in QuickBooks without preventing their employees from having the rights needed to do their job. It would also make users more productive by just displaying the data relevant to them.
See an early prototype: https://invis.io/V66O77NES
Outcome
The initiative succeeded in its goal of getting people more comfortable speaking with customers, and keeping customer needs and mental models top of mind as we develop the product. The company had a re-org soon after we did this, so resourcing for larger projects including improved subscription experience and user roles and permissions was put on hold.
