In this fireside chat, hosted by Kuldeep Kelkar, Senior Partner, UXReactor, Matt Zelen, Chief Customer Officer at User Testing. They discuss the intersection of user experience and customer experience, the importance of collaboration between customer success and product design, and the strengths of UX designers and user researchers. They also explore how designers and researchers can demonstrate impact and influence the broader organization, the significance of understanding business metrics, and tips for designers and researchers aspiring to become leaders.
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Full Transcript
Kuldeep Kelkar
Today we have a special guest, Matt Zelen, Chief Customer Officer at UserTesting. Welcome, Matt.
Matt Zelen
Thanks, Kuldeep. Thanks for having me here. It’s great to chat with you. Look forward to the conversation.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, good to have you. Good to have you as part of this… as a speaker for this podcast. So thank you. Tell us a little bit about your journey through the land of CX and UX. And I’m sure our listeners would be interested in hearing how you got to the place where you are right now.
Matt Zelen
Happy to. You know, oddly enough, I started out as a web developer and really kind of enjoyed the puzzle, if you will, of trying to create something and drive to an output, but had a mix of, I don’t know, creativity around, like how do you make a program run more and more efficiently? You can get it to do whatever output, but then how do you go back and actually recreate it in a more efficient way?
And then, you know, that’s kind of led into my entire career around creating something, building something, and then trying to figure out how to do it in the most efficient way. And it’s been kind of a foundational part of everything I’ve done from a leadership standpoint and working with businesses, how do we establish a great experience for our end customers, and then how do you really look at that experience and then fine tune it and deliver it in a way that scales across the company, across the enterprise, and across the globe.
And so it’s been a fun part of, you know, taking that view, I guess, if you will, in terms of how do you do this for our customers, for each company I’ve been a part of, how do you create wonderful experiences and how do you do it at scale and help the company grow?
Kuldeep Kelkar
Wow, yeah. So how was the… And so right now you are the Chief Customer Officer at UserTesting. Well, I guess, full disclaimer, I worked for Matt, I’ve known Matt for a while now because I worked at UserZoom, which is now part of UserTesting. So while I’m asking these questions, I know a little bit about Matt, but this is more for the listeners. So tell us a little bit about UserTesting and what does a Chief Customer Officer do?
Matt Zelen
UserTesting is a platform that allows companies to kind of experience what it’s like to be their end customer and go through the journey of whether it’s a digital product or even a physical environment experience that our customers are delivering to their end customers, UserTesting helps our customers connect with their customers and get feedback on the experiences they’re developing. As the Chief Customer Officer for UserTesting, I feel like it is really my voice at an executive level and within the company that represents our customers, and are we really delivering the utmost value through our experience, to our customers, for them? And so from a particular focus, you know… I focus on the success of our customers, on the support of our customers, and how we actually provide training channels for our customers to understand how to get the best out of our platform. And then I’m responsible for our book of business, the existing renewal book of business. And how do we make sure that we’re capturing that value? We’re helping our customers understand that value. And when it comes to renewal events, really manage through that renewal process and see how we can get our customers even more value out of our platform, which in turn helps our customers create better experiences for their customers and get better value out of our platform.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, well said. I mean, there is an interesting intersection of user experience, customer experience, customer success, customer support, product. There is go-to-market functions. There’s a whole lot of functions across, not just SaaS companies, but any product development, any software development, any of your customers, or essentially the entire software industry has all these different functions. And in my observation, generally, the design function or the user experience function sits within a product organization. Or the designers and researchers generally sit within either marketing or product. How do you see all of this coming together? Because at the end of the day, the end user, the customer sees what they see. They experience the product and their interaction with the company the way they see it. In your mind, how does all of this come together and at UserTesting or other companies or just in general?
Matt Zelen
You know, there’s a definite overlap. And there’s a healthy kind of balance, I think, between a product organization and a customer success organization. In that, you know, the customer success organization is really focused on the current experience the customers are getting with whatever solution a company is providing to an end customer. And so it’s always important that the customer success organization has a pulse, if you will, on things like NPS or CSAT or just feedback from the customers on what they’re experiencing with the platform and how they’re getting value out of the platform. And even some of the challenges they’re running into, getting that, capturing that value from the platform. On the product side of things, there’s naturally an interest in how existing customers are experiencing the product, and how existing customers are getting value out of the product. But it’s a really important nuanced balance for a product organization to balance the future, the vision.
What a company is trying to build for that next generation of users in the platform, the next generation of customers, the next thing that maybe the current customers don’t even realize they’re gonna heavily benefit from… the product organization has to balance that future focus with what’s relevant to today and to today’s customer base.
And so, do you overlap between the post-sale side of the organization, customer success, and the product organization is critical for the success of any company? So largely, you know, when I go back to my job as a CCO and my organization really has to understand how our customers get value out of the platform and where things are working great and where things are maybe challenged and communicate with the product organization around just that. Where can we do better today? Where are we doing great? And that feedback and open collaboration with say like a product organization or the post-sale organization, you know, helps kind of craft the company’s future vision and roadmap, if you will, around the product and what they’re creating. And so sometimes in, you know, take for example, a product organization that is evaluating a current design for a future advancement in the platform, balancing that kind of desire to really drive forward on that future design with feedback from right now about the particular feature they may be working on and the feedback from the customers on what’s working well, what’s not working well. That balance is critical. So that overlap between product and customer success, the open collaboration between what’s happening in the current world, the current customer base, the current experience, versus what we’re trying to build for the future. It’s just really important, like open collaboration. And so, you know, I think sometimes, so many organizations and so many departments get siloed where they’re just working in their own world. My side of it, like UserTesting for example, we’re Uber-focused on how customers are using the platform, what studies they’re running, what valuable insights are they sharing across the organization? What challenges are they running into when they’re trying to capture those insights and provide that feedback to the product organization? The product organization is also collaborating with us on: what do customers want to see in the future? What should we be focusing on and balancing that with kind of a futuristic vision versus what we’re seeing? And so there should be, in any company, a really strong overlap between post-sales, customer success, product, and UX design and development practice, for what’s happening today versus what we’re developing for the future.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, that is a very interesting take. I mean, Matt, as you know, I speak with a lot of designers and researchers. And I’ll honestly say that not many of them know how to interface with, interact with customer success. But they don’t always get the opportunity to do so. The world that you’re describing where everyone does not work in their silos but collaborates on bringing that customer voice into the organization… because customer success absolutely wants to do that. And here we have designers and researchers who love to interact with customers or observe customers. I mean, that is what UserTesting customers are all trying to do as well. So how do we help bridge this gap between customer success and product designers or researchers that are working within the product organization? Anything that you do or you have seen work successfully in the industry?
Matt Zelen
You know, it’s such a good question and it’s not an easy one to maybe answer. And also in practice, not an easy one to address from a company standpoint. Like there’s, there’s kind of natural tendencies for people to work in silos. And I think when, you know, a product organization is really working on a futuristic design, there is a lot of excitement, energy, motivation around that futuristic design. So that’s going to understandably consume a lot of the mindset and on what’s happening today, how are customers actually using the platform? I feel like what helps is just shared visibility into those insights. And so for example, if say like we run a usability study through UserTesting with our customer base, and feedback with our customers and insights from them, sharing those insights with the product team and getting a really genuine leaning in, if you will, talking about what is working well and what’s not working well, I think fosters a good customer centric environment. And so I also think shared perspectives are really important. So a CS organization that is getting feedback from customers on the current realm has to understand that the paradigm a product team might be looking at is from a futuristic view on what we’re trying to build towards and less around the now.
And so kind of understanding each other’s perspectives on the world and having an open dialogue around a certain piece of feedback from a customer. Oftentimes you’ll get frustration from a customer success organization. Like this needs to be fixed now. And on the product side of things, like we don’t have time in the roadmap or capacity to be able to fix this now. We’ll get it in the future. And having that kind of shared understanding of not only sharing the insights, so you really feel and hear a customer describing their experience that they’re having with a product person that’s designing potentially the next generation feature that’s tied to that, you know, that piece of feedback, I think is really important. And then understanding how you balance the motivators, drivers, kind of focus of a customer success person versus a product person is really important. I think if you don’t have that shared understanding of each other’s perspectives, it can lead to conflict.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Well said. You are in this unique position, I guess, this meta position of being the Chief Customer Officer for UserTesting that focuses on user researchers and designers and product people. So it cannot get any more meta than this. It’s a cookie within the cookie type of a situation. So since you get to see your customers and end users and designers and researchers and UXers in general, what do you think from your perspective, what are their strengths? What do designers and researchers do well or what are they good at?
Matt Zelen
Yeah, I think researchers do really well at understanding how to take multiple methods of capturing feedback and aggregating them together to valuable insights for the betterment of the organization, like really valuable insights. And I think also, researchers understand the importance of unbiased feedback, especially when you’re doing like a diary study or benchmark study or things like that. And so I think researchers have a really, really strong understanding of that aspect and can take a powerful tool where you can do multi-methods and create those valuable insights that you know are relevant, unbiased and valuable insights to an organization.
I think designers are really good at understanding what they’re trying to create in terms of a vision and an experience for end users and capturing that feedback, which impacts the overall design, like taking a piece of feedback from a customer from not just one, but maybe, you know, 10-15 different people, which could be varying aspects of insights, feedback and being able to decipher that feedback and align it with what that designer’s trying to create from an overall vision. And they’re a little bit like two different perspectives.
I think oftentimes what I see in some of our customers is a rigidity for a research team to open and share access to a platform like ours, which is pretty powerful, to do quick feedback and quick design. And at the same time, you see a lot of desire and need from designers or product managers to use a tool like ours to get just that like fast feedback, quick insights, validation of a concept validation, what they’re thinking about between the AB testing, where it’s incredibly powerful is where there is a like really shared engagement of a research team, understanding what’s happening in the industry, understanding what’s happening with competition, doing competitive benchmarking, sharing those insights with the design team and the product management team, while at the same time, the design team and the product management team are like fast forward thinking around the vision of where they’re going and getting feedback quickly on those designs. The shared understanding of both of those powerful perspectives on, you know, what’s relevant to the creation of that next customer’s experience is super important. So there, yeah, I guess maybe there’s power in each one of those roles, if you will, into what’s being created for the organization. How those two groups work together for the betterment of that future design actually… It seems to be fairly challenging for a lot of organizations to get to that point with that kind of open feedback loop and shared kind of access and insight going back and forth.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, I mean, I do hear a lot about this from the industry, just in general in the nature of questions that I get, which is the, hey, the ratio generally is where there are very few researchers and a lot of designers and a lot more engineers and a lot of product managers. And so how do we scale research? I mean, every company that I have spoken with intends to be customer centric, intends to be user centric. The execution can be quite varied. The execution maturity can be quite varied. Any thoughts around this? What can designers do to improve this? What can researchers do to help improve these situations or challenges that they might face?
Matt Zelen
You know, I think in understanding across the organization, if we really want to create a customer centric culture, is that the more insights the organization has and shares around what is being created, what is existing in the customer base, the better it’s going to be for the entire organization. And so, it’s really why we try to encourage organizations to have broad access to a platform like ours to be able to get feedback. I think there’s also… What’s helpful is just a shared understanding of the power of each one of those roles or groups. Like I mentioned, there’s gotta be a group that is doing tremendously powerful industry-related research from a UX research group. And that’s really important. At the same time, there’s gotta be a mechanism for people that are designing that next kind of vision, that next iteration of even a simple page on the website, to be able to get fast feedback and quick insights without restricting that flow. And so I think the shared understanding of the value of each person’s perspective and bringing that to the table when creating some of that next step from the vision and product management standpoint or product or I should say experience development standpoint is really important.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, well said. I mean, this brings me to essentially my next topic, which is something that I hear from a lot of researchers, research managers, even heads of user research, more so than designers. But the designers have similar questions as well. And the larger topic is influence or demonstrating impact. So almost all organizations want their researchers to be impactful. But oftentimes, researchers struggle with, hey, how do I show my impact? How do I influence? How do I make sure that I have all these learnings and I understood all of these things? How do I influence designers? How do I influence product managers? How do I get a seat at the table and present my report to the CCO, in this case you, right? If I were the researcher, what can I do to influence the wider organization?
Matt Zelen
That is a great question. I think, for any research organization, especially getting a seat at the table, just focus on being the value-add, not a restrictive voice. Keep in mind when you’re talking about the future roadmap and creating something amazing for your customers. The more you can be value-add to the conversation, which is, here’s an insight that we should think about in the next iteration of our experience. The more value it’s gonna be, I think sometimes when you come into like, this isn’t right, this isn’t right, this isn’t right, it’s very restrictive on the creative process. And when you’re talking about creating something, whether it’s from scratch or just an iteration on something existing, like that energy is impactful. So creating value-add shareable insights in that dialogue, in that discussion, you’re naturally gonna get pulled into the conversation for sure. I think for the executive level awareness, most of it… you know, what I want to know is, especially for UserTesting is, how are customers capturing the value from our platform? And getting feedback from across my organization in terms of feedback from customers on the ease of identifying the valuable insights, the ease of being able to share those insights across an organization is really important. And likewise, even feedback that some of the barriers are running into, I want to know at a 30,000 foot view, I want to see those snippets. So if a UX research organization or a design organization isn’t sharing those insights broadly, and more importantly, like sharing the video snippets, it won’t have as much of an impact. It’s something to see, you know, it’s one thing to see on a slide, a number or an NPS score or a CSAT score. It’s another thing to see that number and then show a clip right next to it that explains exactly why that number is the way it is. An executive will have that aha moment that shares and realizes the value that UX researcher or designer had in creating that aha moment, right? And it’s impactful for the organization for sure. I think, you know, the other thing that… when it comes to the value of say, like a research or even a design team or whatnot, it’s sometimes hard to quantify ROI from a research standpoint. It’s a little bit easier to keep track of and revisit some of the most valuable insights that have been brought to life over the last year. So if a research team or design team isn’t keeping track in some sort of database, like here are the biggest insights that we have over the last year, it limits the ability at the end of the year to kind of summarize that for whoever they want to showcase. And I think that’s really important. Like spend a moment every week showcasing what a highlight is that you captured that week and share it. And the more you share it every week and the more you create this kind of repository of insights that can then be summarized at the end of the year, it may not be a quantifiable dollar ROI at the end of the year. But when you create that “Summary 2023” or now we’re in 2024, that “Summary 2024” collection of insights, there is massive value in revisiting those aha moments throughout the year that just contribute to like, we need to do more of this going forward. And so that I think is super important for some of the UX researchers in your audience. Like you can get into the habit of not just sharing those insights, but capturing them throughout the year so that when it comes to the end of year, just put the highlight reel together and run it. And it’s a reiteration of the value that was brought up throughout the year.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Well said, Matt. I mean, I was vigorously trying to take some notes here because there were so many nuggets of insights packed in. And by the way, I just released an article called 5V framework, the 5Vs of research, velocity, value, and so on and so forth, and several metrics that can be captured across not just impact, because impact is sometimes hard to prove. But engagement metrics are equally important, and so are the effort metrics. There’s always effort that can be captured. There is engagement of the organization and certainly the outcome, the outcome being the insights or packaging them differently and sharing.
Matt Zelen
And on that note, the velocity one is awesome. When we talk about scaling insights across the organization, allowing the rest of the organization to get fast insights right away, that velocity is highly impactful. So I love the fact that that’s one of your five Vs. I think the other value on that oftentimes we take for granted is the whole rework and mitigation of rework. And if a group is not capturing where an insight has led to a redesign, which mitigated any rework. If that original design would have gone through development and then released, hugely valuable. So on top of the kind of the annual highlight reel,
Keeping track of where those insights have actually saved the organization a ton of time and a ton of effort and a ton of capacity on developing something that ultimately would not have met the experience that they wanted to deliver to their end customers is super important.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, love it. And a somewhat related question, which I also often hear from the community. And I am sure they would love to hear your perspective, because you live in the business world, you interact with investors, you interact with the board, you interact with the executive team. And I’m sure you look at lots of dashboards and KPIs and ARR and GRR and NRR and more acronyms than I can say on this call. But designers and researchers, A, either don’t always get access to that type of data, or B, don’t often understand it and don’t know where to begin. So a two-part question. Do you think designers and researchers should, A, understand the business language? And if so, assuming the answer is yes, how do they get started? What type of metrics should they really focus on? What really matters to the business at a very high level?
Matt Zelen
Yeah. You know, I think, um, so yes. And, yes, every researcher, every designer, every product manager should understand the fundamental business metrics. And really I think everyone across an organization should understand fundamentally business metrics for sure. You know, even in my support organization, understanding the velocity and call volumes, the capacity, the impact of the overall bottom line for customers, hugely important. So I wouldn’t restrict it just to UX researchers and designers. But yes, I think a firm understanding of overall business metrics will be hugely valuable because with that kind of understanding and then keeping a pulse on the performance of the organization and quite frankly, the top line ARR growth or revenue growth is kind of, cash is king, right? So understanding how the company is performing from an overall growth standpoint, hugely important. And the other one is just the cost relative to capturing that revenue. So how much does an organization spend to create the revenue they’re making? And I think when, you know, when it comes to an executive trying to run an organization, it’s all about maximizing the revenue you can create for the company and minimizing the cost without impacting the value of the experience we’re delivering to our customers. And so if you’re a UX researcher or designer or whatnot, understanding those fundamental kind of view to the business and where your company is at is really important because then you can understand, for a UX researcher, if you capture something that is impactful to the value customers are getting out of a given experience then you can articulate that in a way that impacts ARR that a c-suite executive will understand like, oh if we improve this piece customers will get X amount of more value out of the plan, that leads to better retention rates, that leads to stronger expansion and growth rates. And so being able to kind of articulate how impactful an insight is to the overall business would be incredibly impactful. So yeah, I would encourage everybody in the UX research world and designers to just understand the fundamentals of business metrics. And to those two top ones, revenue growth, typically recurring revenue growth, and then costs associated with delivering against that growth is important. And then the overall margin of the business kind of blends through itself if you have those two numbers.
Kuldeep Kelkar
One more related question given that UXers don’t always get to hear as much from executives like you which is fundamentally what you described is very easy the top line things that increase value for the business and makes more money, so make more money, spend less and that’s essentially the bottom line. Fundamentally it’s not that hard to understand, we tend to make it complicated but it’s not really that. But in general, designers and researchers are not always familiar with these concepts. And then they’re not always familiar with how to ask for budgets or how to ask for investments or what is a financial cycle or how does the budgeting work. And so any tips and tricks for the design and research community on asking for more budgets or investments?
Matt Zelen
Yeah, I think the net of it is, don’t be afraid to ask. I mean, it’s really hard to ask for more money, but that is a fundamental piece of advice that I got early on in my career. And it is surprising how many people don’t take that. Like, what can it hurt to ask? You’re gonna get a no, that’s fine. But whether it’s a UX researcher asking their boss or the department lead or whatnot, like just ask about the business metrics. What are we really interested in? That’s just going to help that UX researcher understand what’s relevant to the senior leadership within the organization. And then go back into how, say, a competitive landscape or competitive benchmark testing leads to more insights that are relative to how the company is doing. And so it never hurts just to ask. And I think sometimes this goes back to… it’s really hard to quantify sometimes the ROI of a given piece of research, like a benchmark study. But again, being able to say like, oh, this benchmark study showed where we stand relative to our competition, and then be able to foster that insight as part of a conversation to how are we actually doing as a business? How are we doing against our competition? I guarantee you the executives know what the win rate is and open leads, what the winning rate is against competition, even for me, from a renewal stamp, I know whether or not we’re doing well against competition or not, or if there’s competition in certain areas. And so if I’m having a conversation with a UX researcher and that person has done competitive benchmarking, we can have a great conversation around what competitors are coming up in that benchmark study and where are we relative to those competitors, which I know in the back of my mind how the retention rate is, how the contractible renewal rate is against competitors and things like that. So the short answer is yes, just ask. And I think, being curious and asking more questions around what’s going on in business and what’s relevant, what are the important metrics, will lead to a stronger insight over time.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, I call it “ask and say no or receiving a no” is the same as not asking. Both conditions are the same. If you ask and you get a no and you don’t ask, you are pretty much in the same place. You might as well ask and receive a no. And who knows, sometimes the answer might be yes, yes but and X, Y, and Z and that executive might articulate their need
Matt Zelen
Yeah, and even if the answer is no, you’re still way ahead by asking the question. Because it gives whoever you’re asking a heads up that it’s in the back of your mind and you’re thinking about it. And that’s hugely valuable. I would hope that whoever somebody asks doesn’t give a flat no. It’s a no and here’s why. And so asking the question, even if it is a no, theoretically, you should be well ahead of the game because you’re going to understand why as opposed to just assuming it’s a no. And I think that’s also really important.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, well said. I mean, Matt, we can certainly talk for hours, but let me ask my last question, which is… as designers, researchers, who become managers, directors, leaders within their organization, or there are many who want to become leaders within their organization… any high-level recommendations for them as they are progressing in their career?
Matt Zelen
Yeah. I think, you know, everybody thinks that sales reps are the only people that sell with an organization. It’s not true. Like everyone sells. And I think to move up in an organization, it’s really important you have and learn a skill set of influence and be able to convey your own ideas and your own message in a way that influences others. It may not influence to a yes, but it may influence awareness of what your perspective is. And I think that’s a really important skill to have as somebody moves up into leadership. Because oftentimes when you move up into leadership, you kind of get out of what originally got you into that role. Like I’m no longer a web developer. I sometimes miss solving those equations and problems, right? But I really enjoy leading an organization and solving broader problems in that way. It’s still kind of the same puzzle and I’m still figuring out how to solve it. I’m still figuring out how to solve it in a more effective way. But I’ve learned a little bit more throughout my career, how to be more of an influencer than I was early on. And I think that’s really important.
Anybody that wants to move up in an organization, practice influence through storytelling, through insights, through guidance, through being curious. It’s not only sales reps that need to learn how to sell and influence others.
It’s really important that anybody that wants to move up in the organization kind of foster those skills along the way too.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you to the listeners for listening in. It was a great session with Matt Zelen, CCO, Chief Customer Officer of UserTesting. Thank you listeners for tuning in. Like, share, and comment. Add comments to the social media network. And thank you, Matt Zelen.
Matt Zelen
Thanks Kuldeep, always great chatting with you. This was wonderful, so hope to see you soon.
Kuldeep Kelkar
Well, thank you.
