Building a User Research Panel

At Introhive users were insulated behind political walls. Walls built because of broken trust and the belief the buyer persona was the only one that mattered.

Problem Summary

When I arrived at Introhive at the beginning of 2021, the organization was convinced they had the right solutions for their users. Within my first 30 days, I connected with as many key stakeholders as I could to ask “what problems are we solving and how do we know these are real problems?”.

It became evident they had a clear view of the buyer persona. That buyer had specific needs. We built software to fix those buyer persona’s problems. However, when you begin to scale and reach new customers with differing needs you realize you have been a custom development shop for large-scale customers.

We needed to get closer to our users BUT gaining access to them in B2B is hard for many reasons. At Introhive specifically, we were cut off by Customer Success.

How did we break down the walls that have been erected and gain access to our user base? Through partnerships!

Partnerships

Also through stakeholder interviews, I was able to identify siloed groups, broken trust, and a culture built on sales leadership dictating the product direction. The company lacked true product and design leadership that could advocate for the users.

Customer Success

They felt out of the loop. They felt they had valuable insights to share but nobody was willing to listen. This group also felt they owned the users and communicating with “their” users was not something they felt comfortable with.

I gave them transparency, set up calls with key team members, and built videos to communicate what we were up to. I brought their group into usability testing sessions to show how we observe, I pulled them in close and involved them in our process.

Product Marketing

They felt the true partnership between the product organization was missing. They felt they were an afterthought, making it challenging to deliver impactful messaging. The other challenge they faced was getting something worthy of actual marketing. They felt, we needed more user access but had never been able to unlock it.

Together we tag-teamed the narrative around our users and why they need to be involved at the core of what we do. We meet regularly to share our work and how we can help each other along. We share our roadmaps, our wants, our needs, and our dreams. We opened the door wide, and insisted they pull up a chair, ask questions, and share feedback.

Leadership

They felt they had all the answers but could not understand why we are “not hitting the sales mark” or “delighting our customers like we used to”. “We built these products with our biggest customers as partners. We have the vision”. All the above is true, they had a vision, a good one for buyers. But what they had never done was get down to the user level to validate.

This one was tricky, we needed to operate behind the scenes until we had examples to share. Once we had a few success stories (usability testing or early-stage discovery), it opened their eyes to what research can do for the organization.

You don’t get to come in, elbows up, and win. You have to practice partnership, build trust and prove design works.

Wins from building partnerships

  • Built a UsersResearch program with approval from Leadership and Customer Success.

  • We hired our first user researcher.

  • The customer success team feelt energized to be a part of the process they had been locked out of for so long.

  • Customer success is now pulling us into larger customer sessions to be a design voice in the room.

  • Customers are loving this newfound connection with the people doing the work.

  • Within six months, our mighty UR team of one delivered on six major, actionable research initiatives with a backlog.

  • Leadership is quicker to approve budgets and has given us space to do our work.

  • Product Marketing is the first in the room when we want to talk. They are eager to support us and help in any way possible.

  • We have kicked off serval cross-functional projects.

Summary

Stepping into an organization that has operated a certain way for 10 years requires tact, trust, and being pragmatic. It’s more about building a relationship than convincing people to do it your way.

You don’t get to come in, elbows up, and win. Practice partnership and prove that design works - that’s how we got some big wins for our users.