User Research Starts at Home

How much time did you spend on the design for your company website? How about your logo? And your products or services? My guess is you spent a lot of time on these items, maybe even hired specialists outside your organization to make sure you got it right.

How much time did you spend designing your company?

Companies are rarely intentionally designed. As a company grows, operational boundaries and hierarchal structures develop on their own. Sales splits from marketing. Support grows apart from engineering. Leadership becomes removed from…everything. Accounting, shipping, manufacturing. They all grow into distinct and separated groups.

These structures and hierarchies develop to create efficiencies for the company. They are not deliberately and intentionally design to maximize effectiveness for the customer.

Your customers expect a seamless, consistent and unified experience throughout every interaction. They don’t care about your internal boundaries. 

Try this:

Order your own products. Call tech support. Ask for information from a social media account. Go through your own sales process.

Can your company answer a tech support question that is asked on Twitter? Can your Pacific-North sales person work with a customer from the Rocky Mountain region? Are there awkward handoffs and unnecessary steps?

Getting the customer experience right starts with getting the company right. That means intentionally designing a company structure that supports your customers needs.