Connecting with customers in real time: Q&A with Devin Harold from Verizon and Nayaab Lokhandwala from Alaska Airlines

In a recent webinar, guest speakers Devin Harold, UX Research Manager at Verizon, and Nayaab Lokhandwala, UX Researcher at Alaska Airlines, sat down with us to share how they’ve been leveraging the power of customer interviews with UserTesting’s Live Conversation.

We had a great Q&A session with Devin and Nayaab and included some of our favorite questions below, or you can watch the full webinar here. Enjoy!

How do you decide when to use a moderated versus an unmoderated methodology?

[Devin] It depends on what you’re studying. Is it something that I'll really have to probe on? Is it something I really need to dive deep into because if so, then I would use Live Conversation so I can dig deeper and ask follow-up questions.

If it's something more straightforward like observing the path to purchase, for example,  that is a perfect example of an un-moderated remote study that we could run to get those insights quickly.

If it's something that's an early concept idea, that's a perfect scenario for a moderated study because you're there to guide participants through any challenges or questions.

[Nayaab] When I rely on a moderated study, it’s usually because I'm trying to learn about or research something that isn’t a completely formed concept. It’s also helpful if I have questions that I might need to dig into in more detail. I can ask more questions in a moderated study and I can basically make a study that probably would have ended in half an hour go for an hour and a half just because there is so much interesting reasoning that a participant can give you behind what they're doing and you don't want to lose that why or that essence of their thought process to either move forward or not move forward, by just having them select one option versus another like in an unmoderated study.

How have you leveraged Live Conversation to gain insights faster?

[Devin] I'm a huge proponent of getting everybody in front of customers because it builds empathy on a team level and so that way no one’s asking, "What did the customer say again? Why is this a pain point? Why is this an issue?"

By getting to insights faster, the team can regroup at the end of a research day and we can sit there and start to affinity map those things and those high-level themes that we are finding. That is incredibly powerful for being able to really dive into what we learned that day, what's working, what's not working, and where should we go from there.

[Nayaab] We were able to move so much faster because the recruiting process is so much faster and easier. Previously, we had to basically get two weeks notice before we could even begin recruiting the participants and we’d also have to hire another agency to get space and participants. Live Conversation has really helped us to move our project timeline up as well. I now know that if it’s Wednesday and I need results by Friday, that’s something we can actually make happen with Live Conversation.

Can you share any creative studies that you've conducted?

[Nayaab] There was a card sort study that we were trying to do but we also wanted participants to create their own cards. Instead of using card sorting tools we tried to use a travel board to understand all of the different things that customers think about in a certain phases of booking travel.

[Devin] It was for a new product that we were working on and in order to just get the idea in front of customers, we made a Google Slides presentation of some sketched out ideas. We put down some quotes, and some different instances to get our consumers in the mindset of, “If you were going to use something like this, what are the things that you would be concerned about? What are the things that you would be most excited about and what's your general feedback overall?” This was just getting a gut check on our early ideas and early products and services before we start investing a lot of time into creating a work stream with designers and product managers to make this thing happen and come to fruition.

Want to learn more?

You can watch the on-demand webinar here.

To learn how UserTesting can help you understand your customers through on-demand human insights, contact us here.