Self-Serve Research - Weekly User Chats Program: A Democratized Research Case Study
TL;DR
Built and managed the User Chats program (Voice of the Customer) with a dedicated research panel of 200 users; increased program participation as mentor to all client-facing roles from 40% to 80%.
Wattpad is a storytelling platform connecting readers and writers with 94M global users. Like all apps, it’s important for the company’s staff to be connected to the users of the products they make. We call this empathy in UX (user experience) research. Weekly User Chats, the program I built, ensures an empathetic relation for client-facing staff. Regular interaction with customers enables us to build products that serve important functions in people’s lives.
One of my recent blog posts offers a retrospective analysis of this program 👈
Role
Research Program Manager (as UXR Operations Manager @ Wattpad)
Duration
Built in 4 weeks, iterations over 2 years
Methods
Task Analysis, User Interviews, Heuristic Evaluation, Surveys, Journey Mapping, Prototype Feedback & Testing
Tools
UserInterviews, Airtable, Calendly, Slack, Figma, Confluence, Google Docs, Polly.ai, Miro, Zoom
Reach
25+ active staff, with 70+ user-facing staff consuming passive insights on Slack channel
Situation: The Problem
Sure, everyone who works for an app company knows how to use it. But we shouldn’t assume we’re all power-users (the most elite, avid customers). What’s more, we as the product builders, are biased. So it’s important to have regular contact with the users we serve because it helps us do our jobs better, create stronger products, and solve our users problems.
How do we regularly connect with our users? With a Voice of the Customer program I call “Weekly User Chats.”
Figure 1. Weekly User Chats - How To Manual
Task: What Answers Do We Need?
I inherited a haphazard program (no one’s fault; common with no dedicated Operations person in place). I was urgently tasked not with a renovation but a full tear-down and reconstruct. By briefly talking to a handful of key people, I noticed that everyone was frustrated by the do-it-yourself nature: expired how-to docs, interviewee no-shows that cause unnecessary disruption to our staff’s workday, and stilted conversations that left us nowhere closer to our users.
Action: How I Solved The Problems
- Evaluation and Optimization of Tools: Review current tools & methods for these chats: Are the right tools used? Do our current methods enable scalable, efficient, ethical, and impactful conversations with our users?
Google Meet had previously been used. On the participants side, many struggled with access or reliability; on the staff side, there were privacy issues (since individual staff email accounts were associated with the private link). Zoom for Wattpad Research was established, allowing a single, reusable link between staff. And participants felt more confident with the consistent branding presented with Zoom (ie: I had a standard background with Wattpad’s logo for every call, regardless of which staff members were present).
Figure 2. Linked prompts in How To Manual guide for initial set up, attending, and post chat
Figure 3. Five steps to setting up calendar syncing
- Streamline onboarding: A clear tutorial that took less than 15 minutes, once, and done (Figure 2)!
Included step-by-step numbered instructions, images, video, and personal assistance when troubleshooting is necessary (Figure 3 & 4).
Figure 4. Four steps to finding and attending your sessions
- Implement automation: It costs less to pay our users though our participant management tool, than for the labor time to manually do it.
Bonus: participants are paid sooner, making them happier, and more likely to show up again!
- Evaluation & Optimization of Guides: Review, amalgamate, edit, and write new processes, guides, and templates.
Designed a linked 4-Guide system:
Figure 5. Weekly User Chats - Access Instructions, with links to How-To Manual, Interview Guide, and FAQ
- How-To Manual
- Interview Guide
- Access Instructions
- FAQ
Figure 6. Weekly User Chats - FAQ heading
Figure 7. Weekly User Chats - FAQ table of contents links: Your Participation, Time Slots, Purpose & Value, Process & Proceedure
Figure 8. Weekly User Chats - FAQ table of contents links: User Circumstances, PR Messaging or Marketing Talking Points
This new system facilitates the ability to access all docs simultaneously, and was embedded in every staff-side Weekly User Chat calendar link and pinned in the corresponding Slack channel, for ease.
Figure 9. Weekly User Chats - Interview Guide table of contents: Goals, Instructions, Introduction Script, Interviewing Approaches & Questions, Segues & Polite Interruptions, Closing Script, Post-Chat
Additionally, I included more nuanced methods in the Interview Guide (Figure 9), like Continuous Interviewing Techniques (for the more advanced) and Approaches to Answering Proprietary Questions (for the anxious) (Figure 9).
Figure 10. Post-Chat instructions, with prompt to post insights to #weekly-user-chats Slack channel
Result: Metrics Unlocked
-
Decreased no-show rate by 75% with personalized and automated reminders; created and managed a dedicated participant pool of 200 users (with access to thousands more for continued growth).
-
Increased program participation as mentor to all client-facing staff from 40% to 80%.
-
Tripled insights sharing activity on #weekly-user-chats Slack channel.
-
Built trust cross-functionally in the value of qualitative research, enabling stronger partnerships between UX (Design & Research) and Product.
Next Time: Scaling Considerations
Getting lost in the iteration sauce can be a problem. Sure, things can always be improved, but at some point, it’s functionally and pleasingly good enough. Because the Weekly User Chats program felt like my bebe, I tinkered distractidly too much. I’d set quarterly or biannual review parameters to rein in the too frequent tweaks.