Exploratory Research
User Interviews for Act! CRM
Exploring a New Audience Segment
Act! is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and automation tool with over 800,000 registered users. At the time of our research study, the company primarily focused on small business owners who sold products rather than services, and the age of their average user skewed above 40 years old.
As they continued to scale the business, stakeholders wanted to generate new audience segments that would be within their target market based on their user needs.
A new cloud-based product was being developed to target a younger demographic (ages 25-40) of business owners who sell services (rather than products).
More information was needed about how these individuals found customers, converted leads and conducted business.
Objective
Collaboratively with a team of three other UX researchers, I set out to understand how small business owners who provide services (vs. products) manage their current and prospective customer relationships.
Process
We designed an exploratory research project consisting of qualitative data collection.
Following meeting with stakeholders to understand their challenge, we conducted a literature review primarily focused on existing research on CRMs and recent research (within last 10 years) on young entrepreneurs.
Weekly meetings with our main stakeholder were immensely valuable for both parties, allowing our team to receive feedback and our stakeholder to receive status updates on our research.
Along with weekly meetings, we gave a presentation to all stakeholders halfway through the project which allowed us to “pulse check” whether our work was answering stakeholders’ questions. This presentation also allowed us to identify gaps in our interviewing process and we then further adjusted our questions to collect more comprehensive data.
Because of the qualitative nature of our data, for this project we relied heavily on visual organization and mapping vs. statistics and numbers.
Methodology
We recruited 13 participants by using a combination of word of mouth and recruiting entrepreneurs through LinkedIn.
Two of our teammates sat in on each 1-hour Zoom interview. One person facilitated the interview using a discussion guide we had created and the second person observed and took detailed notes to refer back to during our theme analysis.
Interviews were scheduled over a period of 2-3 weeks, and we began analyzing data for each one as soon as it was complete. By implementing a grounded theory approach, we were able to ask more relevant questions to our users that in turn helped lead us to more robust insights.
In addition to asking open-ended questions during the interview, we also asked participants to perform a card sorting exercise to talk us through the tools they use during a typical day to gather leads, manage customer interactions, and sustain relationships.
Spectrum Mapping
In addition to affinity mapping to code themes present throughout our interviews, we created several spectrum maps which allowed us to view a more nuanced illustration of what our participants’ attitudes and user needs were.
Stakeholders loved the spectrum map because it allowed key points that were digestible at-a-glance, and made it easier to see where their users overlapped vs. where they had diverse and sometimes competing needs.
Findings
Time Management
The entrepreneurs we interviewed wanted to spend more time helping solve clients’ problems, and less time figuring out a clunky CRM with a big learning curve.
They needed to prioritize their time doing: content creation for events and social media, and did most of their client outreach through social media as well.
Nearly every participant interviewed stated that if they were to pay for a CRM, the tool needed to be easily learned, affordable, and uncomplicated.
Heavy Reliance on Their Phone
All except for one participant we spoke with saw their smartphone as their primary tool for conducting business. Though we interviewed business owners from across a wide array of industries, we kept hearing a common thread that phones were used as portable offices, especially for entrepreneurs whose work necessitated traveling to locations, such as an arborist who needed to see clients on-site to do estimates for tree removal.
This was a major insight for our team and our stakeholders because at the time, Act! only had a desktop version of their software. No responsive mobile design was present, and their mobile app was in its nascent stages.
Word of Mouth as Main Source of Referrals and Overall Revenue
100% of our participants cited word of mouth as their main source of customers
At least 5 of 13 participants did NO advertising and rely entirely on word of mouth for business
Several participants also mentioned they see their word of mouth referrals as a measure of their success
Willingness to Pivot is Crucial to Success
Our target research group was young entrepreneurs, ages 25-40. Many were entering growth phases with their businesses or trying to scale rapidly. As a result, they often needed to develop new processes and workflows to meet their changing needs. And, they needed a CRM that was flexible enough to make these changes with them, while still being in a price bracket which they could afford.
Creating Actionable Next Steps Informed by User Feedback
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The language used throughout the Act! software did not align with the vocabulary of the target audience they were courting.
Updating the terms to use more plain language would align with UX best practices and allow them to more immediately connect with prospective users vetting the product to determine, "will this work for me?"
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Most small business owners we spoke with used social media messaging and posts as a primary way of interacting with their customer base -- both existing and future customers.
We recommended that Act add a seamless integration between the CRM and several social media apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp to provide value for their target user base.
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At the time of our study, Act! had begun creating a mobile app, but it was not used by many customers and had received some negative feedback.
Based on users' heavy reliance on their phones, we strongly recommended creating a mobile-friendly interface for people to conduct their business through.
Meeting users where they're at by creating a mobile-friendly UI is a lot more realistic than expecting users to adopt a new desktop device that they aren't using on a day to day basis.