For over a decade, Creative Good has pioneered the non-directed research method called "listening labs." While these are included as the second phase of our strategy projects, some clients prefer to hire Creative Good for a labs-only project, which analyzes the current customer experience - rather than architecting a new one, as in a strategy project.
To anyone who has never observed them, listening labs are perhaps best described as "strategic, customer-focused usability tests." The moderator avoids directing customers and assigning tasks, as often happens in traditional usability, and instead asks customers to demonstrate their customer experience throughout a non-directed conversation.
The method applies just about everywhere: Creative Good has run labs projects on five continents, for almost every kind of consumer and business-to-business industry.
Our method is detailed in our whitepaper: Joining Strategy and Usability: The Customer Experience Methodology
Duration
- 4 or more weeks
Phases
Client Questionnaire
Creative Good submits a questionnaire for the client to prepare answering questions about their business, competitive environment, customers, performance and sales data, organizational culture and other questions. Creative Good also requests login to client performance or metrics systems so our team can analyze customer data directly.
Expert Review
Expert reviews are initial analyses of the customer experience - relying on the Creative Good team's 11+ years of experience.
Customer Recruiting
Creative Good - in consultation with the client - develops the criteria for customer recruiting then manages the recruiting process.
Lab Design
Based on the client questionnaire, data analysis and expert review, Creative Good forms initial hypotheses about the issues with the current customer experience and uses those to inform the customer listening lab design.
Lab Moderation
Creative Good's project manager moderates our version of user tests. These listening labs combine the best of traditional usability research and less directive market research methods. These sessions are one-on-one customer observation sessions, each lasting 45 minutes, followed by adiscussion among the client team members observing from "behind the glass."
In most projects, Creative Good also takes its listening labs into homes, workplaces and even call centers. For some clients we conduct the research on multiple continents.
Client Participation
Client team members attend, representing a cross-section of the organization: advertising, marketing, technology, customer service, merchandising, and the senior executives who "own" the business.
Analysis and Recommendations
A PowerPoint file presenting analysis and set of recommendations to improve the current customer experience (includes detailed metrics from the labs and from the expert review).