Today’s interview is with Alfonso de la Nuez, the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of UserZoom, the pioneering UX Insights System. Alfonso joins me today to talk about UserZoom’s recently published research called The State of UX 2022, what they found out, the difference between CX and UX, the value of research and design and lots of other things.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – The idea that scripts ruin customer experience is a dangerous one – Interview with Jimmy Hosang of TMAC – and is number 431 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here’s the highlights of my chat with Alfonso:

• News of UserZoom’s recent funding raising round https://www.userzoom.com/events-and-news/userzoom-closes-strategic-growth-investment-from-thoma-bravo/
• Delivering great digital product experiences is a very, very difficult thing to do. And, collecting insights and being very customer centric is one of the best things you can do to help achieve that.
• We utilise what we call a triangulation of data which is not just focused on qualitative research and some prototype testing but also understands what’s happening via surveys and other operational insights.
• Before starting any project the difference between UX and CX can be complicated so it’s worth spending some time defining what both mean.
• UserZoom recently published The State of UX 2022 report.
• Alfonso also referred to UserZoom’s resources and publications on benchmarking. Check them out here.
• 70% report the demand for UX research has increased in the past year, but almost half say that budgets are unchanged.
• LinkedIn recently posted the top 25 fastest growing jobs and number eight was UX research.
• While demand is growing there is a lot of democratization taking place, where UX researchers are also enabling and training other people.
• By margins of 30+ points, digital experience teams that consistently integrate user research in product development report a positive impact on customer satisfaction (80% to 50%) and brand perception (76% to 45%), compared to those that don’t.
• McKinsey article: CX without design only gets you halfway
• 45% of companies say that they’re failing to properly integrate user research into their development practices because of time. However, UX professionals can show and demonstrate that they can actually reduce the development time.
• A large portion (60%) of the software produced is failing. It’s not working very well.
• If you ask somebody: Hey, are you having a great experience? And, they give you a 1-10 rating. That’s not very actionable.
• We can’t take that to the designer because there’s two things that it’s missing that are very important. What would be good to know is…….Are you content if you just get a 10 or nine? You should be happy but how do you keep that up and why? And, the second question(s) is How do people do what they do? And, if they’re struggling, how are they using your product?
• UX research lab story from my podcast with Andrew Lawson, former Chief Product Officer of Zopa.com.
• The problem with physical labs is that replicating that every week is impossible.
• Just 13% of organizations have a UX leader in the C-suite.
• User experience professionals need to be more business focused and they need to understand the business of design.
• 45% of UX teams say that DE&I considerations are not standard practice.
• It’s not a bad statistic. 55% do have it as standard practice. But, the rest…they do care and they think it’s a priority for the future.
• At UserZoom we operate with a kaizen mentality (continuous improvements for incremental gains) with our approach to DE&I.
• Design is not design without research.
• Alfonso’s upcoming new book: The Digital Experience Company: Winning in the Digital Economy with Experience Insights.
• We must understand that in order to measure experience and the overall quality of the experience, we cannot just rely on simple surveys of customer satisfaction. We should approach it with a mixed method approach, which may be a little harder but ultimately it’s going to be a lot more actionable.
• Alfonso’s Punk CX word(s): Democratize, Transparent, Scale.
• Alfonso’s Punk XL brand: AirBnb, Apple, Bank of America, Chase and ING.

About Alfonso

Alfonso de la Nuez is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of UserZoom, the pioneering UX Insights System. An entrepreneur, published author, podcast host and keynote speaker with over two decades of industry experience, Alfonso is a sought-after authority in Digital Experience, Customer Experience, and User Interface Design.

Find out more about UserZoom here, check out The State of UX 2022 report, say Hi to Alfonso and them on Twitter @delanuez23 and @userzoom and, finally, feel free to connect with Alfonso on LinkedIn here.

 Thanks to Tumisu on Pixabay for the image.