At Zensurance we provide commercial insurance to small and medium businesses. Therefore, small and medium business owners in Canada are our primary research participants. If you are in a similar space, you might benefit from some lessons I learnt.
First and foremost, for B2B tech companies, conducting UX research is absolutely more fruitful than taking a leap of faith on opinion-based decisions without it. We have seen up to 10% increase in our numbers from solutions based on research findings! At Zen we stopped roleplaying our users. Last year, we conducted a prototype test to see which version users would prefer. Before the test, we took a vote internally as well. Guess what the results were? The opposite! Users voted for option B while teammates voted for option A.
Usually in companies, team members and decision-makers tend to fall into a misconception: “let’s suppose I am a business owner... what will I think/feel/like.” Stop! You have no idea!! Except for the founder of the company, who can to some extent relate to the business owners. No one can. You didn’t live their struggles and ambitions.
So here are some things I learnt.
1. Remove the fluff and get to the point
Communicate what is it in simple words instead of using technical terminologies or UX research jargon. This is for every step of the UX research process with business owners and it’s very crucial. For example, reaching out through an email or LinkedIn, I used to say it’s a “one-on-one interview/ Q&A session.” The response rate wasn’t as good. My guess was it’s intimidating and unclear, what kind of “interview” and what do you mean by a “Q&A session.” Later, I changed it to “for a 45 min conversation where i’d like to take your feedback on our online services” and the response rate went up. Simple!
Moreover, clearly state what is the compensation (if any). Where will the session be? (Address if physical and tool if digital or if they have a choice). Mentioning the bigger goal they will contribute to is also important. In our case, “this is a Canada- based research to improve the experience of buying commercial insurance for Canadian business owners like yourself.” This way they know exactly what is being asked for and what they are signing up for and contributing to. Definitely, write it in a paragraph and be mindful of length.
With B2C, people might participate for extra money and so the details won’t matter as much but in the case of business owners, they are not giving their time for the money necessarily (yes money is always a factor) but more importantly they are also doing it because they want to:
- help another business
- relate to the goal you sent: make it easier for other business owners
- want to feel like subject matter experts
- interested to see how other companies are conducting research
- are considering hiring a UX researcher and want to see what the fuss is about!
And due to these reasons they are not interested in things that sound exciting or cool, they mean business. They genuinely want to know what it is and if they have the time to do it. There is no need to beat around the bush!
2. Recruitment is a %#$@&$
Unlike B2C, B2B target audiences are NOT often out there waiting to be research participants! They are hardly signing up on UX research recruitment platforms. Similarly, you can’t just go to a coffee shop and find your participants (you definitely could get lucky but it’s not always the case).
If you are conducting research with business owners, know where they are and what platforms they use. For me, the directories of various associations were a great resource along with LinkedIn. I had to recruit consultants and I found the Association of Professional Canadian Consultants and started sending emails to people who fit our potential user base. This was the fastest recruitment I did on my own.
Another grave issue with recruitment is that you can’t really rely on third party recruitment services as much as B2C can. I want to say I have been very disappointed with the various UXR recruitment platforms out there. I tried many! Aspects that didn’t work too well for our case:
- Lack of data and numbers about business owners in their participant pool
- UXR apps, softwares & support service providers were over-committing and under-delivering.
- Quality of participants (i’ll explain more below)
- Requiring yearly subscriptions besides per participant instead of having the freedom to just pay per participant
I also reached out to traditional recruitment companies in Canada. Their budgets were out of our league! So, I’d say don’t stick to a platform until you try a bunch of them. If you like 2, keep them both. Some will offer you the option of pay per participant without yearly subscription, that can come handy in times of need.
There’s more to recruitment than just getting participants. It’s the quality of participants too. With the rise of UX and market research recruitment platforms, a lot of people tend to look at participation in these studies as a side hustle for extra money. There is nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is that some participants tend to fake information to get the gig. I have had participants who faked or exaggerated their entire businesses or insurance processes. I could catch it after looking at the websites or processes they mentioned in interviews. There are also people who qualify as business owners because they are doing their own independent work but they might not be the participants you are looking for. There was this one participant who was teaching english online, doing some marketing work on another platform, making transcriptions, and then this UXR participation. Technically, he is doing his own business but he doesn’t essentially represent our customer base. These types of business owners are easier to find because they are looking for UXR gigs. In our case, it’s difficult to filter them. The best thing I do is set up a rigorous screener questionnaire but even then I end up getting one or two every time (at least it reduces the probability!). So be mindful of what questions you ask in the screener. Avoid leading questions and don’t give the right answer as the first option to choose from.
3. They are not your ordinary Joes
Business owners are unique because they are not only experts in their domain but also because they are courageous self-made individuals. Mostly they’ll expect value out of the time they are giving you. To be able to generate value for them and your UXR, you must do some rigorous secondary research and know their domain. It’ll help you understand where they are coming from as well as build trust. I also use LinkedIn for this kind of research. I go to profiles of people in that field and see what kinds of personas are out there and what’s common.
There will always be a few participants who think they are invited as industry experts to show you the light! What I mean by that is, they will try to use demeaning ways to suggest your services are horrible and they know how to fix it. I have noticed this more in consultants (marketing, strategy, finance and design top of the list). Despite trying to ask follow up ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions to understand their opinions, I mostly get more opinions and not reasons. Funny enough, one particular participant comes to mind. He started off by telling me he had so and so books published, is a speaker and helps businesses multiply their profits. He even had a lot of certificates and degrees framed and mounted right on top behind him showing on the zoom screen. He kept telling me “if it was me I’d get rid of this and change this… and ohhh this is horrible” without sharing why and what’s the problem. In these situations, I usually keep a serene, neutral face, appreciating the feedback and trying to communicate effectively but it can definitely put you in a tough spot.
As a researcher you can’t drive value from hate talk or really biased criticism without being able to understand the exact problem. In those cases, it is effective to keep a stepped back approach (it’s not about you!) and filter useful information and feedback based on the goals of your research.
4. Feel free to diverge from the mainstream practices
In the case of the insurance and financial industry, participants have to share personal information. This means mostly there is less wiggle room. Therefore, be mindful of the following:
- Research method you are using. It shouldn’t make them uncomfortable especially when they are sharing personal info; helps them trust you and share accurate details; doesn’t look too experimental or ‘juvenile’ that they feel this is not worth their time.
- Be sure of what you are looking for from the research. Set definite goals and make the questionnaire or segments of the session accordingly cause the conversations with business owners can go everywhere
- You can make your own methods. You know how to get the right information. There is no harm in customizing methods based on your needs.
- Don’t shy away from creating your own analysis tools/methods instead of sticking to the standard because standards were made mostly for B2C research. I customized the journey maps on excel sheets to list down collectively all the problems participants faced at each step to be able to analyse what it means and synthesize the ‘so what?’
5. It’s not about you
I’ll wrap it up with this key lesson! As a colored person and a woman I sometimes get participants who underestimate me and make exaggerated comments about themselves to show they know better. They will not answer my question but will see it as an opportunity to boast about themselves or share harsh opinions. Some older men also acted like they were invited to something below their seniority level. There have been some other uncomfortable experiences too but it’s all part of it. It’s key to remember that people present themselves and act as who they are which has nothing to do with you. You are a researcher trying to find answers, validate perspectives, and dig information. You are like a scientist who dissociates feelings and biases from the study!
