What is The Strategic Value of Ongoing User Research in SaaS?

Whether you’re unearthing new use cases for a core audience, testing value propositions, or mitigating the risk of a feature flop via experimentation, savvy product teams leverage research throughout the product life cycle to improve usability and increase retention.

Judd Antin perhaps put the value of user experience research (UXR) best:

“When research makes a product more usable and accessible, engagement goes up, and churn rates go down. Companies need that for the bottom line. Users get a better product. Win-win.”

Still, the latest reports put typical UX research staffing at a ratio of one researcher to every 50 developers. Perhaps as a result of this imbalance, research roadmaps can be excessively long and often fail to respond to the real-time needs of product specialists.

“Getting on a roadmap can be very tricky,” says Heidi Dean, Principal Product-Led Growth Manager at Adobe. “With a limited amount of internal resources shared across a matrixed environment, you sometimes have to rely on outside help to get the insights you need.”

When DIY Just Won’t Do

In the era of “founder mode,” many product managers (PMs) and product marketing managers (PMMs) are circumventing internal resources and doing ad-hoc research themselves. And while the DIY approach can be a solution to long lead times, it’s not always feasible. A careful combination of training, tooling, and time is required for non-researchers to do their own research.

Take, for example, moderated user interviews and usability studies. “It’s a skill set that I’ve had to try and hone,” says Dean. With permission, desire, and training, Dean has upskilled in the methodologies, but she’s conscious that not everyone in a product role has the time or opportunity to do so. “Sometimes it’s hard to find the time to recruit and talk to customers,” she says.

It’s not just the lack of formal training preventing PMs from DIY-ing it. Access barriers and time also play a significant role.

While formal research teams are generally equipped with tools like Lyssna, Rally, and Pendo, many research tools operate on a per-seat basis. As a result, access to “seats” is often tightly guarded—and PMs are often left off the roster.

These access barriers can make ad-hoc projects hard to streamline. In previous roles, Dean has seen this play out as a permission-seeking exercise that manifests in added up-time for even simple projects. “There’s a lot of overhead that comes with getting access to a system like that. It can be a heavy lift.”

Add to that the challenge of fitting research into an already-packed schedule, and the barriers to DIY research can feel unsurmountable. “It’s not an easy thing to slot into existing work and commitments,” says Dean.

Using Outside Experts to Supplement Research

Luckily, with support from firms like The Good, you don’t need to be an expert in user testing to get quick insights. PMs with already-packed research roadmaps and busy schedules hire outside experts like us to cut the line and get results quicker.

“Using part of our budget to gain customer insights has been invaluable for decision-making. The insights from user research have helped us unlock new opportunities and validate hypotheses,” says Dean.

The impact isn’t just doing more with less, but doing it reliably faster, says Software Director of Product Marketing Gabrielle Nouhra, who leverages The Good for UX research, rapid testing, and on-site experimentation, and thinks of The Good as “an extension to the product team.”

“The speed at which we obtain actionable findings has been impressive. We are receiving rapid results within weeks and taking immediate action based on the findings, unlike past survey research that often took much longer to yield insights.”

The Multiplying Force of Long-term Partners

Operating somewhat behind the scenes, outside vendors can be a multiplying force that enables product managers, according to Dean. “Your team’s work is additive to our roadmap and helps us meet the demands of our stakeholders looking for customer insights.”

If a good research partner amplifies their impact, why aren’t more product teams leveraging research vendors?

It all comes down to cost and time.

Whether it’s familiarizing them with your business model, metrics, or past insights, standing up a relationship with a new vendor is work, and the process is imprecise. “You try to do the best download that you can, but things are always going to get missed or misinterpreted,” says Dean.

That investment cost is why Dean says that when comparing a long-term partner to one on retainer, “there’s no comparison.”

“When you work with somebody long term, they learn your products, the organization and your stakeholders. They understand the pain points that you’re dealing with, and then you just develop a shorthand.”

Retainer relationships mean time saved, which is why, in Dean’s view, dollars spent with a long-term partner go a lot farther. “Using a partner to help with our research needs has been an efficient use of our resources,” she says.

That manifests in not just time saved but a less arduous process altogether. “It’s streamlining things. It makes everything easier. I can get a lot more done using you guys than even I can with my team.”

Assuring the Success of the Relationship

Once you’ve found the right partner and begun building a backlog of research, the results are compounding. Partners with historical product knowledge can mitigate the pain of reorgs by retaining institutional knowledge.

They can also act as a scaffolding to support new hires. Nouhra knows this firsthand. When she was onboarded to a new role, her first task was to review existing research. Having both a catalog of existing, high-quality research and a partner at The Good who could walk her through it has been an empowering resource that enabled her to dive in quickly.

“You brought me up to speed on so much when I joined—beyond test results and our catalog of research, you were able to share what product updates had been proposed, which were implemented, and what the tradeoffs were to get them live. This gave me a headstart with my product and cross-functional teams.”

Knowing that all good things take time, we asked Dean and Nouhra for their tips for a lasting, high-impact partner. Here’s what they said.

Invest in Up-front Relationship Building

While Nouhra raves about the time-savings of a good partner, she cautions that the dividends are born of an up-front investment. Acting purposefully at the outset can set you up for success. “Take the time to invest in the upfront so that you can reap the benefits of the partnership down the line.”

“Having a partner that's always by your side, you've already done the investment. You can actually get a lot more out of it in the short term because they know the background, and they know your customers, and they know your site experience.”

Include Your Vendor in the Scoping Conversations

When other internal stakeholders are involved, Dean recommends letting the vendor in early, even during the scoping phase. That way, they can ask clarifying questions and quickly speak about the budget implications of various methodologies. It’s an approach that saves time, and it helps identify assumptions and biases that might otherwise arise if the conversation stayed internal, according to Dean.

“When the vendor asks questions, it can draw out the unspoken details. It comes across as ‘I want to make sure we do the best work for you guys.’ So there's a built-in trust that we're all trying to get to, and there's a joint exercise of figuring out what that is.”

Establish a Client-side Conduit

To assure mutual success, Dean recommends assigning a single person to be responsible for mitigation in the event of an issue with regard to the vendor-stakeholder relationship.

While it’s possible that no issues will arise, in Dean’s view, just having someone client-side own the relationship makes her stakeholders feel supported. “They know that I'm personally vested in their success. I'm not just throwing them over the fence to a vendor.”

Getting Started

The benefits of user research in SaaS are proven and they aren’t singular. Conducting frequent, consistent research delivers compounding results. Your whole organization can benefit from the learnings if you pass user insights between development, sales, marketing, product, and more.

But, if like many product leaders, conducting your own research gets put on the back-burner due to competing initiatives, ditch the one-off engagement approach.

To get the results you’re looking for, you need to commit to a long-term research partner. Invest time and resources upfront, and you’ll be rewarded with insights that will propel growth. The longer you engage with the right partner, the easier it will be to glean more insights and, in turn, improve your product experience, marketing, and more.

If you want to understand if The Good might be that long-term partner for your business, get in touch. We start with a thorough audit of your current practices and digital experience to ensure you get everything you need (and nothing you don’t) from working with us. Check out our program and get in touch.