Partner Stories
How to mitigate risk in business with analytics
Analytics has come a long way, and the rise of digital services and expectations has provided businesses with a powerful array of tools to stay competitive. We sat down with our partner, UserTesting’s Hilary de Rover to understand how analytics can not only improve the online experience, but help businesses mitigate risks.
Please introduce yourself
Hi, I’m Hilary de Rover, Director of Systems Integrators and Strategic Partners across EMEA and APAC regions. Born and raised in the Netherlands, I currently reside in the UK, dedicating a substantial portion of my career to fostering and managing channel partnerships in the IT and software industry. I specialize in Digital Customer Engagement, a niche in which I have cultivated significant expertise throughout my professional journey.
How User Testing and Contentsquare complement each other?
Contentsquare and UserTesting join forces as Solution Partners (ISV), offering organizations the solutions they need to design superior digital experiences. By jointly analyzing the behavioral patterns of an organization’s digital journeys, we provide insights into the ‘why’ behind specific behaviors and quantify their impact. This collaboration allows organizations to access both qualitative and quantitative data, paving the way for customer-centric decisions that enhance engagement across digital platforms.
For companies crafting digital experiences, an assortment of technologies and workflows are used to collect and analyze customer data across usability, performance, and engagement. This process equips product and marketing teams with insights into the ongoing activities across their digital channels. The challenge, however, lies in discerning WHY certain behaviors are occurring.
By marrying behavioral analytics with experience research and insights, organizations can delve into the ‘why’ behind the ‘what.’ Helping them to see the problem from their customers’ perspective—further empowering organizations to build and optimize digital products and experiences in line with customer needs and behaviors.
How has the use of analytics in risk management evolved over the years, and what do you see as the future?
Over the years, the use of analytics in risk management has significantly evolved. Traditionally, analytics were leveraged for post-launch objectives; once products and experiences were already live. Today, organizations are capturing human insight and using customer analytics throughout their design and development processes—from concept ideation to execution.
The spotlight is now shifting towards a more customer-centric approach, where experience research and insights play an essential role from the initial stages of discovery and design. This shift allows organizations to build products and experiences with greater confidence—knowing they have been vetted and tested by their customers prior to launch.
Looking ahead, I envision a future where qualitative and quantitative data seamlessly converge—operationalized across team workflows—creating a more scalable and efficient way to bring customer behavior and sentiment into the process for how organizations design, create, and deploy new products and experiences. This collaboration of insights will enable organizations to not only identify and meet their target audience’s needs more precisely, but also mitigate risks more effectively, leading to more resilient business models and higher customer satisfaction.
How do analytics platforms help businesses identify potential risks and threats to their organizations?
Digital product organizations are at the forefront of creating digital interfaces such as websites, apps, and chat platforms, integral for driving revenue and business growth. With an increase in digital services in our day-to-day lives, businesses face escalating customer demands for more digitally accessible products and services. This puts teams on a fast track of designing, building, and iterating products and experiences, striving to stay ahead of the competition.
However, this push toward digital proliferation often coincides with a challenge: the need to accomplish more with less. This pressure can strain budgets and resources, and lead to the development of processes that may lack timely customer insights. Research indicates that around 55% of Product Managers rely on guesswork when making product decisions. This can lead to wasteful expenditure of almost half the software development budget on avoidable rework.
The solution lies in the power of human insights and analytics. Continuous testing and validation of your digital products with customers enables departments like UX Research, Design, Product, and other customer-facing teams to readily capture direct consumer feedback throughout the product development lifecycle. This practice helps mitigate potential risks in the design and development process and drives success through a shared understanding of the customer. In essence, customer insights become the cornerstone of identifying potential risks and threats to operations, ensuring businesses stay agile and customer-centric in their decision-making process.
What are some potential challenges or limitations that businesses should be aware of when it comes to using analytics for risk management?
When deploying analytics for risk management, businesses should be aware of several potential challenges or limitations. Product teams often make key decisions at crucial stages of development without sufficient customer input. The fundamental question that arises is: can the existing information be leveraged to reduce risk in decision-making or mitigate the chance of developing misaligned features or experiences? Timing plays a critical role. Is the moment right for introducing a particular feature? Misguided timing could potentially waste resources or lead to a missed opportunity.
The key to overcoming these challenges lies in the continuous integration of customer insights into the decision-making process. This practice helps to bridge the empathy gap between an organization’s perceived customer needs and the actual expectations of the target audience. By doing so, businesses can make better-informed decisions, aligning more closely with customer requirements and expectations, and subsequently mitigating potential risks in product development and strategy implementation.
Finally, what is a customer experience (CX) hill you would die on?
My commitment lies in creating a customer experience where not only are the customers’ needs fulfilled, but they are exceeded upon–this comes through offering a seamless, frictionless, and personalized journey across all channels and touchpoints. It’s thinking ahead about what’s needed next—how can we simplify the journey; how can we be more prescriptive—doing this requires a deep understanding of your customers, and building muscle for customer intuition. A positive CX leads to loyalty and can be transformative for an organization, organically creating brand ambassadors who proactively advocate for your company and/orproduct. This, I believe, is the pinnacle of CX that is worth dedication.
