214: Enhancing Customer Experience and Listening Skills: Insights from UserTesting and AI Trends with Lija Hogan

Lija Hogan is a principal on the Experience Research Strategy team at UserTesting. When she’s not helping UserTesting customers understand the wide variety of topic areas they can cover using the platform, she teaches user research methods classes at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. 

 

Questions

• Could you share with our listeners just a little bit about your journey?

• Could you tell our listeners a little bit about what UserTesting is? And what do you do?

• A survey was done that your company pioneered with 2000 adults. And I’d like you to just kind of talk to us a little bit about that survey and some of the key findings that came out of that survey that you believe can help organisations to have a better understanding of why AI is so important.

•    Where do you see the technology going for 2024? If you were to pick like a single theme that you believe Chat GPT could help an organisation to tap into delivering a better customer experience, what theme would you say they would need to be focusing on if they were going to use Chat GPT as an integration or even any form of AI that your organisation has been exposed to and work with your clients on that you think is critical for 2024 and beyond?

• Now, could you also share with our listeners, what’s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

• Could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you’ve read, could be a book that you read very recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a very big impact on you.

• Can you also share with our listeners what’s the one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about? Either something you’re working on to develop yourself or your people.

• Where can listeners find you online?

• Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you’ll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed, or you got off track, the quote can helps to just to get you back on track.

 

Highlights

Lija’s Journey

Me: Could you share with our listeners just a little bit about your journey? In your own words, how you got to where you are today from where you’re coming from?

 

Lija shared that it was a very roundabout journey. So, she started with the goal of becoming an academic librarian in Slavic and Eastern European studies. So, most people are very amused when they hear that because it’s a very, very focused and targeted discipline that requires a lot of education. 

And she started that path, actually, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with a Master’s Degree Programme in what she thought was going to be academic librarianship, but got bitten by the Human Computer Interaction bug really early there. And so, that was many years ago now. But that was really kind of the entry point to being focused on the user experience and the customer experience and just making really substantive connections between people to help them to transact together more effectively and efficiently.

 

About UserTesting

Me: Now, you are at UserTesting, that’s what we read in your bio. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about what UserTesting is? And what do you do?

 

Lija stated that that’s a great question. So, she tends to think of UserTesting as being an enabling technology. So, essentially, it’s a platform that enables their customers to connect with their own customers, their users, their employees, their potential users. And what it does is provide recording mechanisms across mobile and desktop, to enable people to have either self-guided, or live conversations with people who are looking for insights. 

And they capture videos and audio and screen share, to really get into the perspectives of people around the world. And so, once you’ve gathered all the information, the platform also provides you with some strategies around sharing that information with your colleagues. And so, you can share videos, you can share quotes, and all sorts of other data to really understand where the gaps are in your experience, and also just to understand what you can do to optimize and de risk the solutions that you’re building.

 

Survey Key Findings to Help Organizations Better Understand the Importance of AI

Me: When you were originally presented to me as a guest for our podcast, a survey was shared with us that your company pioneered with 2000 adults. And I’d like you to just kind of talk to us a little bit about that survey and some of the key findings that came out of that survey that you believe can help organizations to have a better understanding of why AI is so important.

 

Lija shared that they’ve actually done a few surveys around AI. And this one, really, some of the significant findings were really around just the fact that people don’t understand where AI is manifesting in their lives right now. So, to a certain extent, if you ask them directly, they are answering yes and no without a clear sense for what AI really is. 

And she thinks one of the major findings that she had in working through that was just really leaning into the knowledge that AI is manifesting in all our lives in many ways, kind of in the background and behind the scenes. And it’s already enabling us to, sometimes make better decisions, have access to more information, enrich the work that we’re doing, the conversations that we’re having. And that is an important benefit that we’re all looking for in artificial intelligence.

 

Organizations Using Chat GPT to Deliver a Better Customer Experience

Me: So, AI exists in many different forms, because it’s a broad topic. But I think the one that people most connect with and use is probably Chat GPT. It’s been a year since Chat GPT was launched, I can’t believe it’s a year already. Where do you see the technology going for 2024? 

If you were to pick like a single theme that you believe Chat GPT could help an organization to tap into delivering a better customer experience, what theme would you say they would need to be focusing on if they were going to use Chat GPT as an integration or even any form of AI that your organization has been exposed to and work with your clients on that you think is critical for 2024 and beyond?

 

Lija stated that that’s a great question, because she think it’s really hard to say that there’s a single thing, but there are probably multiple ones that she sees as being really important. The first is, we’re still trying to figure out what’s in and out of bounds with regard to how people are using large language models. So, she finds the examples that we’re seeing coming out of the legal profession, right, or lawyers are asking a Chat GPT to write briefs and the platform is hallucinating and making up case law, which doesn’t exist. And that’s a problem. 

So, we haven’t yet caught up with creating guardrails and it’s not necessarily about the technology so much as about how we reach practical consensus around what is allowable, given the constraints of the technology as it currently exists. And actually, not just as it currently exists, but with an eye towards the fact is probably going to become a lot more matured much more quickly. So, she thinks that’s one.  

The second is really a more recent development that she’s seeing around DIY, Chat GPT and so essentially, people will be able to essentially create their own version of what a large language model can do given a certain use case that they’ve got in mind. So, she sees the proliferation of a lot of potential technologies use cases strategies that can be leveraged by people who are both technologically seasoned and who are not, who are learning as they go. And she thinks that will be very interesting. 

The other main trend that she sees is the enterprise trying to make artificial intelligence safe for practical applications and business operations. And she says that because even just a few months after the launch of 3.5, back in November of last year, she was talking to UserTesting customers, a lot of their innovation teams were essentially doing tests to essentially say, within the context of our own, say, customers experience or customer support teams, how can we create an experience that is robust and safe and private and secure, and gives us confidence that we can triage some. 

So, essentially enrich the in person interactions that we’re having with people, but also ensure that we’re providing good consistent information to those customers that we might be handling using some of those more automated chatbot style experiences that are powered by artificial intelligence.

 

App, Website or Tool that Lija Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Lija stated that this probably is going to sound self-serving, but actually, it’s UserTesting, believe it or not. UserTesting is really important because it’s really a very open platform that lets you have both a highly structured as well as an unstructured conversation with the people that you want to work with or learn more from. And she thinks what’s so valuable about it is you can test ideas, you can hear what’s top of mind for people. And in this world where we’ve got access to so much data, just hearing stories brings you back down to earth and makes things very tangible and real and we need that now more than ever.

 

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Lija

When asked about books that have had an impact, Lija shared that one that she thinks has been most powerful and it’s because she’s an optimist. And she thinks that it really gave her a research based foundation to be able to say, this is why she’s an optimist, is a great book by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, they’re actually brothers, they’re psychologists, called Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. 

And the concept that she found really fascinating is their focus on not just problem solving, but actually finding those bright spots and going after those, like, where are things going right? And how can we essentially create more experience that look like those bright spots? So, she loves that idea because rather than being focused on all the negatives, it’s basically saying how can we make whatever it is that we’re doing look like the most positive experiences that we’re providing?

So, the other one, it’s a really short book, it’s probably less than 100 pages. But she loves it so much, it’s called the The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick. And even though it’s kind of like a flip book title, what she loves about it is, it’s a very approachable set of strategies around having conversations with people when you’re trying to figure out what to build and whether or not it’s going to work for people.

  

What Lija is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she’s really excited about, Lija stated that that is a really great question. Because there’s so much, but she’s actually, to the point of the books that they were talking about, the biggest area of focus that she has right now is how to listen better to all the partners that she’s working with. And so, she’s actually spending a lot of time reading books. So, the two that she talked about are two of them, but a number of books that are all about how does she listen better? And sometimes it’s about asking better questions, that’s what the Mom Test is about. 

But sometimes it’s actually saying like, “How do I recognize that people are in a special place right now and need to be acknowledged as having been heard?” But then also, how does she change how it is that she shows up in every way, in the writing that she does, in the talking with folks that she does, in the teaching that she does, in all the interactions to help to move things forward. So, she thinks that there are so many great examples that come from working with children, and psychology, and just even business best practice, to really help to listen and to come to consensus, and just make better decisions together. So, that’s really given her a lot of joy right now. 

 

Me: Are there any activities that you do with your team that kind of helps to strengthen their listening skills? Is there anything that you would like to share where that is concerned since that’s an area that you’ll be working on?

 

Lija shared that she thinks a couple of things. One is she actually thinks it’s kind of twofold. One is she’s been spending a lot more time doing one on ones that are very unstructured. And that has given her the platform across the team that she works with, the people that she works with to really say, “What’s top of mind for you, and let’s talk about it.” And sometimes they start talking about their dogs and cats. But a lot of the time, what that conversation changes into is, “I’m working on this, can I get your perspective on it?” or “I’m having this challenge, can we work through it together.” 

And it’s a great way to just stay close to what’s happening in their world and their part of the organization, but then also take what it is that they’re sharing, and see how she can help to pull in other people across the organization, other teams, and talk to other leaders in the organization about what they can do to address some of the themes and trends that she’s seeing. And so, she thinks spending a little bit more time one on one with people has been probably providing a lot of the value that she’s seeing driving those aha moments.

  

Me: That’s brilliant, that kind of reinforces one of the things that Stephen Covey talks about in his book that the most important role of a leader is to grow and develop people. So, the fact that you are actually seeing the results, because of the one on one intervention that you’re doing, the time you’re investing with each person, and you’re seeing it twofold in terms of the benefit with the customers, then it really does prove that that is a strategy that works.

  

Where Can We Find Lija Online

LinkedIn – Lija Hogan

 

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Lija Uses 

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Lija stated that that’s a great question. So actually, this is totally nerdy, but there’s a quote, it’s at the beginning of one of the chapters of this is where it gets nerdy, Children of Dune by Frank Herbert. And so, the Dune series, there’s a movie, a remake of a couple of movies that are out right now.  

And the quote, and she’s not going to remember it exactly, but it’s really about fear and pain and kind of letting it wash through you. And understanding that it’s there, but also understanding that it doesn’t define you and it doesn’t have to have long lasting negative implications. And so, it’s basically, go with the flow, but in a way that leans into acknowledging that sometimes things are really hard and you just have to live through them and understand that it’s hard, and figure out how you’re going to come out on the other side. Change, but change in a way that acknowledges what’s happened to you.

  

Me: Thank you so much, Lija, just want to thank you again for coming on our podcast today and sharing a little bit about your organisation and user testing, and all the value and brilliance that you’re bringing to the customer experience space. As well as some of the research findings that came out of one of the surveys that you had done recently. And just the impact of AI, specifically Chat GPT even though we spoke about that in the episode and other different forms of AI as well. But just taking time out of your busy schedule and coming on here with us and sharing all of the great insights and experiences that you’ve had. I do believe our listeners will gain a great amount of value from this episode. So, thank you so much.

  

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Links

•     Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

•     The Mom Test: How to talk to customer & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick

•     Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

 

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