Productivity rests on high quality and intuitive UX
At Digital First 2015 in Brussels, Jan Dheedene, CEO of D!nk, gave a very interesting talk. D!nk develops digital tools for salespeople in the field to help them sell more. Jan explained his company’s efforts to understand their end users. “Salespeople are alone in the field, facing customers and dealing with more and more technology. When D!nk conducted research among salespeople to find out what they were lacking the most, the answer was very clear: ‘We want good, easy-to-use tools that make our job simpler.’ And that is of course why D!nk exists.”
What can we learn from this in the wider perspective? To work well, to accomplish a job – and this is true for a lot of professions today – we rely on digital tools: our email, a CRM solution to manage our customers and pipelines, an expenses reporting tool, an in-house accountancy tool… The better these tools are, the more intuitive they are to use, the easier our tasks become and the more productive we are. When these tools are difficult to use, our day-to-day job can become drudgery and even result in negative fallout for a company.
That’s exactly what happened to Avon. In 2013 they terminated a $125 million sales force app project. After testing in Canada, the results showed that the new tablet tool was too difficult to use. “The technology worked, but it was so hard to use that Avon salespeople – many of them part timers who network among friends and hold in-home parties – left the company in droves. That’s not consistent with the kind of consumer-grade app experience that has made tablets so popular in sales and retail settings.” (Information Week, Dec 2013)
This example highlights how important good digital tools are for accomplishing day-to-day work. And crucially, tools that offer the same intuitive user experience as apps we expect outside the professional sphere. So how can you be sure your users are happy?
Stop guessing, start listening!
What if it were possible to test user experience in advance, to improve a tool, software, to make an app even more delightful? What if you had the possibility to understand and listen to people who use your software?
UXprobe takes this mission to heart. We help teams to make better apps by understanding their users; because the user is key. She or he is the beginning, and the end.
Our success case with Astrata Europe
One of our clients is the fleet management company, Astrata Europe, which develops on-board tablets used by truck drivers. Their DriverLinc system is designed to help drivers become more efficient while respecting safety regulations. Time optimization while driving safely and delivering goods is a daily challenge for drivers, and the telematics system is a key tool in their day-to-day job. But does Astrata know what drivers think about the on-board tablet they use each day? Are drivers able to accomplish their main tasks in an easy and intuitive way?
A year ago, Astrata did not have the answers to these questions. But because the company understood that great usability – the same as we expect when using an iPad – was increasingly becoming the norm, it began working with UXprobe to measure user experience and satisfaction among truck drivers.
With UXprobe’s reports, Astrata learned directly from the drivers’ behavior. They could see that it was disturbing for a driver to receive notifications about fuel management when they were driving, because a notification needs a reply, and replying when driving contradicts safety rules! They learned that three functions covered 80% of the daily workflow of the drivers – so no need for an over-complicated interface. The highly detailed data collected by UXprobe even helped them to discover a major error in the login system of the software.
Today, based on these insights, Astrata is implementing important changes to their DriverLinc software in order to make it easier to use. They expect these changes to improve the performance of their on-board tablets and also the productivity of drivers.
Last week, for the first time in Astrata’s history, a driver sent feedback to the company about a recent feature implemented thanks to UXprobe. He said (in Hungarian): “A navigacios program kivalo,” which translates as: “The navigation software is excellent.”
When was the last time your employees sent a message telling you that your in-house reporting software was excellent?
This article was first published in Digital2020 blog.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Isabelle Dro
Director of Communications