Applied Systems's CRM - Generative Reserach

Overview
Applied Systems senior leadership team had a vision to build a Customer Relationship Management system to break silos for its clients and eliminate the disjointed experience. I co-led the generative research and the proposal in the first three months of joining the company.
My Contribution
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Ran User Interviews
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Facilitated Stakeholder Interviews
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Created a Screener Survey
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Recruited Participants
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Managed Communications
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Analyzed Data
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Co-led Stakeholder Presentation​
Team
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Lead Product Manager
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Director of UX
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Senior Manager of UX
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Senior UX Designer (that was me)
Tools
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FigJam
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Confluence
Approach
Understand current process
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Stakeholder Interviews
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Partner with the product managers of all the products offered by Applied Systems
Talk to users
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​Create a Screener Survey
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Manage Email Communications
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Moderate User Interviews
Create a proposal
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Analyze the findings
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Generate Insights
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Presentation to SVPs
Understand the current process
I supported the Director of UX, who led the stakeholder interviews by managing the communication, facilitation, and planning of the interviews. The goal was to get exposure to internal knowledge and leverage that during user interviews with the users.


Snippet of FigJam Board used for Stakeholder Interviews
User Interviews
Goals
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Find out the most challenging workflows related to customer relationship management
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Discover what the challenges are in managing the leads
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Uncover the process of selling a prospect/opportunity
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Find ways of maintaining visibility in the sales funnel
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Discover what the challenges are in managing the ongoing relationship with customers
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Uncover the current process of maintaining customer relationships

A few questions from Screener Survey

Screening Criteria

Screener Survey response from one of the agencies
Research Details
15
Participants
User Interview
Method
90 mins
Interview Length

User Interview #1

User Interview #2
Unfortunately, I am unable to share the key findings from these sessions. However, I can connect you with UX leaders who were part of this initiative if needed to reconfirm the authenticity of this case study.
Learnings
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Always advocate for what you believe is right and can be leveraged in a given situation. It was satisfying to see how much the Screener Survey helped us. Later, the Applied UX team started using screener surveys more often.
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Time management is key when leading conversations with stakeholders. I learned about the importance of saying no when needed and the ability to park things which are not in line with the interview goals.
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Walk out politely and professionally when a user is not the right fit for a research study. It happened once with me during this initiative where I stretched the interview even though we figured out in the early stages of the interview the candidate was not the right fit.
