Does product user-experience play a role in customer buying decision in heavy industries?

Problem

The shift towards digitalisation and attention to User Experience (UX) of technologies presented a critical challenge for AutomateCo. Therefore AutomateCo. sought to understand from their customers, the extent to which UX plays a role in their purchase decisions. Furthermore, gauge its product portfolio’s user experience from a customer point of view.

Situation

AutomateCo. operated in the heavy industry with large incumbent players as customers. Thus they selected two industries for this study: Mining and Paper & Pulp. AutomateCo. believed that these industries were striving to embrace digitalization in their production. The primary reason being the efficiency-impact offered by superior digital tools.

AutomateCo. sought support from the SprintlyWorks team to conduct multi-national research to validate/ invalidate its hypothesis.

Key research questions

The key questions in the project were:

Q1. In which product aspects do customers consider UX to be important?

Q2. What is the customer perception of AutomateCo.’s UX maturity at an industry level?

Q3. How is the user experience of AutomateCo.’s product portfolio?

Our approach

Phase 1: Insights on current UX situation

The SprintlyWorks team gathered insights from company management on how UX was incorporated into current product development processes how they foresaw UX as a part of new product creation.

Phase 2: Understand customers’ perception of UX

Next, the SprintlyWorks team conducted customer interviews with key decision-makers in 10 countries. These interviews provided insights on trends, customer needs, and expectations from AutomateCo’s products. Based on these, emerging trends were identified and key UX criteria used by companies were listed.

Phase 3: Roadmap for development

Finally, the SprintlyWorks team analyzed the gap between AutomateCo’s current UX level and customers’ requirements. Based on these a UX roadmap was developed for AutomateCo. to develop UX as a competency.

Results

The SprintlyWorks team developed a UX improvement process roadmap for AutomateCo. comprising key recommendations and sub-themes.

This helped accelerate the transition of AutomateCo. towards making its product user experience a consistent priority.