June 26, 2025 • 30 mins
What if you could close the gap between what you think your customers experience and what they actually feel—using raw, unfiltered feedback you can see and hear for yourself?
In a constantly evolving digital landscape, the journey from a customer’s very first click to their final interaction is more complex—and crucial—than ever before. But many leaders believe that their customer experience is far better than it really is—a costly blind spot that leads to missed opportunities for building trust and loyalty. How can organizations truly see their products and services through their customers' eyes and outpace the competition in building brand confidence?
You won’t want to miss this week’s Delighted Customers Podcast, where Mark Slatin sits down with Baran Erkel, Chief Strategy Officer at User Testing. Baran’s rich background—from developer to consulting to enterprise SaaS leadership—gives him a unique 360-degree view on why empathy at scale is the new differentiator and how User Testing’s platform enables businesses to bring the authentic voice of the customer into every decision. If you’re a leader who wants to turn insight into action, streamline feedback loops, and future-proof experiences in the age of AI, Baran’s expertise is essential listening.
Here are three compelling questions Baran Erkel answers on this episode:
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Why is traditional customer feedback (like NPS surveys) not enough for truly understanding and closing the customer experience gap?
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How does User Testing enable organizations to “get out of the building” and immerse themselves in real-time, video-based customer feedback—even at scale?
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What is the transformative role of AI in the future of human insights, feedback, and designing for trust?
Tune in to this insightful conversation and discover how to proactively bridge blind spots in your customer journey. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify—or catch Delighted Customers on all of your favorite podcast platforms so you never miss an episode!
Meet Baran Erkel
Baran Erkel is the Chief Strategy Officer at User Testing, where he leads strategy, corporate development (including mergers and acquisitions), and product management for their industry-leading platform. With over 15 years in enterprise software and a career foundation in computer science and consulting, Baran’s passion lies in helping businesses harness human insights to drive innovation and deepen customer trust. User Testing, founded in 2008, now serves over 3,000 clients—including global enterprises in financial services, tech, and retail—by enabling rapid, actionable feedback through both digital and physical customer experiences. Baran is committed to equipping organizations with the tools and mindset shifts needed to close the “experience gap” and thrive in today’s competitive landscape.
Connect with Baran on LinkedIn.
Show Note References
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Coupa Café anecdote illustrating the powerful impact of real-time, direct customer feedback
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The Bain & Company “CX Gap” statistic
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User Testing’s role in transitioning from reactive to proactive customer listening
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The future of AI-powered feedback and its integration with human insights
Don’t forget to listen and subscribe—transform your approach to customer experience starting today!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome to the Delighted Customers Podcast. I am so glad
you're here. We challenge conventional thinking about customer
experience because I believe that improving experiences isn't just good
for business, it's a powerful way to make a meaningful difference
in people's lives. Each week we feature thought provoking
conversations with industry thought leaders from a
(00:30):
variety of backgrounds, offering you unique perspectives and
actionable insights. Get ready to sharpen your
leadership and transform your approach to customer experience.
Let's dive in.
Welcome to this episode of the Delighted Customers podcast. I
(00:50):
am so excited to introduce my guest Baron Urkel
from User Testing. He's the Chief Strategy
Officer. I can't wait to tell you about what User testing does
and how it can impact the customer experience and
delight your customers. We've got no one
better than the person who is heading up strategy
(01:12):
at User Testing. Tell you what it's all about. Baron. Welcome to
the show. Mark, thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to be
here. Excellent. So before we jump into the topic,
could you please give our listeners a little bit of
background on how you got to where you are now in the role that you're
in and specifically what your responsibilities are now?
(01:34):
Absolutely. I'll start with what I do right now and then how I got there.
So I'm the Chief Strategy Officer at User Testing and I'm responsible
for strategy, corporate development, which is primarily mergers
and acquisitions, as well as our product, product management for our
software platform and our panel side of the business. And I took
a circuitous route to strategy work in software companies. But I started
(01:57):
as a developer very early in my career, computer science major
many moons ago and then took a detour in consulting and during
that time moved in from building systems
to working on business problems and business strategy and getting closer
to customer needs and how those affect business strategy,
and then moved into enterprise software and have been doing enterprise software for 15
(02:19):
years now. Excellent. And so today we're going to be talking
about, loosely entitled Designing
for Trust how to Build Confidence from the First Click to
the Last Mile. I love the topic. I love talking anything
trust. When it comes to
institutional trust, I think it's a lot trickier. Both
(02:41):
are difficult for sure, but it's a lot trickier to get your arms
around than personal trust, which is already tough enough. But
first of all, let's do some definition around it. When we're talking about first click
to last. Can you help give us a sort of the
landscape of what we're talking about here? Yeah,
absolutely. So we look at customer experience quite
(03:03):
Holistically, we have traditionally been very
popular, known for digital experiences and
digital product teams. But we've also been
used quite extensively in marketing and CX organizations
as they try to really understand the voice of the customer.
And so when we talk about first click to the last mile, it's really
(03:25):
holistically, you might call it omnichannel, you know, in marketing and
CX language, thinking about how we serve or how our
customers serve their customers and really understand
their needs when they're designing experiences, whether they're digital
products, like a loan origination on a bank
website, which is very valuable. And a lot of our customers use us for
(03:47):
testing through to physical experiences where
you can get feedback from customers in an actual experience
in quite short order. So we think of it quite holistically and
we think about designing those experiences in the sense of
everyone is ultimately a designer and an architect of their business,
their business's products, the experiences they provide
(04:10):
to their customers. And so everyone needs to kind of think
about customer need and designing for trust. Love it
and agree 100%. And so as I'm talking
to you, really I'm thinking about the listener. I have some personal
experience with using user testing, but others may not. Like if I
could helicopter back up a couple thousand feet and ask
(04:33):
you a little bit more about user testing, like when, how did it, when did
it come about? Give me an idea of like how large you are,
how you guys are structured and then what would you say is
sort of the range of your ideal customer?
Absolutely. So user testing has been around since
2008 and we have been serving product
(04:54):
builders, marketers and CX professionals since then,
really enabling them to get human insights, customer insights
rapidly to make decisions and improve their products and
experiences. So we're the largest leader
in that space. We serve 3,000 customers and we're really
focused on moving mid market and enterprise customers.
(05:16):
We've got the largest companies in the world as very
significant and strategic customers as well as a lot
of customers in financial services, high technology and
retail. But we serve customers across all industries, but really try to
focus on those enterprise customers that really
have lots of complex needs around customer experience,
(05:39):
human feedback and staying close to customers, which I think is a
challenge that continues and, and won't be solved fully
anytime soon. Well, as long as you got humans involved, it becomes
complex, right? 100%. All
right, so what I'd like to do is jump into
some of the misconceptions that people have about this type
(06:02):
of way to get customer feedback
and some of the Mistakes that people make when they're trying
to get customer feedback. But, but if it's okay. Before we do, I'd like
to kind of scratch the itch that C Suite
leaders may be thinking about, which is why should this be
a big deal to us if we're in the C Suite? There's a lot of
(06:24):
ways we can learn about our customers. Why should I
care about putting an effort like this forward? Great,
great question. And one we talk about with our executives at our
customers quite a bit. And many, many more get it now, I would say than
they did 10, 15 years ago. It is, I don't need to tell your listeners
it is a very competitive and dynamic marketplace and customers have more
(06:47):
choice than ever. And to stand out on that playing field,
you've got to be good, you've actually got to be great. Your customer experience,
your products, the thought you put into those really has to stand out.
Otherwise you're going to be commodified and competing on price, which I don't
think most of executives want. What we see executives
(07:07):
really looking for is they understand the value of
feedback and insights, but they want to make it connected to business
results and outcomes. And so the
best performing companies actually find a way to do that and
institutionalize the practice of getting feedback to
inform decisions, to drive outcomes. And they can see a
(07:28):
through line through all those things. When you do that, it's a no
brainer. And so if we have skeptical executives or
customers or those that are wondering, the best thing we can do is tell them
about a customer that's made that transformation and made that connection, or
just put them in touch and then it becomes this,
aha, this is possible and it makes complete
(07:50):
sense. If I can hear the voice of the customer and then I can see
the results of listening to that and driving decisions based on
that. Why wouldn't I do that and why wouldn't I spread that across my organization?
What comes to mind, Baron, when you're sharing. This is a study that
was done by Bain, I don't know, a while back.
(08:10):
I imagine that the data hasn't changed a whole lot.
And it was a survey that they did that
surveyed CEOs of organizations
and asked them how they felt they were delivering the customer
experience. 80% said they were
excellent, you know, excellent, the highest possible top box.
(08:34):
But only 8% of their customers agreed.
And so there's that, that gap. People call it the CX gap,
whatever you want to call it. But maybe, maybe part of the
reasoning behind this is to ensure that you
don't have a blind spot as a leader and you've got real
customer related customer feedback.
(08:57):
Am I on point with that? You are absolutely on point.
We talk about that as the experience gap. And you know, if
you just think about a day in the life of an executive, a CEO or
the executive team, how much do they spend inside the four
walls or now the virtual walls of their organization and team
meetings and talking to employees and team members
(09:19):
versus how much do they spend with their customers, talking to
customers, or in their own digital or physical experiences
alongside a customer? It's very lopsided and that's just the
nature of business, right? We have to run and manage and lead businesses, spending time
with our people, making decisions, etc. And so
the way we've seen some customers, you know, a lot of our customers close
(09:41):
that gap between what they think they, they provide and
what others perceive is, I mean, it's not rocket
science, but it takes some thought. It is getting closer to the customer and listening
to the customers. And we can talk about this more, but doing it proactively
rather than reactively, that's how you start to close that gap. But
yeah, I mean, I don't think those stats have probably changed a lot.
(10:04):
It is quite stark reminder. So, Lee, a great segue
into the question about misconceptions
about customer feedback methods and the value of
customer feedback and mistakes that people make.
Let's talk a little bit more about that. What do you see as the
mistakes? And one of them, if I might ask a
(10:27):
leading question, is they don't think they need it at all. That
is, you know, I think that people,
people say they need it, but they think it might
be different things. What do we mean by it? Very basic example.
Everybody has a CSAT program, an NPS
program. Some businesses and leaders think that that's
(10:49):
enough, that that is it, that that is listening to the customer. And you know,
what I've seen and what we see with our 3,000 customers is
that is helpful, but it is not the full story. If you've
ever taken a survey like that, as a consumer, as an
individual, you know that's not providing your full experience, your thoughts
and how much you trust that brand, what feature you
(11:12):
liked or didn't like in the product, all of those things. So that is one
mistake I see is like, hey, we've got a robust program. We get these reports.
I can see numbers, you know, executives, we love numbers. You can't manage what you
can't measure. But stopping there or thinking at a
robust program and that is it. It's just one part of
the puzzle. The best in class do much more. So I want to talk about,
(11:36):
you mentioned NPS or Voice of the Customer programs and I want
to talk about how user testing is not survey and I want to talk
about the power of it. And from your standpoint, why is it,
why is it a differentiator? Absolutely.
We like to say that there are a ton of voice of the customer
programs out there and a ton of money spent on them. My good
(11:58):
friend Jamie Anderson, our president of field operations, was a former
cmo, worked in large companies is that I would get reports on
Voice of the Customer once a quarter. I paid a million and a half dollars
for them, but I never actually heard the voice of the
customer. I was reading a giant PDF from a research
agency that was no voice and reactive.
(12:19):
We are the leader in video based feedback. I don't think
anyone in the world actually provides more video based
customer sessions than we do over a million and a half a
year of individual customers. Providing detailed
feedback across a range of use cases, whether it's very
conceptual, whether it's about brand and trust, or whether it's about a very
(12:41):
specific change you want to make to the shopping cart
checkout page on your E commerce application runs the
gamut. But the key is you get so much richer
feedback, so much more information when you have the video.
It's not just what they're saying, it's their body language, it's their tone.
So that's one key differentiator. Now we do also provide surveys.
(13:05):
We find that a lot of our customers like to get feedback in multiple ways
and triangulate to make the best decisions for their business.
But we're not an NPS kind of survey tool, CSAT survey
tool. We provide a range of capabilities to get
closer to the customer and our most popular by
far is video based feedback because it is so, so rich and we
(13:28):
can talk more about this. But you need people to be willing
to give that feedback, take the time and do that in a video based
way and be motivated to give good insights.
And so we work really hard on that as well. Bahram we are moving more
and more toward a digital. I've heard, I'm going
to paraphrase, but I've heard it said that regardless of what industry you're
(13:50):
in, you have to be in digital. Your customers are going to experience
your brand in digital and I think that
you have User testing has a unique ability
to inform how customers are experiencing
your product or service. In a way that surveys
can't really capture. Could you share more about,
(14:14):
like immerse us into that experience? If you, if you're
trying to explain to someone how the,
the outcome of using your product. And
I'm not, I'm really not trying to make this a commercial because I, I really
an infomercial for you guys. Even though I do appreciate what you
do. For me, the basis of this question about
(14:36):
immersing people in is so they get an idea of what this
is. Cause I do want to talk about AI and how AI
might complement, overlap,
intervene, whatever the right word is with the service
that you offer and why there is sort
of a holy shrine in my mind for really
(14:59):
being able to look through the lens of the customer
as they experience your brand. Whether that's, you know, before
they even start engaging with you, all the way to. After they've left
you for a moment, maybe they become a future customer again.
Yeah. But anywhere in that whole customer life cycle. And so the
reason I believe this is whether it's journey mapping, automated
(15:22):
journey mapping, journey mapping. Whether it's getting customer feedback,
traditional ways, getting customer feedback through what we're about to talk about,
or speaking to customers, manage my walking around, you know,
getting out and walking in their shoes, I believe that AI is
not going to replace that. And if you think it's going to,
you're missing a critical component of what you need to be able to design
(15:46):
and deliver an experience that's a differentiator. Absolutely.
Yeah. We could talk about, I think those topics for a while. And AI
is something we're reading about and thinking about and prototyping
around every day. So would love to dive deep in that. Maybe just to
get to the digital. Start with the digital part. I start with a very quick
story that leads to kind of what customers then do with platforms like ours.
(16:08):
I used to live in the San Francisco Bay area and I spent some time
in Palo Alto and there's a famous coffee shop in Palo Alto called Koopa
Cafe. Struggling
to connect the dots across your customer journeys? You're not
alone. For many CX professionals, journey mapping is still
manual and fragmented. Especially in large
(16:29):
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(16:51):
journeys. Want to see how AI can help you map
smarter, not harder? Download our free white paper at
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click the link at the end of the show. Notes to get started with
AI powered journey mapping in minutes.
(17:11):
And it's near Stanford University. It's right off of University Avenue in downtown
Palo Alto. Beautiful area. And it's famous for
startup founders sitting there looking
for people to test their apps against. And I remember I had first moved
to the Bay Area, heard about this cool cafe, didn't know this part of the
story, but having a cup of coffee and I would always get
(17:33):
someone, some young, usually Stanford student, Stanford computer science student,
just lean over, see I was alone, reading a book or something and say, would
you, do you have a few minutes? Could you try my app?
And they would have, you know, iPhone was early days. They would have
an app and they were trying to make it big and start a business and
they were then gonna walk down the street and try to raise money. And I
(17:54):
would, I'd say, yeah, sure, of course, I love meeting people and helping people. And
I would go through and say, oh, this, this is confusing. Or, you
know, this, this doesn't make sense, or this is great. Oh my gosh, I love
this. Oftentimes they'd say, hey, can you try doing this task? Like, try
to, you know, add a friend to this social network or whatever.
And so, and like, literally every time I went there, if I was
(18:16):
alone, I would get one of these. And then I learned this was kind
of just the spot. That is great. I mean,
think about the entrepreneur trying to find product market fit. They, they live or die
based on the customer. They live or die based on whether they meet the need,
you know, first understand the customer, understand the problem, and then meet the need of
the problem and deliver a great solution. It's no different for big companies.
(18:38):
It's just you get out of the coffee shop when you're in a big company,
you're in your office and you get farther away from the
customer and you start thinking, I need to get consultants to talk to my
customers. Or I, you know, just. All I can do is
mass surveys. What we enable is basically taking that cup of coffee
experience and doing it at scale and making it really
(19:00):
easy and fast, even if you're in the HQ building
to virtually sit with the customer. And so one way people use
this is like this, a video conversation where they're
asking the customer questions or looking at an application, looking at their
screen as they go through your prototype or your app or your digital
experience, whatever it is, your website, and getting
(19:22):
feedback this way, live. Another very common way is even
more common, is without Someone live moderating it. It's called
an unmoderated test. And you send some instructions
to people and you say try to check out from
this experience. We're trying to make it more efficient. What do you think of our
one click buying? And I want you to follow these five steps and
(19:45):
panelists, there are people out there that do this. It's kind of gig work
and they do it for money. But they also a lot of them do it
because they really like contributing and they want to see better
experiences for all of us and less frustrating experiences. And
they'll go through those steps on video. Thinking out loud. It's called
think out loud testing and you can do that with tens, with
(20:05):
hundreds of people. So it basically lets you
scale Koopa Cafe in Palo Alto, get the feedback from the customer
and lets bigger companies be more like startups and be more
agile and faster. Love it. We'll be calling
Koopa Cafe and Palo Alto for some ad
sponsorships opportunities for the show. What a great story.
(20:27):
Love that story. Think out loud is really cool. We use it at the
bank. We use user testing at the bank. I work, I worked for in the
past for new a new account opening for B2C
customers because in the past it was all you got to go to a
branch and there was no online self service version
of it. So user testing I'm sure would do a great job of
(20:50):
that. And what you talk about is for me to think about
being able to get back from the product manager, head of marketing
or even cx but to be able to get back customers as they're
clicking through different spots on your site and saying why is
that button over there? Why can't I have a field that just does this? You
know, ask me for this. Why do I have to re enter this information
(21:13):
over and over again? Those kind of things. So surveys
and feedback will tell you and operational data will tell you that they,
that they checked out. Like that they clicked off your site or
that they went on and then they didn't complete a cycle. It'll tell you that
and it'll tell you also if they were dissatisfied or wouldn't recommend you.
But it won't tell you the nitty gritty of what went wrong,
(21:35):
like what specifically disturbed
them. Unless you're really lucky and really really great at getting text analytics. And
even then you end up in the macro world and you might miss
some important nuances. Would you agree? 100% agree.
Most current feedback methods tell you the what is happening.
Like you talked about analytics, surveys what happened
(21:59):
doesn't tell you the why we talk about. You need to understand
the why to provide a truly great customer experience. And
what better way to understand why people think the way they
do, feel the way they do about your brand or your product than to see
them, hear them, watch them try it.
So we have talked, we really had a good conversation around
(22:21):
talking about the differentiators and why this
is important. Are there any other strategies? If
you were to advise a CEO
or a head of operations, for example, who felt
like they were missing something, they had some gaps, maybe they were really concerned
about the experience gap in their own, in their own organization because
(22:43):
maybe there was some smoke, smoke in the data or
through some particular customer outcries and
they wanted to set up a structure, you know, a strategy. How do they begin
to even think about this other than calling your, your team know which they
could do, but from a strategic standpoint, your chief strategy officer. What are
some ways that we can help them out? Absolutely. First
(23:05):
I think it's just, it's stating that it is a priority
and something for the organization to work on. It's
not, you know, letting the team assume that
what they're currently doing is good enough. So the executive has the
bullhorn. They can say this is, this is a priority and we need to,
we need to find ways to do better. I'd say the second is
(23:29):
a mindset shift from it's
difficult and there are old ways of doing it. The
reactive once a quarter or only kind of large
scale quantitative surveys that are impersonal. There's just a mindset
shift needed to understand that different ways of working are possible.
You can get closer to customers at scale
(23:51):
more quickly and actually proactively. I think there's just actually a lot of
maybe we should call the awareness gap. Like there's just not enough
awareness. I'd say especially in marketing and CX
executives that the kind of 50 year,
perhaps agency model, you know, that there are other ways of
getting feedback and insights. We're seeing more and more awareness now. But
(24:14):
that would be the second big thing is like mindset shift that it's possible ask
the teams then to go and solve it.
And I think most executives will be surprised once they let
their teams loose on what they can bring back. And I've seen customers
transform from very reactive old
ways of getting feedback to the voice of the customer is around
(24:36):
the executive table. They will have the
executive team seeing videos, hearing customer feedback
and really informing, you know, the big strategic decisions
all the way down to the Feature decisions.
And from my experience too is there's really nothing quite
like the executives, you know,
(24:58):
experiencing what the customer is experiencing.
Absolutely. Seeing is believing. Seeing and hearing, you know,
is super powerful. It's, it's kind of a no brainer
when you think about it, that every company should be doing this. But I just
think that the methods have not been there in the past and
the kind of awareness has not been there. So, you know, something around
(25:20):
bringing the customer into the room. I think Bezos was famous in the early
days of Amazon. Jeff Bezos, where he'd have the empty chair
around the executive table which represented the customer. You know, that was a great
metaphor and just a great kind of statement of priority.
But now there's technology that can really help actually like bring the voice of the
customer in the room all the way. You know, everything except for actually
(25:43):
physically bringing them in, which you can always do, but doesn't scale as well.
Right, right. What we talked briefly earlier and
I mean we'll kind of finish out our conversation on this note is
AI and the role of AI and where do you see the intersection of
AI and user testing and methods to collect customer
feedback? Yeah, it is a topic we spend
(26:06):
a lot of time on and me personally as Chief Strategy Officer spend a lot
of time on trying to look around the corner. I think a lot of us
are, especially in technology and it's exhilarating and exhausting at the same
time because things are moving so fast. So we're in the summer of 2025 now,
AI is going to change and is changing the way these
kinds of platforms and tools work, but it's also going to change
(26:27):
the type of work that our customers need help with. So on the first one
it is more automation. And what we talk about is
being an agentic AI first platform that
will basically make it even faster and easier to get
human feedback. And so today if it's 10 steps to set up
a test, pick an audience, you know, put in your criteria or your
(26:50):
prototypes to get feedback on and all the way through to getting insights back.
Let's say that's 10 steps and hours, you know, a few hours, it should be
as easy as typing a prompt into ChatGPT and getting the
insights back. We have so much data from almost 20 years of
customer feedback. You know, customers asking for feedback from their customers,
we can actually automate most of that process. And so we talk about kind of
(27:13):
agentic AI first testing, research and insights
generation. And I would say that's just like to be expected.
I would hope people would think we're working on that and we are. The second
part is also super interesting, which is what this means for
our customers, products and their experiences that they're trying to provide to their
customers. And I mean, if we talk digital, I think AI is going
(27:35):
to impact every digital product and experience in fundamental
ways. It started With Search and ChatGPT,
now it's software development and all of these software development
agentic coding tools. It's going to impact every digital
experience that we use. And it's going to be a fundamental shift. It's
not just a new kind of paradigm, new way of designing
(27:59):
a website or a minor technology. It's a fundamental shift. And so, so
to survive in the AI age, every company is going to need to rethink their
experiences. And what better way to try to get
it right than to try it on your customers and get their feedback. So we
really think about how we help our customers make this transition
into the AI age and be winners in that age. And
(28:22):
it's really helping them get feedback on those new experiences. And
I think it's more important now than ever because this is
a once in a 20 year or more paradigm shift in technology.
We are right at the cusp of it and excited about what you guys are
doing in that field. I'm sure. I love that. Exhausting and
(28:42):
exhilarating at the same time. Hey, I
loved our conversation. I want to end it by asking you the same question
I ask all my guests. Which is what delights you as a
customer? What delights me as a customer is when I know that
the people behind the company or brand have
put a lot of thought into and care into the
(29:04):
details of the experience. I'm a very detail oriented
person. I may, I can be a great customer because if I love a product
or service, I will tell everyone about it. I will evangelize for
you. But if it's been sloppily done,
if it hasn't been designed well, you know, I will not be happy.
I'll be pretty vocal and you can just tell, you can just tell when
(29:26):
somebody really cares and they've taken the time to get, you
know, to get feedback, to put themselves in my shoes and
you know, you can tell they care about their work and I appreciate that as
a customer, as just, you know, fellow human being. So that's what
delights me is you could call it deep kind of empathy, but just really thinking
about me and having the attention to the details. Excellent.
(29:48):
Baron Urkel, thank you so much for being on the Delighted Customers
Podcast Mark. Thank you very much. This was a lot of fun.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Delighted Customers Podcast.
It would mean so much if you would take a moment to subscribe. You can
go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to
podcasts. Click on the plus sign or follow button and that will ensure
(30:10):
that you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others.
While you're there. I'd love it if you leave a five star review. I
look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday.
Welcome to the Delighted Customers Podcast. I am so glad
you're here. We challenge conventional thinking about customer
experience because I believe that improving experiences isn't just good
for business, it's a powerful way to make a meaningful difference
in people's lives. Each week we feature thought provoking
conversations with industry thought leaders from a
(00:30):
variety of backgrounds, offering you unique perspectives and
actionable insights. Get ready to sharpen your
leadership and transform your approach to customer experience.
Let's dive in.
Welcome to this episode of the Delighted Customers podcast. I
(00:50):
am so excited to introduce my guest Baron Urkel
from User Testing. He's the Chief Strategy
Officer. I can't wait to tell you about what User testing does
and how it can impact the customer experience and
delight your customers. We've got no one
better than the person who is heading up strategy
(01:12):
at User Testing. Tell you what it's all about. Baron. Welcome to
the show. Mark, thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to be
here. Excellent. So before we jump into the topic,
could you please give our listeners a little bit of
background on how you got to where you are now in the role that you're
in and specifically what your responsibilities are now?
(01:34):
Absolutely. I'll start with what I do right now and then how I got there.
So I'm the Chief Strategy Officer at User Testing and I'm responsible
for strategy, corporate development, which is primarily mergers
and acquisitions, as well as our product, product management for our
software platform and our panel side of the business. And I took
a circuitous route to strategy work in software companies. But I started
(01:57):
as a developer very early in my career, computer science major
many moons ago and then took a detour in consulting and during
that time moved in from building systems
to working on business problems and business strategy and getting closer
to customer needs and how those affect business strategy,
and then moved into enterprise software and have been doing enterprise software for 15
(02:19):
years now. Excellent. And so today we're going to be talking
about, loosely entitled Designing
for Trust how to Build Confidence from the First Click to
the Last Mile. I love the topic. I love talking anything
trust. When it comes to
institutional trust, I think it's a lot trickier. Both
(02:41):
are difficult for sure, but it's a lot trickier to get your arms
around than personal trust, which is already tough enough. But
first of all, let's do some definition around it. When we're talking about first click
to last. Can you help give us a sort of the
landscape of what we're talking about here? Yeah,
absolutely. So we look at customer experience quite
(03:03):
Holistically, we have traditionally been very
popular, known for digital experiences and
digital product teams. But we've also been
used quite extensively in marketing and CX organizations
as they try to really understand the voice of the customer.
And so when we talk about first click to the last mile, it's really
(03:25):
holistically, you might call it omnichannel, you know, in marketing and
CX language, thinking about how we serve or how our
customers serve their customers and really understand
their needs when they're designing experiences, whether they're digital
products, like a loan origination on a bank
website, which is very valuable. And a lot of our customers use us for
(03:47):
testing through to physical experiences where
you can get feedback from customers in an actual experience
in quite short order. So we think of it quite holistically and
we think about designing those experiences in the sense of
everyone is ultimately a designer and an architect of their business,
their business's products, the experiences they provide
(04:10):
to their customers. And so everyone needs to kind of think
about customer need and designing for trust. Love it
and agree 100%. And so as I'm talking
to you, really I'm thinking about the listener. I have some personal
experience with using user testing, but others may not. Like if I
could helicopter back up a couple thousand feet and ask
(04:33):
you a little bit more about user testing, like when, how did it, when did
it come about? Give me an idea of like how large you are,
how you guys are structured and then what would you say is
sort of the range of your ideal customer?
Absolutely. So user testing has been around since
2008 and we have been serving product
(04:54):
builders, marketers and CX professionals since then,
really enabling them to get human insights, customer insights
rapidly to make decisions and improve their products and
experiences. So we're the largest leader
in that space. We serve 3,000 customers and we're really
focused on moving mid market and enterprise customers.
(05:16):
We've got the largest companies in the world as very
significant and strategic customers as well as a lot
of customers in financial services, high technology and
retail. But we serve customers across all industries, but really try to
focus on those enterprise customers that really
have lots of complex needs around customer experience,
(05:39):
human feedback and staying close to customers, which I think is a
challenge that continues and, and won't be solved fully
anytime soon. Well, as long as you got humans involved, it becomes
complex, right? 100%. All
right, so what I'd like to do is jump into
some of the misconceptions that people have about this type
(06:02):
of way to get customer feedback
and some of the Mistakes that people make when they're trying
to get customer feedback. But, but if it's okay. Before we do, I'd like
to kind of scratch the itch that C Suite
leaders may be thinking about, which is why should this be
a big deal to us if we're in the C Suite? There's a lot of
(06:24):
ways we can learn about our customers. Why should I
care about putting an effort like this forward? Great,
great question. And one we talk about with our executives at our
customers quite a bit. And many, many more get it now, I would say than
they did 10, 15 years ago. It is, I don't need to tell your listeners
it is a very competitive and dynamic marketplace and customers have more
(06:47):
choice than ever. And to stand out on that playing field,
you've got to be good, you've actually got to be great. Your customer experience,
your products, the thought you put into those really has to stand out.
Otherwise you're going to be commodified and competing on price, which I don't
think most of executives want. What we see executives
(07:07):
really looking for is they understand the value of
feedback and insights, but they want to make it connected to business
results and outcomes. And so the
best performing companies actually find a way to do that and
institutionalize the practice of getting feedback to
inform decisions, to drive outcomes. And they can see a
(07:28):
through line through all those things. When you do that, it's a no
brainer. And so if we have skeptical executives or
customers or those that are wondering, the best thing we can do is tell them
about a customer that's made that transformation and made that connection, or
just put them in touch and then it becomes this,
aha, this is possible and it makes complete
(07:50):
sense. If I can hear the voice of the customer and then I can see
the results of listening to that and driving decisions based on
that. Why wouldn't I do that and why wouldn't I spread that across my organization?
What comes to mind, Baron, when you're sharing. This is a study that
was done by Bain, I don't know, a while back.
(08:10):
I imagine that the data hasn't changed a whole lot.
And it was a survey that they did that
surveyed CEOs of organizations
and asked them how they felt they were delivering the customer
experience. 80% said they were
excellent, you know, excellent, the highest possible top box.
(08:34):
But only 8% of their customers agreed.
And so there's that, that gap. People call it the CX gap,
whatever you want to call it. But maybe, maybe part of the
reasoning behind this is to ensure that you
don't have a blind spot as a leader and you've got real
customer related customer feedback.
(08:57):
Am I on point with that? You are absolutely on point.
We talk about that as the experience gap. And you know, if
you just think about a day in the life of an executive, a CEO or
the executive team, how much do they spend inside the four
walls or now the virtual walls of their organization and team
meetings and talking to employees and team members
(09:19):
versus how much do they spend with their customers, talking to
customers, or in their own digital or physical experiences
alongside a customer? It's very lopsided and that's just the
nature of business, right? We have to run and manage and lead businesses, spending time
with our people, making decisions, etc. And so
the way we've seen some customers, you know, a lot of our customers close
(09:41):
that gap between what they think they, they provide and
what others perceive is, I mean, it's not rocket
science, but it takes some thought. It is getting closer to the customer and listening
to the customers. And we can talk about this more, but doing it proactively
rather than reactively, that's how you start to close that gap. But
yeah, I mean, I don't think those stats have probably changed a lot.
(10:04):
It is quite stark reminder. So, Lee, a great segue
into the question about misconceptions
about customer feedback methods and the value of
customer feedback and mistakes that people make.
Let's talk a little bit more about that. What do you see as the
mistakes? And one of them, if I might ask a
(10:27):
leading question, is they don't think they need it at all. That
is, you know, I think that people,
people say they need it, but they think it might
be different things. What do we mean by it? Very basic example.
Everybody has a CSAT program, an NPS
program. Some businesses and leaders think that that's
(10:49):
enough, that that is it, that that is listening to the customer. And you know,
what I've seen and what we see with our 3,000 customers is
that is helpful, but it is not the full story. If you've
ever taken a survey like that, as a consumer, as an
individual, you know that's not providing your full experience, your thoughts
and how much you trust that brand, what feature you
(11:12):
liked or didn't like in the product, all of those things. So that is one
mistake I see is like, hey, we've got a robust program. We get these reports.
I can see numbers, you know, executives, we love numbers. You can't manage what you
can't measure. But stopping there or thinking at a
robust program and that is it. It's just one part of
the puzzle. The best in class do much more. So I want to talk about,
(11:36):
you mentioned NPS or Voice of the Customer programs and I want
to talk about how user testing is not survey and I want to talk
about the power of it. And from your standpoint, why is it,
why is it a differentiator? Absolutely.
We like to say that there are a ton of voice of the customer
programs out there and a ton of money spent on them. My good
(11:58):
friend Jamie Anderson, our president of field operations, was a former
cmo, worked in large companies is that I would get reports on
Voice of the Customer once a quarter. I paid a million and a half dollars
for them, but I never actually heard the voice of the
customer. I was reading a giant PDF from a research
agency that was no voice and reactive.
(12:19):
We are the leader in video based feedback. I don't think
anyone in the world actually provides more video based
customer sessions than we do over a million and a half a
year of individual customers. Providing detailed
feedback across a range of use cases, whether it's very
conceptual, whether it's about brand and trust, or whether it's about a very
(12:41):
specific change you want to make to the shopping cart
checkout page on your E commerce application runs the
gamut. But the key is you get so much richer
feedback, so much more information when you have the video.
It's not just what they're saying, it's their body language, it's their tone.
So that's one key differentiator. Now we do also provide surveys.
(13:05):
We find that a lot of our customers like to get feedback in multiple ways
and triangulate to make the best decisions for their business.
But we're not an NPS kind of survey tool, CSAT survey
tool. We provide a range of capabilities to get
closer to the customer and our most popular by
far is video based feedback because it is so, so rich and we
(13:28):
can talk more about this. But you need people to be willing
to give that feedback, take the time and do that in a video based
way and be motivated to give good insights.
And so we work really hard on that as well. Bahram we are moving more
and more toward a digital. I've heard, I'm going
to paraphrase, but I've heard it said that regardless of what industry you're
(13:50):
in, you have to be in digital. Your customers are going to experience
your brand in digital and I think that
you have User testing has a unique ability
to inform how customers are experiencing
your product or service. In a way that surveys
can't really capture. Could you share more about,
(14:14):
like immerse us into that experience? If you, if you're
trying to explain to someone how the,
the outcome of using your product. And
I'm not, I'm really not trying to make this a commercial because I, I really
an infomercial for you guys. Even though I do appreciate what you
do. For me, the basis of this question about
(14:36):
immersing people in is so they get an idea of what this
is. Cause I do want to talk about AI and how AI
might complement, overlap,
intervene, whatever the right word is with the service
that you offer and why there is sort
of a holy shrine in my mind for really
(14:59):
being able to look through the lens of the customer
as they experience your brand. Whether that's, you know, before
they even start engaging with you, all the way to. After they've left
you for a moment, maybe they become a future customer again.
Yeah. But anywhere in that whole customer life cycle. And so the
reason I believe this is whether it's journey mapping, automated
(15:22):
journey mapping, journey mapping. Whether it's getting customer feedback,
traditional ways, getting customer feedback through what we're about to talk about,
or speaking to customers, manage my walking around, you know,
getting out and walking in their shoes, I believe that AI is
not going to replace that. And if you think it's going to,
you're missing a critical component of what you need to be able to design
(15:46):
and deliver an experience that's a differentiator. Absolutely.
Yeah. We could talk about, I think those topics for a while. And AI
is something we're reading about and thinking about and prototyping
around every day. So would love to dive deep in that. Maybe just to
get to the digital. Start with the digital part. I start with a very quick
story that leads to kind of what customers then do with platforms like ours.
(16:08):
I used to live in the San Francisco Bay area and I spent some time
in Palo Alto and there's a famous coffee shop in Palo Alto called Koopa
Cafe. Struggling
to connect the dots across your customer journeys? You're not
alone. For many CX professionals, journey mapping is still
manual and fragmented. Especially in large
(16:29):
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Their platform unifies journey mapping management and
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so you can make smarter decisions and deliver smoother
(16:51):
journeys. Want to see how AI can help you map
smarter, not harder? Download our free white paper at
JourneyTrack IO podcast or or
click the link at the end of the show. Notes to get started with
AI powered journey mapping in minutes.
(17:11):
And it's near Stanford University. It's right off of University Avenue in downtown
Palo Alto. Beautiful area. And it's famous for
startup founders sitting there looking
for people to test their apps against. And I remember I had first moved
to the Bay Area, heard about this cool cafe, didn't know this part of the
story, but having a cup of coffee and I would always get
(17:33):
someone, some young, usually Stanford student, Stanford computer science student,
just lean over, see I was alone, reading a book or something and say, would
you, do you have a few minutes? Could you try my app?
And they would have, you know, iPhone was early days. They would have
an app and they were trying to make it big and start a business and
they were then gonna walk down the street and try to raise money. And I
(17:54):
would, I'd say, yeah, sure, of course, I love meeting people and helping people. And
I would go through and say, oh, this, this is confusing. Or, you
know, this, this doesn't make sense, or this is great. Oh my gosh, I love
this. Oftentimes they'd say, hey, can you try doing this task? Like, try
to, you know, add a friend to this social network or whatever.
And so, and like, literally every time I went there, if I was
(18:16):
alone, I would get one of these. And then I learned this was kind
of just the spot. That is great. I mean,
think about the entrepreneur trying to find product market fit. They, they live or die
based on the customer. They live or die based on whether they meet the need,
you know, first understand the customer, understand the problem, and then meet the need of
the problem and deliver a great solution. It's no different for big companies.
(18:38):
It's just you get out of the coffee shop when you're in a big company,
you're in your office and you get farther away from the
customer and you start thinking, I need to get consultants to talk to my
customers. Or I, you know, just. All I can do is
mass surveys. What we enable is basically taking that cup of coffee
experience and doing it at scale and making it really
(19:00):
easy and fast, even if you're in the HQ building
to virtually sit with the customer. And so one way people use
this is like this, a video conversation where they're
asking the customer questions or looking at an application, looking at their
screen as they go through your prototype or your app or your digital
experience, whatever it is, your website, and getting
(19:22):
feedback this way, live. Another very common way is even
more common, is without Someone live moderating it. It's called
an unmoderated test. And you send some instructions
to people and you say try to check out from
this experience. We're trying to make it more efficient. What do you think of our
one click buying? And I want you to follow these five steps and
(19:45):
panelists, there are people out there that do this. It's kind of gig work
and they do it for money. But they also a lot of them do it
because they really like contributing and they want to see better
experiences for all of us and less frustrating experiences. And
they'll go through those steps on video. Thinking out loud. It's called
think out loud testing and you can do that with tens, with
(20:05):
hundreds of people. So it basically lets you
scale Koopa Cafe in Palo Alto, get the feedback from the customer
and lets bigger companies be more like startups and be more
agile and faster. Love it. We'll be calling
Koopa Cafe and Palo Alto for some ad
sponsorships opportunities for the show. What a great story.
(20:27):
Love that story. Think out loud is really cool. We use it at the
bank. We use user testing at the bank. I work, I worked for in the
past for new a new account opening for B2C
customers because in the past it was all you got to go to a
branch and there was no online self service version
of it. So user testing I'm sure would do a great job of
(20:50):
that. And what you talk about is for me to think about
being able to get back from the product manager, head of marketing
or even cx but to be able to get back customers as they're
clicking through different spots on your site and saying why is
that button over there? Why can't I have a field that just does this? You
know, ask me for this. Why do I have to re enter this information
(21:13):
over and over again? Those kind of things. So surveys
and feedback will tell you and operational data will tell you that they,
that they checked out. Like that they clicked off your site or
that they went on and then they didn't complete a cycle. It'll tell you that
and it'll tell you also if they were dissatisfied or wouldn't recommend you.
But it won't tell you the nitty gritty of what went wrong,
(21:35):
like what specifically disturbed
them. Unless you're really lucky and really really great at getting text analytics. And
even then you end up in the macro world and you might miss
some important nuances. Would you agree? 100% agree.
Most current feedback methods tell you the what is happening.
Like you talked about analytics, surveys what happened
(21:59):
doesn't tell you the why we talk about. You need to understand
the why to provide a truly great customer experience. And
what better way to understand why people think the way they
do, feel the way they do about your brand or your product than to see
them, hear them, watch them try it.
So we have talked, we really had a good conversation around
(22:21):
talking about the differentiators and why this
is important. Are there any other strategies? If
you were to advise a CEO
or a head of operations, for example, who felt
like they were missing something, they had some gaps, maybe they were really concerned
about the experience gap in their own, in their own organization because
(22:43):
maybe there was some smoke, smoke in the data or
through some particular customer outcries and
they wanted to set up a structure, you know, a strategy. How do they begin
to even think about this other than calling your, your team know which they
could do, but from a strategic standpoint, your chief strategy officer. What are
some ways that we can help them out? Absolutely. First
(23:05):
I think it's just, it's stating that it is a priority
and something for the organization to work on. It's
not, you know, letting the team assume that
what they're currently doing is good enough. So the executive has the
bullhorn. They can say this is, this is a priority and we need to,
we need to find ways to do better. I'd say the second is
(23:29):
a mindset shift from it's
difficult and there are old ways of doing it. The
reactive once a quarter or only kind of large
scale quantitative surveys that are impersonal. There's just a mindset
shift needed to understand that different ways of working are possible.
You can get closer to customers at scale
(23:51):
more quickly and actually proactively. I think there's just actually a lot of
maybe we should call the awareness gap. Like there's just not enough
awareness. I'd say especially in marketing and CX
executives that the kind of 50 year,
perhaps agency model, you know, that there are other ways of
getting feedback and insights. We're seeing more and more awareness now. But
(24:14):
that would be the second big thing is like mindset shift that it's possible ask
the teams then to go and solve it.
And I think most executives will be surprised once they let
their teams loose on what they can bring back. And I've seen customers
transform from very reactive old
ways of getting feedback to the voice of the customer is around
(24:36):
the executive table. They will have the
executive team seeing videos, hearing customer feedback
and really informing, you know, the big strategic decisions
all the way down to the Feature decisions.
And from my experience too is there's really nothing quite
like the executives, you know,
(24:58):
experiencing what the customer is experiencing.
Absolutely. Seeing is believing. Seeing and hearing, you know,
is super powerful. It's, it's kind of a no brainer
when you think about it, that every company should be doing this. But I just
think that the methods have not been there in the past and
the kind of awareness has not been there. So, you know, something around
(25:20):
bringing the customer into the room. I think Bezos was famous in the early
days of Amazon. Jeff Bezos, where he'd have the empty chair
around the executive table which represented the customer. You know, that was a great
metaphor and just a great kind of statement of priority.
But now there's technology that can really help actually like bring the voice of the
customer in the room all the way. You know, everything except for actually
(25:43):
physically bringing them in, which you can always do, but doesn't scale as well.
Right, right. What we talked briefly earlier and
I mean we'll kind of finish out our conversation on this note is
AI and the role of AI and where do you see the intersection of
AI and user testing and methods to collect customer
feedback? Yeah, it is a topic we spend
(26:06):
a lot of time on and me personally as Chief Strategy Officer spend a lot
of time on trying to look around the corner. I think a lot of us
are, especially in technology and it's exhilarating and exhausting at the same
time because things are moving so fast. So we're in the summer of 2025 now,
AI is going to change and is changing the way these
kinds of platforms and tools work, but it's also going to change
(26:27):
the type of work that our customers need help with. So on the first one
it is more automation. And what we talk about is
being an agentic AI first platform that
will basically make it even faster and easier to get
human feedback. And so today if it's 10 steps to set up
a test, pick an audience, you know, put in your criteria or your
(26:50):
prototypes to get feedback on and all the way through to getting insights back.
Let's say that's 10 steps and hours, you know, a few hours, it should be
as easy as typing a prompt into ChatGPT and getting the
insights back. We have so much data from almost 20 years of
customer feedback. You know, customers asking for feedback from their customers,
we can actually automate most of that process. And so we talk about kind of
(27:13):
agentic AI first testing, research and insights
generation. And I would say that's just like to be expected.
I would hope people would think we're working on that and we are. The second
part is also super interesting, which is what this means for
our customers, products and their experiences that they're trying to provide to their
customers. And I mean, if we talk digital, I think AI is going
(27:35):
to impact every digital product and experience in fundamental
ways. It started With Search and ChatGPT,
now it's software development and all of these software development
agentic coding tools. It's going to impact every digital
experience that we use. And it's going to be a fundamental shift. It's
not just a new kind of paradigm, new way of designing
(27:59):
a website or a minor technology. It's a fundamental shift. And so, so
to survive in the AI age, every company is going to need to rethink their
experiences. And what better way to try to get
it right than to try it on your customers and get their feedback. So we
really think about how we help our customers make this transition
into the AI age and be winners in that age. And
(28:22):
it's really helping them get feedback on those new experiences. And
I think it's more important now than ever because this is
a once in a 20 year or more paradigm shift in technology.
We are right at the cusp of it and excited about what you guys are
doing in that field. I'm sure. I love that. Exhausting and
(28:42):
exhilarating at the same time. Hey, I
loved our conversation. I want to end it by asking you the same question
I ask all my guests. Which is what delights you as a
customer? What delights me as a customer is when I know that
the people behind the company or brand have
put a lot of thought into and care into the
(29:04):
details of the experience. I'm a very detail oriented
person. I may, I can be a great customer because if I love a product
or service, I will tell everyone about it. I will evangelize for
you. But if it's been sloppily done,
if it hasn't been designed well, you know, I will not be happy.
I'll be pretty vocal and you can just tell, you can just tell when
(29:26):
somebody really cares and they've taken the time to get, you
know, to get feedback, to put themselves in my shoes and
you know, you can tell they care about their work and I appreciate that as
a customer, as just, you know, fellow human being. So that's what
delights me is you could call it deep kind of empathy, but just really thinking
about me and having the attention to the details. Excellent.
(29:48):
Baron Urkel, thank you so much for being on the Delighted Customers
Podcast Mark. Thank you very much. This was a lot of fun.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Delighted Customers Podcast.
It would mean so much if you would take a moment to subscribe. You can
go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to
podcasts. Click on the plus sign or follow button and that will ensure
(30:10):
that you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to others.
While you're there. I'd love it if you leave a five star review. I
look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com