Table of content
- What is Customer Experience
- Customer Experience and the App industry
- Key Aspects of Customer Experience Testing
- Hearing the Customer
- Mapping the customer journey
- Digital Testing
- Customer Experience Testing
- Common Pitfalls in Customer Experience Testing
- Tools and Frameworks to Address These Challenges
- Conclusion
Growing up in the twentieth century, I’m sure we have all witnessed our parents and grandparents taking us to do the daily chores. Be it going to the same barber to cut our hair, or going to the same tailor to stitch our clothes, or the same grocery store that they have been going to for ages. This is mostly because of the close relationship that was built over the years between the customer and the vendors, where loyalty and quality were prioritized more than ever. However, with the rise of the information age and digitalization, shops and vendors have been upgrading their services to serve a larger group of customers and extend their reach from small localities to wider geographies, and also competing with the global eCommerce firms that are trying to capture a majority of the market share.
With so many brands, competitors, and vendors taking the online route, how does one stand out in the marketplace? By keeping an eye out on online ratings, reviews, and customer experience. In the world of digitalization, many customers are starting to depend on reviews posted by other customers, the ratings that businesses receive, and experiences shared by others about the business or product. While these three aspects play a crucial role in the digital transformation of businesses, we will specifically focus on factors of App Testing to improve the Customer Experience.
But before we get to the crux of the subject we need to understand what exactly Customer Experience (CX) means?
What is Customer Experience
Customer Experience encompasses various aspects of a business that a customer encounters. Starting from jotting down available options, assessing the service, interacting with the product, making a decision to buy, and leaving their feedback about the service cover Customer Experience (CX). It is the culmination of the interactions between a customer and a business or an organization when the services or products are being exchanged between the parties. Customer Experience isn’t restricted only to a particular period when a customer performs a transaction with the business or vendor. Rather it is the wholesome experience that one goes through in availing a particular service or product.
Customer Experience and the App industry
With the advancement of technology and the information age, the way to engage our customers has drastically changed. The smartphone generation has leveled the playing field for advertisers, businesses, and vendors to creatively engage their customers. With the advent of Social Media, Omni-channel marketing, customized notifications, etc. have become prime importance for businesses to succeed. And, with a number of apps competing in the market and making their way into our phones. There is no room for errors or second chances. While Customer Experience is not only about Mobile and Web Apps, the App industry sure does play an important role. Of course, the approach to enhance the customer experience is to start with the customer. And customer Experience Testing is one of the key approaches that bring the QA industry closer to the user/customer-centric approach. Here’s a helpful webinar that sheds more on Customer Experience and the Role of Testing.
Key Aspects of Customer Experience Testing
As suggested earlier, it is vital to start from the customer and incorporate QA from the beginning of the development itself. But how do we do that? – Is a question that has been gaining popularity amongst many QA experts in the field. While exploratory testing comes closer to incorporating a user-centric testing approach it isn’t the end-all. Creating a continuous feedback loop through the use of DevOps, testing around customer behavior, analyzing customer data to understand their needs are some of the main aspects that one should focus on when considering customer experience testing. Here are four core aspects of Customer Experience –
Hearing the Customer
Mapping Customer Journey
Digital Testing
Customer experience testing
Hearing the Customer
Getting to know the needs of the customer is primary to any product or service offerings by businesses and vendors. With that said, it becomes vital that we understand the
needs of the customer in order to provide an delightful experience. But, how do we get to know the needs of the customer? This is where the use of surveys and questionnaires comes into play. Hearing the Customer is not just a primary step, but rather a continuous process. We are supposed to be focused on constantly receiving feedback from the customers or target audience to solve their problems. This constant feedback loop between the stakeholders, development, and operation teams creates a more robust framework that supports the user/customer-centric approach. This continuous feedback loop helps us understand the customer’s needs to curate the solutions that provide a delightful experience. Once we understand the needs of the customer, we can move on to the customer journey process, where we will start to map out the solution from start to finish.
Mapping the customer journey
There are a number of things that come to play when we talk about mapping the customer journey. Customer journey is a detailed roadmap of the list of tasks that the customer performs along with the feeling that he/she harbors while performing the task to render the service. For example, a person might be feeling anxious once they fill in the card details to make a purchase and wait for a confirmation, or he/she might be excited to see that a particular product is on discount. The customer journey mapping not only captures the details of the tasks and emotions but also helps enhance the customer experience and brings clarity within the teams to design and improve the required solutions. But before we even attempt to chart out the course, it is important to gather information about the target audience, do a competitor analysis, conduct customer surveys, and draw insights from previously researched sources. And if it is a new segment by itself. Conducting moderated or unmoderated discussions, surveys, and interviews will provide valuable insights to create a clear roadmap to address the current needs of the customers.
The customer journey mapping exercise will provide us information about the different stages, the anticipated feeling of the customer, the touchpoints they will use at various stages, etc. The customer journey map will help us gain a holistic understanding of not just the physical needs, but also gives us insights into the emotions that one might experience at different stages. This would enable us to think, feel and put ourselves in the customer’s shoes to curate a holistic solution that is genuine and empathetic.
Digital Testing
In today’s omnichannel environment, users interact with apps across multiple devices, platforms, and interfaces. Digital testing ensures consistency and high performance regardless of where the interaction happens.
- Cross-Device Compatibility: Test your app on a wide range of devices, operating systems, and screen sizes to ensure uniform performance. Tools like Pcloudy help streamline this process.
- Browser and App Testing: Ensure smooth functionality across popular browsers and mobile apps by performing functional and regression testing.
- Scenario-Based Testing: Validate how the app performs under real-world scenarios, such as low battery, spotty network coverage, or high traffic conditions.
Digital testing establishes a reliable and consistent experience, meeting user expectations in diverse usage environments.
Customer Experience Testing
What is the experience that customers would have when going through your website? Is it easy for them to navigate through the website to reach a particular page or solution? If your business is a global e-commerce company, how easy or difficult is it to complete a product purchase in real-life scenarios. How will an app perform when the battery is running low, or the network reception isn’t that great? What is going through the mind of the user when a particular app isn’t responding appropriately, is he or she able to resolve it? These are some of the questions that would shed light on the experience of the customer when using your service or a product. Using different types of testing like resilience testing, exploratory testing, website navigation, Usability testing, will provide us the data to improve, bring new features, or get rid of the features that we don’t need to increase the performance of the system. Consequently, this will result in enhancing the customer experience from time to time.
Challenges and Solutions
Customer experience testing is critical for delivering a smooth and satisfying user journey, but it’s not without its challenges. QA teams must overcome common pitfalls and leverage the right tools and frameworks to ensure apps meet user expectations.
Common Pitfalls in Customer Experience Testing
1. Limited User Context in Testing
a. Many testing strategies fail to incorporate real-world user scenarios, leading to gaps in understanding how the app behaves under diverse conditions like low battery, weak network, or edge use cases.
2. Fragmented Testing Environments
a. Disconnected tools and platforms for testing create a fragmented approach, making it difficult to maintain consistency across devices, browsers, and operating systems.
3. Overlooking Emotional Aspects of User Experience
a. Testing often focuses solely on functionality and performance, ignoring the emotional journey of the user, such as frustration with slow-loading pages or delight with seamless navigation.
4. Inefficient Feedback Loops
a. A lack of continuous feedback mechanisms slows down the ability to respond to user needs and improve the app experience in real time.
5. Scalability Challenges
a. As apps grow to support more devices, operating systems, and geographies, QA teams struggle to scale testing efforts without compromising on quality or speed.
Tools and Frameworks to Address These Challenges
- User Behavior Analytics Tools
a. Tools like Hotjar or Mixpanel provide insights into how users interact with your app, highlighting navigation paths, drop-offs, and frequent actions. These insights help create test scenarios that mimic real-world usage.
2. Unified Testing Platforms
a. Pcloudy offer an integrated environment for cross-device, cross-browser testing, allowing QA teams to ensure consistency and scalability in testing efforts.
3. Customer Feedback Platforms
a. Tools like SurveyMonkey and Usabilla help gather user feedback directly, ensuring that app updates align with real customer needs.
4. Customer Journey Mapping Frameworks
a. Frameworks like UXPressia or Smaply assist in visualizing the customer journey, enabling QA teams to understand emotional and functional touchpoints and prioritize testing accordingly.
5. Automation Testing Tools
a. Automation frameworks like Selenium, Appium, or TestNG can reduce manual testing efforts and provide faster regression testing, ensuring your app is ready for timely updates.
6. Performance and Load Testing Tools
a. Use tools like JMeter or LoadRunner to test how the app performs under varying traffic conditions, ensuring reliability even during peak usage times.
Conclusion
Customer Experience plays an important role in keeping our customers satisfied and engaged. And testing plays a crucial role in ensuring that the quality of the systems is on
point so that customers enjoy a smooth experience when using a product or availing a service. Understanding these important factors that affect and enhance the customer experience will go a long way in choosing the right strategies to rethink and improve the features of your products and services. While QA plays a crucial role in testing, it is important for all teams to work together to understand the exact needs of the customer and meet their expectations promptly. Here is another helpful resource that sheds light on the other important App Testing technologies of 2024.
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