Overview

background

Enterprises and small businesses are responsible for filing monthly returns. The B2B SaaS company I work for delivers sales tax filing software. Before my involvement in the project, our marketing team sent out a survey to all our filing product customers. The survey revealed the moments that cause our customers the most frustration with our current product is making sure the tax data is as accurate as possible, a process known as reconciliation.

GOAL

Understand why a typical reconciliation process for a mid-to enterprise-sized are the most painful stages of the filing journey

OUTCOME

• A comprehensive user journey map of the reconciliation process pointing out major pain points and opportunities. 

• Two-day cross-functional alignment session that served as the foundation for our Filing product vision and roadmap.

Tools

Miro, Webex, EnjoyHQ

Duration

4 months

MY ROLE

I led the qualitative research efforts to identify our customers’ pain points and facilitated two workshops where we validated a product vision.

Project Scoping & Recruitment

Project scoping

Stakeholder Interviews

In the first week of the project, I led several working sessions with the Filing product UX designer to define goals and prioritize hypotheses. I also interviewed the development lead, the product owner, and the back-end developer to refine the scope of the project. Through these interviews, I uncovered the motivations and goals of each individual stakeholder and defined the business impact of the project as well as technical limitations. 

Recruitment Process

External recruitment with a screener survey

With a well-defined research plan, I began the recruitment process. 

During this step, I encountered a roadblock. We did not have an established program for interview incentives. I advocated for a budget by explaining why it’s important to have a screener survey when recruiting for a very targeted audience. I also used the ethnio.io interview calculator to demonstrate the market rate for incentives for the type of customers we wanted to talk to. 

As I waited for the budget approval, I finalized the screener survey. 

Upon budget approval, I reached out to our current customers to invite them to take the screener survey. 

Remote Moderated Interviews

Customer interviews: 

I held five 45 minutes moderated sessions using Webex. In each interview, I invited the participants to share their screens and demonstrate their current data import and reconciliation process. 

During the interviews, customers were able to demonstrate their entire reconciliation process from import to filing a return. 

Sharing Research

I scheduled two working sessions with the lead designer and the developers to go through each step of the journey. The rich amount of evidence from the screen shares helped illustrate the current state of our customers’ process and validate our original hypothesis. After each stage of the journey, I gave the participants a chance to ask questions and ideate.