97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 78. Talk to Customer Support to See What’s Tripping Up Users

Dave Connis

UXers should treat any coworkers in frequent communication with customers as deities. Just by doing their jobs, these folks gain tons of insight into the problems users face when using your product. Whatever your company calls them—customer success, customer support (maybe both?)—treat them as a resource for gathering data and challenging hypotheses.

Renaming a Feature

For example, I was a UX writer at an application development platform where customers repeatedly asked for a feature even though it was already in the product. With some research, my team found the current name wasn’t connecting with users because it didn’t give them any context into what the feature actually did. So it sat untouched in a settings section.

My team was debating a new name when my manager said, “I wonder what users call this specific functionality when they talk to support?” So we walked out of the meeting room and over to a customer support rep and asked them. Sure enough, when customers requested the feature from customer support, most used a specific term that wasn’t reflected in the name or in our docs. So instead of coming up with a brand-new name, we just named it what our users already called it.

We checked in with support a month later to see whether customers still asked for that feature, and we found requests ...