How the Pandemic Drives the Need for Remote User Testing

We talked to Tina Banerjee of Userpeek about user testing, and she had the following to say:-

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Userpeek.

Tina Banerjee: My career began in the startup scene in Berlin, where I built and led various teams in the areas of user experience, design, research, marketing and played a key role in determining the strategic direction. Like many of the startups at the time, we were digital pioneers who knew how to use new technologies to turn data into actionable insights and use them to develop products and marketing that disrupted the relevant industries. 

The only problem was that no one understood what customers really thought or how they made decisions. Unlike salespeople in local shops who talk to their customers – see and understand them and react immediately when something is wrong – online businesses don’t see their customers. They don’t see what they are doing, how they are finding something and what is bothering them because the customer is sitting at home in front of a desktop computer or using a mobile phone while on the move – far away from those who are developing and optimizing the digital offers. 

In times of COVID-19, this problem becomes critical when people aged 70 and over are obliged to register for a vaccination appointment in order to be vaccinated. They have great difficulty in accomplishing the task and often fail because processes are cumbersome or do not work at all. A user test in advance would probably have saved a lot of trouble.

Even today, it is difficult for digital companies to really know their customers. This is where user testing comes in. User testing allows teams to really see and hear what customers are thinking in order to develop products that actually work. The teams I worked with used various tools to do this remotely rather than inviting customers into the office, but it was difficult to get things going. Also, it took quite a long time to run such tests, with all the stages like preparation, testing, review and evaluation, so I thought about a tool that would combine everything to test users remotely. That’s how I ended up co-founding Userpeek in 2019. To build a tool that makes user testing as easy and affordable as possible for businesses of all shapes and sizes. I know how a single user test changes everything – from total uncertainty to “now we know what to do”. It’s as simple as that. A picture is worth a thousand words, imagine what a video can say. Or in the words of Avinash Kaushik: “You watch the videos and read the comments, you cry, you fix things, you become rich.”

How does Userpeek innovate?

Tina Banerjee: Userpeek innovates the way businesses make better decisions based on real customer feedback. In every conceivable way. It starts with finding the right testers based on customer profiles and personas. Userpeek’s pool of testers grows quickly and is diversified. The test setup is easy, you can start without any experience and get real customer feedback within 24 hours. We’ve streamlined the review process by adding several features that make it easy to collect, share and collaborate with other teams. This ensures that the research results can be used by everyone – design, UX, product management, marketing, sales and many more. But that’s not all. Userpeek enables teams to test users in an automated way to constantly validate their optimizations and grow faster. 

Userpeek is only at the beginning of its journey, but the mission is clear. 

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business finances?

Tina Banerjee: Userpeek has not launched yet, where are still in development as planned. We are also completely bootstrapped. The pandemic has not affected our finances in any way. This is mainly to do with our global team. We were already fully remote before the pandemic and have been operating this way for quite some time. We are a SaaS business, so we are rather positively affected by the pandemic. In fact, it’s driving digitization, so people are more interested in Userpeek than ever before, even though it’s still in the pre-launch phase. We are working towards an earlier launch to serve this ever-increasing demand. 

Did you have to make difficult choices regarding human resources and what are the lessons learned?

Tina Banerjee: No. Quite the opposite. We are now able to grow the team faster than before. 

Did you benefit from any government grants, and did that help keep your business afloat?

Tina Banerjee: No, Userpeek is fully bootstrapped. 

Your final thoughts?

The pandemic has rapidly increased the need for companies to deliver digital experiences that fit their customers. Our remote user testing solution enables companies of all shapes and sizes to do so. 

Your website? 

https://userpeek.com/