Using discovery to gain empathy and understanding

With goals center around growing the commercial vehicle lending business, we first had to understand how commercial customers make financing decisions, the terminology they use, and how they want to interact with vehicle lenders. Because we had very little research on our existing customers, we didn't know the best way to retain them and attract new ones. Answering these key questions was going to help us create a plan to achieve our goals. 

I was the lead UX researcher who was responsible for writing the research plan, all interview logistics including managing the recruiting, writing the moderator guide, and facilitating the interviews, synthesizing, analyzing, and creating a report of insights and findings. 

We had a lot of questions about our existing customers, so we took to our regional relationship managers to help us identify some customers. While they got us research leads, I managed the calendar of participants and sent personal calendar invites to each one. Our goal was 20 participants, so this took quite some time and follow-up. Because these were existing customers, we didn't have any screener criteria. Our only goal was to get a good, representative mix of participants.

I interviewed 19 customers across a range of regions, industries, years in business, and demographics. The interviews were all remote, 1:1 video sessions. 

During the interviews I asked customers to describe their experience with GM Financial, how they go about deciding whether to lease or buy, where they go for information on commercial vehicle financing, how they use the website today, and what term -- commercial, fleet, or business -- resonated with them most. 

Over the course of the weeks that the interviews took place, we learned so much about what goes on when a business is in need of a new vehicle for the business. We were reminded that these people are business owners and time is money, so any time spent doing other tasks directly impacts the business. Further, managing multiple vehicle account can be very daunting and difficult, especially as their fleet grows. 

I gained so much empathy for our commercial customers. Listening to them describe their problems was so eye-opening. So much so that we were able to identify new internal product and process issues to solve. 

After the interviews wrapped up, I spent days synthesizing and analyzing the data. For this project, I used a tagging method to categorize all the notes. Each category had a color. Through the categories I was able to see common themes that emerged from the interviews. 

These themes turned into 11 insights that I shared with stakeholders in a PowerPoint deck via a debrief meeting. Each insight had a recommendation to consider as well. I ended up giving the debrief presentation several times to various groups of people. The insights were written from the perspective of the customer, so when read aloud, were very powerful. 

The insights were the starting point for many discussions and have influenced other projects. We not only got the answers to our questions, but were also made aware of the severity of other issues. 

The research gave us the empathy and understanding we needed to be able to achieve the organizational goal of growth, but also revealed and prioritized other problems.