What is Customer Experience Testing & How to Excel At It? Unsurprisingly, consumers base their purchase decisions on customer experience. Despite 73% of consumers placing a high value on customer experience, only 49% believe companies meet their expectations. Testlio October 4th, 2024 Businesses that integrate customer experience into the software development life cycle have shown better customer retention and satisfaction rates. There is a direct correlation between product quality and customer satisfaction. The better the application’s performance and user experience, the more customers it will attract. Customer reviews and feedback can make or break a business. Apps with five-star ratings on the Play Store see significantly more downloads. This reality makes customer success the top priority for software development and testing teams. This article will explain customer experience testing, how it is conducted, and why it matters. What is Customer Experience Testing? Customer experience testing is a type of non-functional testing in which the quality assurance (QA) team evaluates how users interact with a product throughout their journey. Customer experience testing, or CX Testing,’ involves observing user behavior, collecting feedback, and identifying pain points that may affect overall customer satisfaction. . Customer Experience Testing Components Typically, when QA teams test an application, they focus on testing for customer requirements. They write test cases based on specifications and expectations given by stakeholders. This approach often overlooks the customer experience. Customer experience testing ensures that the product provides a smooth user experience. Why is Customer Experience Testing Important? Customer experience testing breaks or makes business deals. Satisfied customers are likelier to remain loyal, recommend the brand, and make repeat purchases. A single bad review can sway potential users away from an application, leading to reduced sales. It can also make organizations rethink their whole processes. To understand the importance of customer experience testing, let’s take a look at the following key points: Customer Satisfaction: Customer experience testing helps businesses understand customer needs and preferences. This enables teams to develop products and services that align with their expectations. Competitive Advantage: A good customer experience is essential for differentiating the brand and gaining a competitive edge. Customer experience testing ensures that the application experience is up to par. It also helps businesses identify areas where they excel compared to their competitors. Business Growth: Positive customer experiences help build good customer relationships. Thorough CX testing results in a better customer experience, ensuring customer loyalty, advocacy, and increased revenue. By investing in CX testing, businesses can improve their bottom line and achieve long-term growth. Customer Experience Testing Methodologies Customer experience testing starts long before customers start using the application. In agile development, where development and testing are incremental, teams add customer experience testing with each increment. QA teams play a vital role in ensuring the product satisfies customer needs. Some of the testing methodologies that QA teams use for customer experience testing are explained below: Usability Testing Usability testing evaluates how easy and user-friendly a product is. It focuses on the user experience (UX) by observing real users interacting with a product. Why is Usability Testing Important? Some key objectives of usability testing: Identify user experience issues: Usability testing ensures a smooth and intuitive user experience. It is often done by testers who have never used the application to analyze how easy it is for a first-time user. During usability testing, teams pinpoint areas of confusion or frustration to identify potential improvements. Enhance application effectiveness: Usability testing ensures users can go through user flows effectively and efficiently. By validating that the product meets user needs, teams can decide to optimize UI/UX. Validate design decisions: Usability testing either approves or disapproves the design choices and decisions. For example, listing pages in e-commerce applications are usually paginated, and social media applications are designed with infinite scrolling. These design decisions can only be made after thorough usability testing. A/B Testing A/B testing is a type in which two versions of a web page or application are compared to determine which performs better. In this approach, users are randomly assigned to either version A or B. After using the application for a specific period, their interactions are analyzed to assess which variant best meets the customer’s requirements. A/B Testing Some key objectives of A/B testing are: Improve user reach: By testing two application versions simultaneously, the team can analyze which version got more hits, downloads, and praise. This can help decide which application version will be more attractive to users. Validate user experience: A/B testing helps determine which variant of the user interface is more intuitive and user-friendly. Based on the results, teams make design decisions. Data-driven decision making: A/B testing calculates metrics like click-through page, bounce rate, average time on page, and user retention rate. This data helps draw actionable insights into the overall application’s interface. Survey Feedback and Mechanisms Survey feedback includes collecting customer responses regarding their experiences, opinions, and satisfaction with the product. Surveys can be conducted through various mechanisms, such as online forms, email, in-app prompts, etc. Some key objectives of survey feedback are: Gather insights on user experience: Survey feedback helps pinpoint specific areas in the application that need improvement, such as functionality, design, or content. Measure customer satisfaction: Some applications show a rating prompt, a simple rating scale to measure customer satisfaction. These scales can be used to see how many users are satisfied with the application experience. An Example of Rate Prompts Identify improvement areas: Customers communicate the application’s improvement areas and enhancements through survey feedback. The team can then prioritize these improvements. Google Meet Feedback Survey Heatmaps and Session Recordings Heatmaps are visual or graphical representations of user interactions with the system. They show each minor and major user action, such as clicking, scrolling, hovering, etc. Session recordings capture videos of the user interactions. They provide detailed documentation on the whole user journey. Heatmap Report by Hotjar Some key objectives of heatmaps and session recordings are: Identify user engagement areas: Heatmaps and session recordings allow teams to have an end-to-end view of the whole user journey. This helps identify the areas of applications that attract customers more. Improve onboarding Process: Analyzing heatmaps and session recordings can help teams identify the areas where users struggled the most. These insights allow the teams to improve and refine their customer onboarding process. Customer Journey Mapping Customer journey mapping is a visual representation of the steps a customer takes when interacting with an application. It includes each touchpoint, from opening the application to completing the whole user flow. Customer Journey Map Some key objectives of customer journey mapping are: Understand customer needs: Customer journey maps determine what the customer needs from the product. It is most commonly used when beta versions of applications are released. This helps identify customer requirements before going into production. Align internal teams with customer feedback: Customer journey maps serve as a bridge between internal (Development, QA, and PM) and external (Customer success team, support) teams. They provide a deep analysis of customers’ mindsets and sentiments, which can be used to improve the quality of the overall product. Eye Tracking Eye tracking is a technology that measures where and how long a user looks at various elements on a screen in the application. It uses sensors or cameras to capture eye movements. Eye tracking is usually used to identify which elements of the user interface attract the user the most. The key objectives of eye tracking include: Understand user attention: Eye tracking helps the team understand which parts of the user interface caught the users’ attention. This information helps the team build future designs based on similar patterns. Enhancing marketing strategies: Eye tracking reveals where users focus their attention in ads. Marketers can use this data to position key messages. This increases customer engagement with the promotional ads inside the applications. Expert Reviews Expert reviews include getting advice/reviews from experts and professionals on user interface, application design, and customer experience. Expert reviews are usually a series of consultancy sessions with senior experts and the software teams. Experts provide knowledge and insights on how to improve the customer’s overall experience. Areas of Focus for Expert Reviews Expert reviews have the following key objectives: Get actionable feedback on user experience: Expert reviews provide valuable feedback on the application’s accessibility, content, interaction, user-friendliness, navigation, and visual designs. This feedback is used to improve the customer experience. Benchmarking against standards: Experts compare the application under test (AUT) against industry standards and best practices. This helps the organizations understand where and against what they stand in the market. How to Incorporate Customer Experience Testing into Existing QA Efforts Quality Assurance and Customer Satisfaction Customer experience testing is the main part of each quality assurance domain. Manual and Automation QA teams test the product’s functional and non-functional requirements. Performance QA teams ensure the user experience is smooth and fast when thousands of customers interact with the application. For the best customer experience, all hands should be on deck. QA teams (Manual, Automation, and Performance) should design test cases focusing on functionality and accessibility. To incorporate customer experience testing into an existing process, QA teams should keep these key actions in mind: 1. Understand the Customer The first step is to understand the customer. It is essential to know the customer’s behavior, requirements, mindset, and motivation before proceeding to the design, development, and testing phase. Some important steps to cover in this phase are: Define the target audience: Start by defining the target audience. For instance, if you’re developing a fitness app, find out what motivates users to track their workouts. Do your market research and look for systems of similar domains to ensure the best user experience. Use surveys and interviews: QA teams should gather periodic feedback about the product and the processes when working directly with customers. For this purpose, surveys and 1-1 meetings are conducted. 2. Consolidate and Analyze Customer Feedback Providing support and incorporating customer feedback is extremely important for businesses. Customers are likelier to leave brands that do not provide customer support and incorporate customer feedback. QA teams should remember the following key points when handling customer feedback: Focus on customer feedback: The feedback from the actual users/customers should be prioritized. The best practice here is to keep a ‘Customer Enhancements’ log in the backlog. A few tasks from the customer enhancements backlog should be picked up with each release. Stay in touch with the customer: QAs should stay in touch with customers by continuously communicating with the customer support team and training the support team in user flows. This will help them understand the customers better. 3. Engage Customer Success Teams in QA Planning Engaging the customer success team in QA planning helps incorporate customer feedback and sentiments into test planning. Here, QAs have the following few action items on their ends: Facilitate meetings: QA leads should add the customer representation team to the planning meetings. This way, they can share customer feedback about previous releases early on. Create user stories: QAs should collaborate with the product management and customer support teams to write accurate and user-centric user stories. For example, a user story about login functionality should be titled: As a User, I want to be able to log into the application using my email and password. 4. Map the Customer Journey Across the Test Cases The customer/User journey is defined as the steps the customer/user goes through when interacting with the application. Mapping the customer journey helps identify all user interactions with the product. QAs can contribute to the customer journey in these ways: Identify key touchpoints: QAs work with product managers and UI/UX designers to outline all customer touchpoints. For an e-commerce application, QAs will identify user journey touchpoints like viewing the items, adding them to the cart, and the checkout flow. Develop test cases: QAs create test cases reflecting the customer journey. They ensure that all the touchpoints are assessed for usability and functionality testing. 5. Address Emotional and Psychological User Experiences Understanding the emotional responses of users can enhance product design and functionality. When it comes to addressing user’s response, the QA’s role is described below: Utilize sentiment analysis: Use tools that analyze customer feedback for emotional cues. QA can use this data to prioritize testing on features that impact user emotions. Evaluate language and tone: Ensure in-app messaging and notifications resonate with users. This involves testing for clarity, relevance, and emotional appeal. 6. Perform Comprehensive Performance Testing Performance testing is a type of non-functional testing that evaluates the speed, responsiveness, stability, and scalability of a system under a specific workload. Performance issues like high screen load times cause customer dissatisfaction. When integrating performance testing with customer experience following are a few action items: Establish performance benchmarks: QAs collaborate with product owners and stakeholders to document performance benchmarks. These benchmarks include the number of users, load times, etc. The QA team also tests the application’s performance on various devices and OS to ensure a smooth user experience across devices. Simulate real-world scenarios: QAs conduct tests that mimic real user behavior, such as high traffic or limited bandwidth conditions. This helps in identifying performance bottlenecks. Why is Customer Experience Testing Important? To ensure a satisfied customer experience, the quality assurance team must center their testing on customer experience. It improves user satisfaction and product quality. Training of the QA team in this regard is essential. The QA team should know the gaps in the test cases so that they can be filled with customer experience test cases. Here are some key reasons why this training matters: User satisfaction: Effective training allows teams to spot usability issues early on in the software development life cycle. When QA teams learn how to test and improve user experience, they create products that meet customers’ real needs. Boosts customer retention: Customer experience testing leads to higher retention rates. Training helps QA teams tackle customer pain points and build loyalty. Graph Showing Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Improves product quality: QA team training in customer experience testing ensures that the teams deliver better products. An intuitive user experience ultimately improves sales. Well-trained teams catch and fix UX issues early, which means fewer problems after the product goes into production. Effects of Teamwork on Company Success Final Thoughts Customer experience testing predicts how satisfied the customer will be with the product. It is not just about finding bugs but about understanding the user’s journey and feelings. Companies that invest in customer experience testing lead to higher satisfaction and better retention rates. Quality assurance teams collaborate with the customer success and support teams to understand the customer better. They gather and prioritize the customer side feedback to grow sales and business. Why Choose Testilio for Customer Experience Testing: Customer-centric focus: In Testilio, QA teams prioritize understanding the entire user journey. This ensures that our test cases are customer-centric. Proven results: Testilio’s commitment to high-quality functional and usability testing has increased customer satisfaction and retention. Collaborative approach: Testilio’s quality assurance team works closely with customer success and support teams to gather valuable feedback. This enables continuous improvement and impactful solutions. Competitive edge: By focusing on customer experience, Testilio has helped clients stand out in the market, leading to sustained revenue growth and success. Are you looking for software testing support? Collaborate with Testlio for expert QA services that meet the highest quality standards. Contact sales to find out how we can help you ensure flawless software quality!