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Summary
If you want to improve your product’s user experience, you need to show your team what it’s like for real people to use your product. It’s a simple concept, but many companies struggle to do this consistently. Zapier recently launched an initiative that simplifies this exposure to users. ‘All Hands Research ride-alongs’ are open UX research sessions where anyone at Zapier can observe users interacting with the product and hear their feedback. Zapier has seen PMs, designers, marketers, executives and more join these sessions and apply learnings to their everyday work. More importantly, they keep coming back for more!
Key Insights
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Zapier has a long-standing All Hands Support practice where all employees spend time on customer support weekly, keeping them connected to user problems.
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Highly technical support tickets and product complexity lowered participation and motivation from non-support team members in customer support.
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Expanding user exposure beyond support through live research ride alongs helps employees gain richer perspectives on user experience.
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All Hands Research Ride Alongs invite any employee to observe live user interviews, removing prior UX/research experience as a barrier.
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A 45-minute interactive UXR 101 training session precedes ride along participation, easing intimidation and providing basic research knowledge.
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Slack is used as a central hub for session discovery and participation with automated alerts and easy RSVP via reactions, removing friction.
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Lookback’s live share tool enables a separate observer UI with chat and notes while isolating and simplifying participant experience.
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Automating the entire join process using Zapier tools removes signup friction, making spontaneous participation more likely.
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Despite strong efforts, a segment of employees choose not to participate in research ride alongs due to fear, past experiences, or preference for other customer interaction modes.
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Research ride alongs not only increase customer empathy but also foster unexpected cross-team collaboration and camaraderie across a distributed workforce.
Notable Quotes
"We have an expectation that each teammate spends roughly two hours per week on customer support since the company was founded."
"Answering some tickets becomes quite technical and tedious for folks outside of product, especially marketing or recruiting."
"Real exposure to users is irreplaceable — just like the difference between hearing about snow and experiencing your first snowfall."
"We wanted to make research accessible and remove any intimidation for people to join user research ride alongs."
"UX research can seem really intimidating if you’re outside the UX world and that unfamiliarity can stop people joining."
"We automated the whole discovery and joining flow in Slack using Zapier so all teammates have to do is react and then just click a join link."
"Lookback lets us have observers who can chat and take notes invisibly while participants only see the moderator, no distractions."
"Some people told me they don’t think they’re qualified enough to observe research sessions even after training."
"Despite all the improvements, there will likely never be a time when every Zapier employee participates in ride alongs."
"One of my favorite things is the interaction thread on Slack before and during sessions—it builds camaraderie across diverse teams."
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