Increasing Customer Empathy from Day 1

The success of many startups can be attributed to founders knowing their target market inside and out. As companies grow and new staff members arrive into a high-pressure, fast-moving environment, this level of customer insight risks getting lost. There’s one necessary component to instilling a high level of UX knowledge and understanding across a large or growing company: UX onboarding. Incorporating UX principles into the onboarding process increases the likelihood that all employees will be as empathetic to the needs and motivations of the user as the original founders.

At Shopify, we’ve recently passed the 500-employee milestone by doubling our staff every year for the past three years. With so many teams now working on different areas of our product offering, a key challenge is retaining a UX-focused mindset across the company.

Maintaining a high level of customer empathy is a key challenge for many businesses. As teams grow, more distance often develops between the employees and customers of a business. Over time, it becomes increasingly likely that many employees of larger organizations may never speak to a customer—let alone know the details of their needs.

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