Customer success leads to testing success

30 days of Testability, day twenty-eight

Quality is determined by the customer

Today’s challenge:

Pair with an internal user or customer support person and explore your application together. Share your findings on The Club.

I believe that the customer often has the final say when it comes to the quality of your product. A feature could pass all the tests in the world - but if the customer finds it difficult to use, or buggy, or unappealing - then there’s a problem.

Customer support teams are often on the front line of this. They can bring a unique and valuable perspective to testing, and to be frank, I don’t spend enough time with our support team.

This exercise was a timely reminder as to how valuable this can be.

Our software has bugs…

I paired up with Emma Lavelle, our Director of Customer Success, to look at a new feature we’ve built.

Posting this video requires a bit of vulnerability - because, well, there are bugs. It’s a bit unusual to post something that shows your product ‘warts and all’.

But, I want to show how valuable a session like this can be. Because as you’ll see, Emma picks up on a few quirks with our software that neither myself, or the development team, had considered.

…but it has successes, too!

We had a lot to talk about! I really came away from this wanting to have this conversation more often - and earlier.

The good news is, that despite finding some usability issues, Emma found her way through the experience with little difficulty. We have room to improve for sure, but for the most part, I consider it a win.

Thanks

Thanks Emma for a great chat, and thank you for watching it. See you for the next one!