There are questions you don’t know to ask, until you talk to customers. These conversations can lead to answers now, but also opportunities in the future.

Rob Barrett wanted to see more of these conversations happening at Experian. As Head of Innovation Portfolio, Barrett is responsible for ensuring best practices for innovative B2B product development are adopted by the global tech giant's 150 UK-based product managers (PMs). Customer research is vital to their work.

PMs at Experian did customer research before Barrett entered his current role, and it’s still their responsibility today. But there’s one area in particular where he saw an opportunity to help Experian’s PMs improve the quality of their research so they could turn customer insights into visionary products.

The problem: No process, no tools & a difficult mindset shift

In supporting Experian’s Product Managers, Barrett noticed a key distinction between where they excel and where they struggle with customer research.

“Product managers tend to be okay when there's an existing product, and they're talking about what's not working today,” Barrett said.

This requires a mindset shift from problem-solving mode into customer discovery — easier said than done.

“That's quite hard for people who are day-to-day running an existing product,” Barrett said. “So that’s what we facilitate."

When getting PMs started with customer research, he’s noticed that their aha moment often comes when customers offer insight that alters their original idea.

Even after these aha moments, Barrett recognized that customer research at Experian was still underutilized. There were no processes or tools to set people up for success.

“Some people did research better than others, if they did it at all,” Barrett said. “Typically our salespeople who are frontline client-facing would feed back what clients tell them, which is not a bad source of information. But it's not robust enough in and of itself.”

Managing candidates, recording interviews, storing data — everything — was done manually across various tools, none of which were purpose-built for B2B customer research. To build out a healthy research practice that drives real product innovation, Barrett knew they needed a more systematic approach and a dedicated tool. A home for all things research.

The solution: An innovative tool for an innovative team

In 2023, Barrett set out to find a tool that would empower Experian’s PMs to run B2B customer research more efficiently. Their biggest need was an easier way for PMs to connect with customers at a time that works best for everyone. Fortunately, he found Great Question, a UX research platform built for B2B companies.

“For our B2B customers, we need to speak to people and interview them,” Barrett said. “So we were looking for a tool that could help us manage participants, run and record interviews, and store insights."

In evaluating their options, here’s what stood out to Barrett about Great Question — both in the product and in the people.

A flexible calendar built for research

It’s true. Great Question’s research calendar allows you to sync with your work calendar and customize your availability to schedule 1:1, collective, or round-robin customer interviews without conflicts.

Plus, features like time proposals, waitlists, scheduling notices, and buffers between events (among others) help create a great experience for researchers and participants alike.

A rapid roadmap with first-class support

Innovative teams need innovative tools. So naturally, Barrett took note of Great Question’s rate of change and responsiveness to customer needs.

“The rate of roadmap progression has been very good,” Barrett said. “That is a real strength of theirs — the rate that they adapt to their clients. So we felt that the Great Question product would carry on evolving really quickly and solve a lot of things we haven’t solved yet."

He was also pleasantly surprised by the quality of customer support.

Everything in one place

Product and people aside, Barrett also recognizes the impact that having a central solution for customer research has had on their process. It provides structure and discipline to keep things running smoothly.

“When you run dozens of interviews across multiple studies and get to fifty, sixty participants, the chances of messing up get higher and higher,” Barrett said.

What’s next for Experian

Looking ahead, Barrett plans to add more and more users to their Great Question account, growing Experian’s customer research practice. It’s something he’s confident will show a strong ROI, given the great price and fast time to impact.

"We'd have to employ somebody to do it because the amount of admin work it would create. That avoided cost alone makes Great Question worth paying for, let alone the less tangible but significant benefit of higher quality and faster turnaround on research.”