How Signifyd saved 30+ hours per month on research operations

Scattered processes. Limited access to customers. Lack of automation.

Michelle Menchaca knows the challenges of B2B research too well. But now, she has a solution.

As the only UX researcher at Signifyd, a California-based SaaS company specializing in e-commerce protection, or “fearless commerce”, Michelle manages all aspects of the company’s research process and operations. 

She works closely with four designers and three product managers to help protect merchants from fraud without adding unnecessary friction to the checkout experience. And all of them use their research platform of choice — Great Question.

Research challenges at Signifyd

When Michelle joined Signifyd as a Senior Experience Researcher in 2022, she quickly discovered disconnected tools and manual processes were limiting their ability to conduct UX research at scale.

The team faced two major challenges.

Limited access to B2B customers

The main hurdle was not having a reliable participant panel. Like many researchers in the B2B space, she found it difficult to recruit people to participate in her studies.

“Because we're B2B, the direct access to customers was a little more challenging... I think it's just the nature of B2B. It can take a little bit more convincing, and we just didn't have a pool of reliable people that we could go to.”

Even contacting them was a struggle. Every participant recruitment request had to flow through customer success and sales managers, creating bottlenecks that delayed research. 

Inefficient manual processes & logistics

Michelle’s team used tools like Zoom, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, and Figma to tape together their research process. But the Frankenstack wasn’t up for the job. 

“You can do Zoom and Google Calendar and Google Sheets and Figma for prototypes, but it just becomes such a mess so quickly.”

The main issue was the lack of automation. When you run three user interview studies per month, each with up to 10 participants, conducting every step of the process manually isn’t sustainable — let alone scalable.

The consequence? Ad hoc research of limited scope and frequency:

”There was a lot that we were doing ad hoc, and it definitely limited the amount we were able to do effectively and the frequency in which we were able to talk to users.”

How Signifyd found a solution with Great Question

After diagnosing the issues that plagued her team, Michelle wasted no time. She set out to find a unified research platform to automate their logistics and improve research consistency. Great Question emerged as the leading contender.

While the strict procurement requirements of an enterprise company in the fraud protection space made for a long sales process, it paid off. Fast forward 18 months, and Michelle can’t imagine doing her job without Great Question:

“We're so happy to be on Great Question and it's really been a huge value add for us. We use it for many end-to-end aspects of our research, and all the pieces fit together."

Here's how Great Question helped transform Signifyd's research practice:

30+ hours saved per month by streamlining ResearchOps 

Great Question's all-in-one platform eliminated manual work across recruitment, scheduling, and study management.

“Great question handles all of the logistics and management of talking to users and, particularly, things that I don't want to spend my time doing.”

For Michelle and her team, that’s many hours saved on logistics. Hours they can reallocate to high-impact work.

With three studies a month, that’s at least 30 hours saved per month — or 15 days per year.

The quality of Signifyd's UX research is also more consistent, thanks to Great Question’s library of standardized templates:

“We have the surveying processes and templates and interview templates and now unmoderated testing templates, so everything runs a lot smoother.”

Targeted recruitment for accurate insights

Great Question makes it easy to securely import your customer data from a CSV file or via integration with your CRM, and then send them branded research invites.

This solved the most significant challenge Michelle faced in her early days at Signifyd: participant recruitment. They can now conduct their research regularly without worrying they won’t have enough participants.

And not just any participants. The right ones for every study, with the help of Great Question's Salesforce integration.

Access to granular participant data helped Michelle increase not just the number of customers taking part in her studies, but also their diversity. So, no more talking to the same people over and over again, which means better insights and a healthier panel in the long run.

Richer user insights with unmoderated prototype testing

When Signifyd chose Great Question, their main objective was to optimize how they ran customer interviews and surveys. However, they soon learned they could achieve much more by adopting different research methods. Like unmoderated prototype testing, which previously wasn’t even a feasible option.

“No one on my team had actually done unmoderated testing before just because it's difficult to get the logistics set up.“

From recruiting participants and setting up tasks to managing incentives and analyzing results, a lot goes into running a successful unmoderated test. Great Question streamlines it all, helping Michelle make unmoderated testing one of Signifyd's go-to study methods, both for internal and external research.

The best part? Great Question automatically tracks key usage metrics like success rate, average duration, and misclick rate, and provides timelines, paths, and click maps for every task. This makes it easier to analyze results in the same place you conducted the test. 

Improved cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder engagement

Great Question’s research repository, where Michelle stores all studies and insights, has been another game-changer for Signifyd. 

Having a centralized location for research findings has empowered Signifyd to share insights across teams, breaking down silos and democratizing research throughout the organization.

For Michelle, being able to share the voice of the customer directly with her stakeholders makes it easier to back up her recommendations and secure buy-in:

“With the research repository and highlight reels, convincing business stakeholders that they should act on our recommendations, or that this qualitative or quantitative data is actually meaningful and important, is pretty easy."

What’s next for Signifyd?

Signifyd has had initial success leveraging Great Question’s AI capabilities to extract insights from individual studies.

“We have a good handle on synthesis and summarizing how interviews are going and what the highlights are."

The team now wants to take it one step further. Their focus is on connecting the dots across multiple studies and data sources to better spot trends and patterns. 

"Something we're still working on is looking at insights across studies to try to find trends and patterns. Not just what we hear one time, but being able to connect that to what people were doing six months ago or maybe what they're doing in our product analytics and being able to tie these different types of data points and different user stories.”

And they’re confident they’ll be able to do that in Great Question, too.