Lindex user research going agile with Leanlab

A manual and labour intensive process slowing down customer research

Lindex used to have a manual and labour intensive way of doing user tests and engaging with users They relied heavily on interviews, which require a lot of work in the recruiting phase, during the actual execution as well as in analysing the data. 

The process of getting customer input used to be very complex and time consuming:

1. Whenever input from customers was needed they manually tried to reach as many customers as possible through email and have them sign up for an interview.
2. After the initial recruitment, one person at Lindex directly contacted suitable persons to agree on an interview.
3. The interview itself was run by two persons, one being the actual interviewer and the other taking notes.
4. Finally the process ended with the cumbersome and time consuming work to  manually analyse the notes from these interviews. needed to be analysed.

Since people are hard to recruit for user research these days, a huge amount of work went into getting just a few interviews done. Out of maybe one hundred persons who originally agreed to participate only five to seven really ended up being interviewed.

This led Lindex to start looking into solutions that could not only provide them with a faster way to involve their users, but also would be able to provide them with more variety in research methods. 

After scanning through different options and testing a few tools they ended up choosing Leanlab. What made up their mind was that:

1. Leanlab allows an easy way to build your own Customer Lab. 
2. The platform provides a wide variety of research methods (including both qualitative and quantitative methods) all on one platform.
3. Leanlab gathers all user research into one platform, removing the hassle of needing to use a variety of tools for different purposes

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Smooth setup and good collaboration

Once the decision was made, setting up the platform went smoothly. Despite a common concern about how to get users recruited to the Customer Lab, Lindex did not encounter any problems with that. Recruiting was done by contacting users directly through email, by promoting the community on the Lindex website and through a Facebook campaign. Getting the participants in was very easy and also activating them went very well. In the beginning the Lindex team got very impressed with how much users actually shared.

Lindex customer panel brings customers close to service development

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Both during onboarding and throughout the collaboration, one thing that Lindex has appreciated has been the support from the Leanlab team. In the beginning the onboarding was seen as thorough and all features on the platform were well introduced. The Lindex team has also appreciated a very good and kind dialogue the whole time. If you have a question, you will get an answer and there are no stupid questions, you can always ask if you want help. 

Eye opening projects show the value of talking to your users

One project that really showed the value of user collaboration, was when Lindex wanted to learn more about how users look at the loyalty program that Lindex offers. Lindex had a feeling that the loyalty program could come across as somewhat confusing and they wanted to understand at what point of the shopping journey their members log in, in order to get the membership points for their purchase. The insights gathered from that, really were an eye-opener for the business and revealed how hard it is to just guess what users think and how they act without them telling you.

Currently Lindex is working on developing a new service, StyleMe, which they will launch in fall 2024. The offer and structure of the service is a result of a deep knowledge in customer insights and real customer needs, where lab members have played a significant role.

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Lindex is collaborating with their customers all the way through the StyleMe service development

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Getting answers from users within 24 hours

Leanlab has brought users much closer to service development at Lindex. Thanks to Leanlab, Lindex is now able to immediately turn to their users with any matter. From a very cumbersome process of setting up interviews with all the hassle of recruiting and executing them, Lindex can now get feedback from several users in just one day. This saves days of work and enables a continuous collaboration with users that would not be possible without a tool like Leanlab.

Having your own Customer Lab also makes it easier to get people to respond. Since you are talking to users that have signed up to help Lindex develop their services, people are eager to participate and give their input. Within the community there is no fatigue to be seen in people’s enthusiasm to respond to surveys and other activities.

‍Most users also find it fun to participate and they are eager to be able to develop Lindex’s products and services. Also the latest project where community members have been participating all the way from the beginning to the development of a service, have seen a great engagement. Users have been very involved in the project. They find the project itself important and they think it's great fun that it’s done together with them.

At Lindex the awareness within the organisation is growing, and the more results that are seen, the more widely people are getting the hang of it, and starting to find even more use cases where Leanlab can be a valuable asset.

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Time savings and smooth processes for anyone with a user base

Leanlab has definitely lived up to expectations that Lindex had when signing up for the platform. Having to contact hundreds of users in order to be able to arrange an interview with maybe five to seven people, Lindex can now talk to tens and tens of users immediately, every day if they want to. This is a significant saving in time and resources for Lindex.

Leanlab has also made user research smoother. Having everything on the same platform makes things easier and is also a cost saving factor.

At Lindex, Leanlab is seen as a platform that would be recommendable for anyone who has a user base and who is developing something that in some way affects users. Because if you do something that will affect the user, you should test it with them.

Going forward the plan at Lindex is to continue engaging users through Leanlab and test new services with them in an even broader manner than before.

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Key takeaways

• A Customer Lab can save you weeks when wanting to know what your users think.
• Users want to participate in developing services and products they like/ use.
• A tool like Leanlab makes user research easier, as it enables you to have everything in one place
• If you have users, you should talk to them, that’s the only way to really understand them and their needs and expectations.