Lenovo: Customer Empathy Across the Entire Org
Lenovo uses dscout to drive customer-centricity across the entire organization, from the C-suite to individual contributors, through revealing videos of its customers.
"dscout helps non-researchers empathize with our users. The platform enables us to capture the voice of the customer and share their perspectives throughout Lenovo."
Chief Customer Experience Officer, Lenovo
Seeking a way to listen to Lenovo’s customers and drive meaningful change through their feedback, Dilip Bhatia had an idea—and a request for his team.
“Let’s dscout it,” Bhatia said.
Bhatia, Lenovo’s Chief Customer Experience Officer, was inspired by deliverables from his team that used dscout’s in-context research platform to surface user experience insights and customer perspectives. Video entries, recorded by participants using their smartphones, helped Bhatia and his team progress in their mission to better know their customers.
The Fortune Global 500 technology firm began using dscout in 2016 for user research. Successful early projects generated enthusiasm for the platform among Lenovo’s research teams, and led to additional researchers using dscout for their projects. By 2018, more researchers at Lenovo had leveraged dscout for dozens of research missions—collecting thousands of video entries along the way.
Bhatia, who has a background in both product development and marketing, understood the power of surfacing authentic perspectives from real Lenovo users. With an approaching company kickoff meeting based on customer-centricity, Bhatia saw an opportunity to showcase these voices across the company.
Lenovo researchers conducted a set of agile missions targeted at understanding the views and opinions of Lenovo product owners across the consumer and commercial spectrum to complement existing customer insight data.
Researchers launched separate missions for computer and smartphone users, collecting hundreds of entries distilled from more than 1300 screener respondents sourced through dscout Recruit. The team tagged video entries within the platform to classify elements such as brand, perception, likes and dislikes among features, and much more.
Matt Davis, UX Design Engineer at Lenovo and leader of research on this project, believes the screener information paves the way for further analysis and research initiatives, especially through its competitive insights.
“We pulled only Lenovo product owners out of the screener for our mission, but have all other data back-logged,” Davis said. “This means we can always come back to the responses for more analysis.”
After tagging and analyzing the entries, researchers collected the responses into a video collage of about 20 of the most engaging entries, then streamed the video during the company-wide annual meeting as part of a call-to-action to all teams.
Highlighting engaging, real feedback from a diverse group of respondents, including many international scouts with fresh customer perspectives, turned out to be a great way to inspire and remind employees to always consider the customer’s perspective first.
“dscout helps non-researchers empathize with our users,” Bhatia said. “The research platform enables us to capture the voice of the customer and share their perspectives throughout Lenovo.”
The Lenovo research team is continuously conducting new dscout research based on further improving customer centricity, with focus areas in product innovation and how users incorporate technology into their lives.
