It shouldn’t come as a surprise that REI, the nation’s largest consumer co-op with some 23 million members, loves to talk with its customers.

In this Insights Unlocked episode, UserTesting’s LeTisha Shaw talks with REI’s Monique Lalonde about their continuous interview program with customers to support the product development life cycle.

“As our product-led practice matured, we saw an opportunity to foster a habit of talking to customers on a regular basis in support of the product development cycle,” said Monique, REI’s Director of Product Design. “Layne Foit (REI’s senior manager of UX research & Content) developed a scalable framework for continuous customer interviewing with a goal to empower teams with just enough research skills so they feel comfortable talking to customers, are able to analyze what they hear, and use those customer insights to drive innovation and customer centricity.”

REI's Continuous Interview Program: a case study

Once a week, members from REI’s UX research and product teams meet up to talk with a customer about a specific problem they are experiencing. They then evaluate that interview together, listening for all the different things that people observed.

We often talk about shifting left in the product development lifecycle when you’re talking with your customers and prospects. This helps you develop products your audience wants, needs and will pay you money. It also helps avoid or reduce the cost of rework (estimated at more than $1 trillion annually) because you built something no one wanted.

REI is a purpose-driven specialty outdoor retailer dedicated to enabling life outside for all. The co-op was founded in 1938 as some mountaineering friends in the Pacific Northwest sought access to better climbing gear. As a co-op, with about 23 million members, they measure success differently than many companies. 

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“Our goal is to run a healthy business, which enables us to make a positive impact on our employees, members, and society,” Monique said. “Our product design practice plays a critical role in supporting our goals, measuring their progress and impact in all our experiences.”

So far the program has been successful in conducting continuous research that can be measured and tracked, Monique said. 

“This shared experience is helping in cross-functional alignment, promoting a user-centered culture, and understanding a holistic picture of our customer journeys,” she said. “An unexpected benefit has been team building. Our product teams are 100% remote and our pilot teams reported feeling more connected to their co-workers thanks to the program.”

Sharing insights across the organization

Monique said most of their product teams in digital commerce are now regularly talking to customers and the findings go beyond the project-level and feed into REI’s product pipeline. 

“We continue to uncover unknown friction points or see evidence opposing common assumptions,” she said. 

She said they track the conversations in a team Mural template and report the quarterly findings in a deck which gets posted to their shared UX research library on Sharepoint.

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Aligning UX efforts with business goals

Monique said she works with her Product Management partner and REI’s digital commerce vice president to focus their research on the most impactful KPIs – Conversion, Demand, and CSAT. She said they regularly review the co-op’s key goals and objectives on a yearly and quarterly basis. 

“From that we go after customer insights to discover where improvements can be made, and how they are expected to impact the desired outcomes the team has outlined,” she said.

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The role of AI in Experience Research programs

Monique said she has been obsessed recently with trying to better understand and plan for AI’s role in their experience research programs. “Our field has changed so much in the past 10 years,” she said. “It is really hard to assess what AI will bring.”

In the short term, she is looking forward to using AI to better parse through customer insights, helping bring the most important to the surface. Long term, “I am so excited to be able to increase our testing capabilities with all types of content that the AI could potentially provide.”

She thinks it will aid in REI’s personalization efforts. 

“We’re going to be leaning on AI to better understand our customers better,” she said. “We can’t learn enough about it, fast enough.”

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Advice for those just starting out on their experience research programs

Monique’s advice for teams just starting out is to include all the different stakeholder teams earlier in the process. She specifically mentioned including the tech or engineering teams. “The more we can bring people in, the earlier on in the research, I think helps keep the customer’s interests and mindset upfront,” she said. 

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Episode links

• Monique on LinkedIn
• REI 
• REI’s shopping app
• REI’s annual impact report
• LeTisha on LinkedIn