40 percent of respondents say budgets are growing, 50 percent holding steady, while only 10 percent saw budgets decreasing

UserTesting, a leader in experience research and insights, today released the 2023 Experience Research Industry Report, a compilation of both the UserTesting and UserZoom annual surveys that revealed interest in human insights, also referred to as experience research, continues to grow as more companies see the value in knowing how their customers use and interact with their digital products and experiences. In fact, 40 percent of respondents claim that budgets have increased and 50 percent holding steady, while demands for experience research across organizations have increased by 61 percent. More than half of respondents said they can barely keep up with the organization’s demand for insights over the last three years. Additionally, 80 percent of respondents reported that their executives are increasingly prioritizing and investing in customer experience.

The 2023 Experience Research Industry Report revealed three key trends highlighting the growing importance of the discipline and its impact on business strategy and operations:

• Demand for experience research continues to increase
  
  Demand remains high for customer insights, 61 percent of respondents claim that demand for experience research and insights is increasing in their organizations, with the frequency of testing doubling over the course of the past decade, since the inaugural report in 2013. Findings also show a healthy investment and overall stability of the practice, with 90 percent of respondents saying that their budgets have increased or stayed the same over the past year.
  
  
  
  
• Value of experience research growing as more teams leverage it across the organization
  
  The increase in demand for experience research has been highlighted by respondents across many organizations that described the wide array of value that comes from experience research, including improving customer satisfaction (75%), brand perception (68%), driving revenue (69%), and reducing costs and mitigating risks (51%). From an organizational perspective, the benefits of human insight have scaled, respondents highlighted that more departments, beyond just their UX teams, are conducting experience research on their own that includes product management (14%), marketing (14%), market research teams (14%), and customer experience teams (18%).
  
  
  
  
• Organizations are becoming more systematic with human insights
  
  The survey revealed that the discipline of user testing and user research has matured and grown in sophistication in the past decade. Back in 2013, 64 percent of respondents claimed their organization did not have a dedicated usability team, and 44 percent said they only had a team of two to five people focused on it. Today, in 2023, in large part due to developments in digital-first experiences and maturity of the user experience and research discipline, 64 percent of respondents said their companies now even have dedicated ResearchOps teams to help scale human insights and operationalize their experience research processes. Also, 82 percent of respondents reported that user feedback is now incorporated into their daily processes and decision making, highlighting the value and impact experience research has on the business.

"We have the privilege of partnering with thousands of organizations that prioritize customer-centric insights for more informed decision making, and we find it inspiring. It’s encouraging to see many of these companies innovating in areas of experience research and creating winning digital products and experiences that drive business growth and customer loyalty. Those companies that do not embrace this mindset, risk losing both customers and market share to their more customer-focused competitors," said Dana Bishop, Vice President of Experience Research Strategy at UserTesting. "In today's macro economic climate, customer attitudes and behaviors are changing rapidly, and companies need to be able to understand and adapt their products and experiences to address the changing consumer sentiment. Having access to experience research and insights is imperative to an organization’s success."

To access the full UserTesting 2023 Experience Industry Report, click here.

Join Dana Bishop and Lija Hogan, Principal, Customer Experience Consultant, as they dive into how the experience research industry has come to be over the last 10 years, including insights from this year’s survey. Register for the upcoming webinar “The Dawn of Experience Research and How We Got Here” on Wednesday, May 31 at 11:00 am Pacific here.

Methodology and survey results

In the tenth annual Customer Experience Industry Survey, UserTesting and UserZoom asked 1857 professionals from around the world across a wide variety of industries how their organizations are approaching customer experience and conducting experience research.

About UserTesting

UserTesting is fundamentally changing the way digital products and experiences are built and delivered by helping organizations get insights from customers–from creation through execution. Built on top of a world-class, on-demand sourcing engine, customers can receive fast, high quality, opt-in feedback from both our proprietary and partner-sourced audience networks around the world. UserTesting offers the industry's most comprehensive experience research solution. Unlike approaches that track user behavior or collect customer listening data on live experiences, then try to infer what that data means, UserTesting enables companies to get input earlier in the process, helping to reduce guesswork, and bring experience data to life with human insight. The company, formed through the combination of UserTesting & UserZoom, has more than 3,400 customers worldwide, including 75 of the Fortune 100 companies. To learn more, visit www.usertesting.com.

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