“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ― Benjamin Franklin
A few years ago, I was approached by a hotel chain to help figure out why their booking rate was lower than the industry average. It was a unique opportunity to analyze a booking funnel and provide insights that would directly inform them with data-driven insights that would be inputs into UX and creative changes planned for later in their fiscal year.
1. Stakeholder Interview Preparation
I started the analysis by taking out a pen and my notebook and writing down all my questions about the business. I put myself in the position of the CEO of the entire hotel chain and thought what questions they might have. I thought about what the marketing team was doing, why hadn’t this been prioritized earlier, what demand generation team would have questions about, and every other permeation of team or output that might be relevant to my analysis.
Instead of jumping straight into the analytics tool and pulling reports on data, I put pen to paper and did my due diligence in prepping. I forced myself to not even think about data and just think in terms of business questions. I wanted to try to anticipate all of the needs of the team and nuances BEFORE I interviewed the team.
The next thing I did was set up stakeholder interviews with pertinent members of the team. CMO, Marketing Directors, Channel Managers and more.
2. Stakeholder Interviews
Each interview consists of a lot of back and forth to understand the individual’s role or department needs to learn as a result of your analysis. I have a number of questions I typically use throughout the interviews that help me get this insight. It should go without saying that not everyone gets the same questions and a skilled analyst will know how to effectively pivot throughout this part of the process and follow-up or dig deeper on any response that yields interesting takeaways.
- What is important to you?
- How does your job function interact with the booking funnel?
- What specific questions do you have about the booking funnel?
- Why they haven’t been able to do this analysis in the past or why it was important to do it now?
- What customer segments are important to you?
- Are there any known challenges with a particular advertising channel?
- Are their known issues with any of the data?
- What biases exist within the company, department, or team about the booking funnel?
I finished all of the interviews with the same question “If you could describe the perfect output from this analysis, what would that look like?” In essence, they’re now telling me exactly what they expect from the analysis – not the results themselves as nobody knows what those will be at this point – but what types of results they need to do their job.
Throughout that process, I changed my language from ‘you’ or ‘yours’ to ‘me’ and ‘we.’ I became a part of their team for this analysis by fully immersing myself into their culture, their language, and evaluated the teams’ needs.
You might be thinking – “Wait, hold on, Bryant…didn’t they tell you the objective before you started…‘Why is our booking funnel underperforming?’ Why not just get the conversion rate and start running reports to find the answer?” The simple answer is “Yes, they did.” They did tell me they wanted to know why their site wasn’t performing to industry standards.
They also wanted the best answer possible, they hired ME to do this for them. They didn’t tell me to get them a conversion rate and do basic analysis. They were counting on me and my team to provide them with insights they wouldn’t be able to get any other way. In my own prep for the interviews, I had a good sense of what they needed and in fact, a lot of their responses were in line with what I had anticipated. But in doing those interviews I garnered insight into their culture, their priorities, and internal language on how the team spoke. I also built rapport with each stakeholder and member of the team I would be working with.
All of that were filed away in my notes to use later in my readout to them when the analysis was complete.
What if you’re not a consultant and you’re already ‘in tune’ with the culture, organization and business challenges? Should you just skip this step? Absolutely NOT. By interviewing members of the team you work with regularly and others you might not – you’ll hear nuances in the requirements that focus your thinking and efforts into a single analysis. You’ll potentially hear from your boss a requirement that wasn’t detailed in the original request. You might hear from the VP a particular way he articulates ‘conversion’ that you wouldn’t have considered – or a way they evaluate customer ‘engagement’ that’s different than how you usually report.
The point of all of the above is – DON’T ASSUME ANYTHING – except that you don’t know everything. Put in the time and effort to fully evaluate this analysis BEFORE doing anything else.
3. Document Everything
During your interviews you should be taking copious notes throughout. Some of my greatest questions and insights come while someone else is talking and it triggers a thought. There was a time I was interviewing a retailer about a specific analysis they wanted on User Journeys from Email to their landing page for a specific promotion sign up. The VP told me about how it was a new promotion they’re trying to extend the black Friday shopping day. This particular promotion was new in that they were trying a new email vendor in addition to a new designer on the team he had personally recommended for hire.
In that moment – I picked up two details about this analysis I needed to be cognizant of. First – this was a new email vendor and there’s potentially some data issues I’ll run into and need to be extremely careful when analyzing that data. Second – there’s personal bias in seeing this succeed based on the designer that came up with the concept of the landing page. All of this was something I made specific notes about in my notebook to review later.
Organize all of your interviews by day, time, stakeholder, and topic how it relates to your deep dive analysis. Block 15-30 minutes after the interview to collect your thoughts and organize your take-aways from the interview. By not going directly into the next meeting or task, you’re giving your brain a chance to fully digest the information you received.
What works really well for me is to take notes by hand during the interview and type them up afterwards – I find that I’m able to focus more on the overall concept of what is being discussed in person and then put it in words that make sense to me afterwards. If I’m typing during a meeting or scheduled interview, I find I’m trying to capture EVERY WORD instead of listening to what is being talked about. This might not be the case for you – or you might try switching it up a little bit as your listening and interpretation skills are paramount when you’re in this first step of Evaluate.
Finally, take a glance at all of the responses you received regarding the question “If you could describe the perfect output from this analysis, what would that look like?” Read each of them and write out for yourself the ‘perfect analysis’ and what it would look like and entail.
Once you’ve done this – you’re ready for the next stage – IDENTIFY.
Pro Tips and Takeaways:
- Document all business questions from each stakeholder interview
- Prioritize business questions based on importance and value to the analysis
- Describe what a ‘perfect analysis’ would look like using the details from business questions and interviews