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22 October 2020
10 MIN READ 
BY
Nithin SS
Customer Requirement motivated Software Testing Strategies are a requisite for absolute customer satisfaction
Companies cannot thrive & be profitable without meeting customer requirements meticulously is an absolute truth in today’s customer-centric arena. Meeting customer expectations is extremely pivotal for businesses to attain customer satisfaction. Modern software testing strategies emphasise the above point which means customer feedback or customer inputs are very important in modern testing practices. Serving customer demands in a fascinating manner is the key to building a product and achieving absolute customer satisfaction. And I always believe that, if a product can’t build good user trust or can’t provide a good user experience, it is not a successful product!!!
In traditional software testing, testing practices were more focussed on delivering only the objectives of the software testing team rather than considering the customer experience. Now, it is about beyond traditional software testing.
Along with the evolution of products & technology, customers also evolved. This new vista is set to upend traditional test case-based approaches with different software testing strategies and customer-centric approaches. If the product is not customer satisfactory, they are sure to proceed with alternatives and the market has lots of options inclined to fulfil customer demands that customers can choose from. This is where we can end up when software testing strategies are not focused on customer experience or customer point of view.
What really matters is the customer experience!!! It’s a win-win if we can provide a better customer experience.
And it’s time to shift the testing objectives to delivering desired customer experience.
To design effective software testing strategies which are customer satisfactory, firstly we must understand customer behaviour which encompasses different characteristics, traits, and non-functional aspects alongside addressing human behavioural elements.
Mainly Customer Feedbacks, Emotions & Feelings!!!
Michael Bolton has shared a wonderful piece of content to understand more about “Emotions in Software Testing”
No matter how carefully we design, develop & test our product, people will refuse to stick to the happy paths we laid out for them 😄 And we cannot blame them for that, we also behave the same when we are customers/users of a product.
It’s why exploratory testing is so important when we do software testing preferring customer-centric approaches.
Do something unexpected, as your customers certainly will.
Understanding the customer & user journey gives us an infinite space to test and vast possibilities to explore the product.
Follow the intuition and understand the design with the intend of a user engaging to it.
A Customer obsessed software tester focuses on customer satisfaction by thoroughly understanding them and acting on those insights.
In addition to doing software testing, try to understand the context, ask customer focused questions and challenge customer centric assumptions.
Testers bring value by helping to combine the understanding of technical requirements of the system with the big picture of business requirements. Also, they ask customer-focused questions to evoke requirements and remove hidden assumptions. And these customer centric questions are an important part while learning more about the product and help understand it well.
The main purpose is to give valuable suggestions to improve products for better user experiences that can result in excellent customer feedback. Staying customer focused leads to improvements in application software that are validated and useful.
Customer centric approaches are the best way to ensure that your customers will actually use the product you’re building
Let Data & Knowledge drive the tests evolved from opinions
Understanding how customers use our application is valuable information for every team. `Before building a Software Testing Strategy from a customer point of view, user analytics must be considered. Analyse the previous data & understand the risks. Customer feedback received from previous versions, production issues and customer support team inputs are the information to consider while building Software testing strategies from the customer’s point of view. We can even provide valuable recommendations by gathering inputs from these sources.
Consider an example of application software for e-commerce, where the bounce rate is more due to the page load time on the checkout screen. By analysing this data, we can provide recommendations on reducing the page load time thereby reducing the bounce rate and a subsequent increase in the revenue and an improvement in the conversion funnel.
Data is the key factor for customer-centric strategies. Just imagine, if a small reduction in page load can increase the revenue of a business, how much impact can we bring in by analysing relevant technical behaviour & data? Also, have frequent chats with team members handling customer services or real customers and gather user inputs and customer feedback.
Focus more on creating regression tests from production logs, which are detailed records of possible user activity paths. By analysing the logs or tracking system, we can gauge the user attempts and possible paths and focus more on those areas. Automated testing, smoke testing, performance testing, and transaction monitoring all benefit from knowing the top customer demands from these logs.
Let Data & Knowledge drive the tests to evolve from opinions
Rather than choosing all the major functions of the application software to determine stability, testers can choose the functions that matter most to customers. The larger a platform, the more that usage is distributed. Application features which are most favourite of users should be monitored closely for error rate and should be tested in-depth based on risks identified.
Again, data is the key here also. Customer usage data plays a vital role in building a proper software testing strategy that is customer-centric. Having the analytics on customer delighted devices & configurations is very useful. It helps to identify which browser is being used the most, which Operating System is preferred, which platform receives more traffic, which mobile device is being used by most of the users etc. Based on these, companies can focus on product configurations used mostly by the customers. And, this is where cloud providers play a key role. Rather than depending on in-house options to buy more real devices, it is always a good choice to rely on cloud providers like BrowserStack, SauceLabs, LambdaTest etc.
Answers to these questions give us the importance of performance testing in customer centric software testing strategies. As I said before, emotions and feelings are more important in software testing strategies which are customer centric. And performance is the key factor in that.
Focussing all over the place can be a hassle for all the teams. So, keep in mind to monitor what is relevant & prioritize what has to be resolved faster.
User actions help us to create a focussed UI test automation strategy, client preferences give us focus to test the most important product configurations. Also, this monitoring gives us the Knowledge to build software testing strategies that are customer-centric.
Understanding customer behaviour benefits everyone… Team, Stakeholders & Users
We’re living in a customer-centric era & everyone tries to adapt to customer-centric approaches. Also, customer expectations of the technology they use are very high, meeting those expectations is critical. There is always an alternative option for them, so meeting customer expectations & building cordial customer relations are more important. Bringing software testing strategies which are customer-centric to the top, we win more business. Software testing is customer-centric generally when the tester takes on the persona of a customer.
Customer obsessed businesses bring better customer feedback than their competitors. It ensures that our customers select our products and services persistently over our competitors.
It describes a goal but gives freedom of imagination to the software testers on how to achieve that goal. But, certainly, it is good to ask more questions to clarify as the customer’s expectations & desires keep on changing.
And we at Testvox follow customer-centric approaches in our testing strategies. As we know there is no success without adapting to testing strategies that are customer satisfactory.
