UserTesting’s Chief Insights Officer Janelle Estes and CEO Andy Macmillan Launch New Book Detailing How Human Insight Can Help Companies Succeed in Today’s Experience Economy

New book explains how to capture the power of data without replacing the human connections on which businesses are built

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--UserTesting (NYSE: USER), a leader in video-based human insight, announced the launch of a new book—User Tested: How the World’s Top Companies Use Human Insight to Create Great Experiences—co-authored by UserTesting Chief Insights Officer Janelle Estes and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Andy MacMillan.

Available today through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, User Tested gives both individual contributors and executives an approachable, pragmatic guide for stepping beyond standard business metrics and infusing real human insight into every business decision and customer experience. In it, companies like Microsoft, AAA Club Alliance, HelloFresh, and Notre Dame’s IDEA Center share valuable, real-world case studies detailing how they solidly connect with and elicit meaningful feedback from customers in friendlier, faster, and more direct ways.

“Companies are drowning in data, but data alone can’t help you truly understand and empathize with your customers,” said Estes. “No amount of data will take you inside your customers’ heads, help you see the world through their eyes, or let you experience what it’s really like to be your own customer. In User Tested, Andy and I explain how companies can capture and apply the customer perspective at scale throughout their organizations. It’s for anyone wanting to build a better, brighter, customer-focused future by gaining and taking action on real, compelling human insight.”

User Tested readers will:

• learn how businesses became obsessed with data—but disconnected from their customers—and why that’s not sustainable;
• find out how to capture human insight through experience testing, including how to find the right people, ask the right questions, and make sense of—then act on—all the insights they uncover;
• receive detailed deployment playbooks that share real-world examples of how top brands collect and scale human insight across many different functional teams in their organizations—from marketing to product and beyond; and
• learn how to evangelize the power of human insight throughout their organizations, so every department can share a firsthand understanding of customer needs and create a culture of customer empathy.

“A massive chasm is growing between companies and their customers made only wider by the disintermediation caused by digital transformation and the inability of traditional methods for gathering customer perspectives to keep up with the speed and scale of today’s business,” said MacMillan. “Our book showcases tried-and-true best practices anyone in any department can use to gather rich, viable human insight, so they can deliver better products, services, and experiences—and achieve greater business success.”

Industry Leaders Praise User Tested

“It’s easy for companies to get distracted or overcomplicate how to have a real and empathetic understanding of customers. User Tested helps put it back into focus.”

— Mikkel Svane, CEO and Founder of Zendesk

“If you’re obsessed with data, this book is for you. If you’re obsessed with building an awesome customer experience, this book is for you. And if you care about results, this book is definitely for you.”

— Linda Itskovitz, Chief Marketing Officer at Quicken

“The real magic to designing truly customer-centered products is less about understanding what people do, and much more about why they do it. In this book Janelle and Andy provide tools, methodologies and most importantly, a mindset that will help you uncover the why behind the what.”

— David Schonthal, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management and author of The Human Element

“User Tested is a great reminder that while no business leader in their right mind would say that their company doesn’t prioritize their customers, many consumers feel misunderstood and unvalued. Janelle Estes and Andy MacMillan break down the underlying disconnect between businesses and what their customers actually experience, and then explain what to do about it.”

— Tom Krackeler, Chief Customer Officer at Zuora

About the Book’s Authors

Janelle Estes, Chief Insights Officer at UserTesting, helps leading organizations build human insight into culture and process. As a speaker and thought leader on customer experience, Janelle has guest lectured at Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School, and Northeastern University.

Andy MacMillan is CEO of UserTesting, the world’s leading user testing and human insight platform. He is a former product executive at Oracle and Salesforce. He understands the critical role that human insight plays in building world-class products and solutions on a global scale.

Learn More

Find out more about the book User Tested.

About UserTesting

UserTesting (NYSE: USER) has fundamentally changed the way organizations get insights from customers with fast, opt-in feedback and experience capture technology. The UserTesting Human Insight Platform taps into our global network of real people and generates video-based Customer Experience Narratives (CxNs), so anyone in an organization can directly ask questions, hear what users say, see what they mean, and understand what it’s actually like to be a customer. Unlike approaches that track user behavior then try to infer what that behavior means, UserTesting eliminates the guesswork and brings customer experience data to life with human insight. UserTesting has more than 2,100 customers, including more than half of the world’s top 100 most valuable brands according to Forbes. UserTesting is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. To learn more, visit www.usertesting.com.