Return on Experience (RoE)

In today’s highly competitive digital landscape, businesses are continually looking for ways to enhance customer satisfaction, drive engagement, and improve overall business performance. One of the most potent tools that organizations can leverage to achieve these goals is User Experience (UX) design.  

But how exactly does UX affect a company’s top-line and bottom-line growth? And how can businesses quantify the return on investment (ROI) of UX, or in better words, the Return on Experience (ROE)?  

Return on Experience (RoE)

To find answers to these questions, Worxwide Consulting, hosted a webinar to delve into the strategic impact of UX on business outcomes, with four industry leaders sharing their invaluable insights on the subject.  

Let’s take a deeper look at the key takeaways and explore how businesses can measure the ROI of UX, enhance customer engagement, and achieve better business performance. 

During the webinar, participants were asked the key question,  

Return on Experience (RoE)

The results highlighted the focus of UX professionals and business stakeholders: 

  • 10% selected the number of users visiting a website. 
  • 70% emphasized the financial impact of UX design on business outcomes, showcasing the priority placed on tangible returns and business growth. 
  • 0% chose the visual appeal of UI, underscoring that aesthetics alone are not a primary metric. 
  • 20% identified the time taken to complete user tasks, reflecting the importance of efficiency in user interactions. 

These findings illustrate that most of our audience are aware that the financial impact of UX design is paramount, hence the audience was largely interested in understanding how industry leaders have utilized the power of data-driven design to make the right business decisions that bring gain.  

The ROI of UX: Why It Matters for Businesses

At the heart of any successful business is customer satisfaction. It is no surprise, then, that businesses are increasingly recognizing the importance of UX in fostering customer engagement. However, one of the significant challenges that design leaders often face is demonstrating the direct impact of UX on the bottom line.

As Itamar Mederios, Vice President of Design Strategy at SAP, Germany, aptly pointed out, businesses need hard data to correlate UX improvements with business metrics that matter to leadership, such as churn rates, customer retention, and adoption.

According to Mederios, a study conducted by his colleagues at SAP revealed that products with lower product satisfaction (P-sat) scores typically experience higher churn rates. This finding underscores the direct relationship between user satisfaction and business performance. A seamless, intuitive user experience can reduce customer churn, increase product adoption, and ultimately boost revenue.

Return on Experience (RoE)

However, the challenge remains: how do you measure the ROI of UX? The answer lies in data. Businesses must adopt a data-driven approach to UX, where metrics like customer satisfaction scores, task completion times, and user retention rates are closely monitored. By aligning UX efforts with measurable business outcomes, companies can showcase the tangible benefits of investing in design. Only by measuring the metrics of design will we be able to assess which features have shortest time to value.

Return on Experience (RoE)
Return on Experience (RoE)
Trust in AI and the Role of UX
Return on Experience (RoE)

A recent example comes from Zomato, a leading food delivery platform. Zomato introduced AI-generated dynamic food photos tailored to user preferences. However, the move backfired as users began to question the authenticity of these images. The disconnect between AI-generated content and real-world expectations led to a loss of trust, prompting Zomato to roll back the feature. Mr. Arora shared that during this period, he even considered stopping his use of Zomato but reverted to being a strong supporter once they addressed the issue transparently and removed the feature. This incident underscores the delicate balance between innovation and user perception, particularly when AI is involved. 

Trust is the cornerstone of UX, especially in AI-based systems. Lack of trust directly affects adoption rates, user satisfaction, and business outcomes. To ensure long-term success, organizations must design AI systems with transparency, ethical considerations, and a user-centered approach. By addressing trust issues proactively, businesses can foster deeper engagement, enhance user confidence, and drive sustainable growth. 

UX Maturity: Indicators and Challenges
Return on Experience (RoE)
Return on Experience (RoE)

However, as Mr. Patel noted, several hurdles prevent companies from adopting robust UX maturity frameworks. These include a lack of flexibility in design thinking, inadequate budgeting for UX activities, and resistance to change at the organizational level. To overcome these barriers, businesses must shift their mindset and prioritize UX as a critical component of their overall strategy.

Spotting Goldmines in UX

Reflecting on his time at Microsoft, Jain emphasized the power of simplifying user interactions through thoughtful design.One of the key examples he cited was a personal story of making Outlook more user friendly for all users, previously a simple task like flagging an email took several steps hence users found their own workarounds to complete the task more efficiently, hence the ‘one click flagging’ feature was introduced to Outlook. This design intervention was achieved by gathering implicit data—solely by observing user actions without direct interference—and using it to inform design decisions. 

A similar insight can be drawn from Microsoft’s journey in designing Bing. While developing Bing, Microsoft tested countless colors for its search result links. The team discovered that a specific shade of blue (#0044CC) consistently outperformed other hues in terms of user engagement. This particular shade not only resonated with users but also contributed to a massive $80 million annual revenue increase, thanks to higher click-through rates and better ad engagement. 

‘Don’t overlook even the smallest things when it comes to design. Ask questions. Curiosity is the epitome of the inquisitive mind’ 

Return on Experience (RoE)

Mr. Jain’s example underscores a vital aspect of UX: the need for continuous improvement. As user expectations evolve, so too must the design. Enterprises must constantly monitor user behavior, gather data, and iterate on design solutions to ensure that the product remains relevant and easy to use.

Furthermore, Mr. Jain’s experience with Microsoft showed the importance of reducing friction in user interactions and also find out what clicks. A simple, intuitive design can make a world of difference in terms of user satisfaction and efficiency. By focusing on reducing unnecessary steps and simplifying tasks, companies can enhance the user experience, which in turn improves productivity and overall business outcomes.

The outlook revolution
  1. Swipe in the message list

The Message List now supports Swipe from Left and Swipe from Right actions (for touch-screen devices). As a result, there have also been some minor organization changes for the hover actions (with your cursor).

You can customize your swipe actions by visiting the Swipe section of the Mail > Customize actions page of your Settings window.

Figure 1 – Hyper personalization options launched in outlook in Dec 2024

  • Hide completed/past events in My Day pane

When “Today’s” events have been completed, they will now be hidden from the agenda view of your My Day pane.

Figure 2 – Intuitive removal of clutter

  • Dismiss individual or all notifications in the Notifications pane
    Dismiss a single notification by hovering over it and selecting Dismiss, or dismiss all notifications in the pane using Dismiss all  at the top.

Figure 3 – Notification selection options launched in Dec 2024

  • Scope search suggestions to specific entities:

You can now scope your search suggestions down to specific entities such as Files, People, Mail, etc. to sort through your suggestions more easily. You will be able to navigate from the suggestion directly to the entity tab in your search results.

Figure 4 – Dynamic scope search options launched in outlook in Dec 2024

How to prioritize which UX improvements to focus on  

As industry leaders have demonstrated in the conversation, prioritizing the right UX improvements is essential to driving meaningful customer engagement and achieving measurable business outcomes. To maximize impact, businesses must adopt structured, data-driven frameworks that balance user needs with organizational goals. 

Two effective prioritization frameworks include: 

  1. JTBD (Jobs to Be Done): This framework emphasizes understanding what users are trying to accomplish with your product. By identifying and addressing the core tasks users aim to complete, organizations can focus on UX and CX improvements that directly enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. 
  1. RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort): This scoring model helps align UX initiatives with business goals by evaluating: 
  1. Reach: The number of users affected. 
  1. Impact: The degree of improvement in their experience. 
  1. Confidence: The certainty of achieving the desired outcome. 
  1. Effort: The time and resources required. 

RICE enables businesses to prioritize high-impact, low-effort opportunities, ensuring efficient allocation of resources and faster delivery of value. 

By leveraging these frameworks, organizations can take a deliberate approach to UX improvements, fostering both superior customer experiences and long-term business success. 

Conclusion: Investing in UX for Business Success

As we’ve seen from the experiences of industry leaders, the strategic impact of UX on customer engagement and business performance cannot be overstated. A positive user experience leads to greater trust, higher satisfaction, and improved customer retention, all of which contribute to a company’s bottom line. However, businesses must go beyond anecdotal evidence and embrace a data-driven approach to measure the ROI of UX effectively.

Organizations looking to succeed in today’s digital age must prioritize UX and commit to continuous improvement. By fostering a user-centered culture, allocating resources for UX research and testing, and aligning design efforts with measurable business goals, companies can unlock the full potential of UX to drive long-term success.

Return on Experience (RoE)

In conclusion, the return on experience is not just about enhancing user satisfaction—it is a strategic investment that can yield significant returns in the form of improved business performance, customer loyalty, and sustainable growth.

Key Takeaways:
  1. Businesses recognize the importance of UX design in enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing churn, with a strong focus on measuring its financial impact through metrics like customer retention and satisfaction.
  2. Trust is a significant factor in the success of AI applications. Transparent and user-focused UX design is crucial in addressing trust issues, such as inaccurate AI outputs.
  3. UX maturity requires organizations to go beyond addressing user needs, investing in resources, frameworks, and deeper psychological insights to sustain and improve UX practices.
  4. Adapting UX practices to evolving user expectations is essential. Streamlining tasks and reducing friction in user interactions lead to better engagement and productivity.
  5. SAP’s FIORI design system exemplifies how businesses can enable better user experiences through unified, responsive, and personalized interfaces that align with user roles and workflows.
Return on Experience (RoE)

Here is the full recording of the webinar for reference: Click Here

Here is another whitepaper by Worxwide on How UX design can generate demand.

How Worxwide Can help?

Worxwide is a digital growth consulting firm and a global UX design agency, our focus has always been helping clients grow with exceptional experience design for their products and services. We help companies in their sales transformation journey, customer experience strategy, user experience design, winning business and AI-led Innovation. We can help you research the market, analyze the personas behaviors and design personalized experience for each persona that drive traffic, and user conversions leading to growth.

Learn more at www.worxwide.com/customer-experience 

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