Why Customer Experience Drives Software Testing and Quality Assurance?

The fierce market competition in the online sphere, fuelled by the rapid pace of software deployment, has brought into sharp focus the role of QA professionals in delivering the best customer experience. The success or failure of a software application in the market is underpinned by the level of customer experience it delivers. It has been observed that customers no longer put their loyalty to the price or product, but to the brand or company delivering the best experience. Should a company not be able to keep up with shifting customer expectations, it can look down the barrel at failure.

Even statistics prove the primacy of customer experience in the acceptance of a product in the market. As per PwC research, 86 percent of customers are willing to pay more if they are assured of a great customer experience or CX. A Walker study in 2020 found that customer experience should be the key brand differentiator over price and product. So, with enterprises simplifying and modernizing their legacy environments to get into the digital era, software quality solutions need to straddle both digital and legacy systems.

Further, as business enterprises adopt the Agile-DevOps methodology for software development that focuses on continuous testing and delivery, QA professionals have become a critical element in the SDLC. By conducting various types of QA software testing, testers can gain crucial insights from test results about issues impacting the customer experience. They should focus on the following aspects to ensure the software application in development is able to deliver a top-class customer experience.

Knowing customers and their preferences

Before creating a strategy for software quality assurance, it is important to know the customers and focus on customer experience to establish priorities. It makes sense for any quality assurance company to incorporate customers’ perspectives into their testing process. It is only when testers understand the preferences and needs of the customers that they can create suitable test suites aligned to the business objectives. They should know the customers’ expectations about the software product vis-à-vis its performance, functionality, usability, and security. Further, by taking a human-centric approach and focusing on customer behavior (intrinsic as well as latent), end-to-end testing processes can be put in place to achieve the delivery of best-in-class quality software applications.

Identifying and validating requirements for customer interactions

The customer experience can be enhanced by customizing the testing process as per customer expectations. To make the software application live up to the expectations of customers, testers have to think from the customers’ perspectives and validate the functional and non-functional elements of the application. For this, the requirements related to customer interactions have to be defined and validated. The areas to be tested related to customer interactions include the look and feel, performance across devices, loading speed, ease of navigation, and smooth working of functions.

Making customer experience testing a part of the testing process

Customer experience testing for a software application can be executed over and above conventional technical testing. By taking a user-centric approach and making changes to the test plan, testers can improve the customer experience. The peripheral variables that are part of the customer testing process can help QA testing providers identify major bugs or issues in the software product. Customer experience testing can help derive the ‘pulse’ of the customers and let testers understand how the software application would address the needs or expectations of the customers. This way, testers would be testing software quality solutions in a holistic way instead of just the systems.

Executing performance testing

Performance testing evaluates attributes such as responsiveness, speed, and stability of a software application, device, and network when subjected to a workload. It helps testers to identify the load threshold a software application can handle and is a crucial factor in enabling a top-quality customer experience. Here, software quality assurance can cover aspects beyond load speed that influence the overall CX. These aspects may include the launch time and the usage of RAM, processor, hard disk, and battery.

For example, the lack of performance testing can leave a software application vulnerable to attributes such as latency, downtime, or even crash when the user traffic crosses a certain threshold. This can happen during certain times of the year, such as festivals, when customers use e-commerce software applications in large numbers to order stuff. And in the event of the software crashing or showing latency, the customer experience can go for a toss and the business can lose customers, sales, and revenues.

Knowledge about crowdsourcing

Besides using in-house resources for testing, testers may leverage the power of crowdsourcing to derive top-notch customer satisfaction, experience, and retention. Crowdsourcing can provide tangible customer feedback before a software application is released into the market. The areas where crowdsourcing testing requirements can be used during the development and post-production phases of a software application include the user interface, design, core aspects, and navigation.

Evaluating customer feedback

Customer experience testing can allow any software quality assurance company to consolidate and evaluate customer feedback about a software product. Testers can improve customer experience if they have access to the inputs provided by the customers. The suggestions and queries given by customers can be incorporated into an upcoming test cycle to ensure the final software product offers a top-quality customer experience.

Conclusion

A customer-focused testing process gives testers of a software testing company an understanding of the customer’s journey vis-à-vis the software product. The journey may include aspects such as personalization, custom settings, cross-channel browsing, and transactions. This can enable business organizations to timely address or respond to sudden product failures and prevent customers from choosing a rival product. Thus, customer experience testing can provide the best-in-class customer experience for users, and enable the business to remain competitive.