User engagement soars after Lyssna survey shapes the Annual Notification Process for Vestd
We speak with Tom Alcock, UX Researcher at Vestd
Summary
From finding an affordable solution to achieving actionable insights and improved product outcomes, read how Vestd’s UX researcher accomplished all this.
Sharetech platform Vestd is dedicated to helping companies manage their equity and set up share schemes to reward and retain employees. Based in the UK, its currently scaling and looking to improve their offering for current and new customers.
Vestd operates with a small, agile product team consisting of four designers, three product managers, and a single UX researcher — Tom Alcock. In his role, Tom handles, “everything on the research side, from product research in terms of customer interviews and surveys, through to market research and competitor analysis.”
Tom shares his experience of finding Lyssna, integrating it with the team and how it has contributed to improvements in both their internal processes and customer satisfaction.
Challenge
When Tom joined the team in 2021, he was tasked with building a research infrastructure from the ground up. With no existing tools in place, one of his top priorities was to find a tool that would allow him to conduct effective user research without breaking the bank.
“I have used UserZoom, now part of UserTesting, in the past, so I was looking for tools like that,” shares Tom.
“UserTesting's pricing for a company our size is just a non starter. So I started searching for alternatives.”
Tom Alcock
UX Researcher
The challenge wasn’t just finding an affordable solution — it also had to be user-friendly and versatile enough to handle Vestd’s various research needs, such as customer surveys and prototype testing.
Tom discovered Lyssna (back when we were called UsabilityHub), and began integrating the platform into the team's workflow.
Solution
One of the key reasons Tom decided to use Lyssna was its simplicity and effectiveness. “It’s not trying to be overly complicated. Everything is very clear and straightforward,” he explains.
“What I like best about Lyssna is that it’s really simple to use.”
Tom Alcock
UX Researcher
Lyssna’s range of testing methods helps Tom to meet all his research needs. “Most of the time, I use Lyssna for customer surveys. Whenever there's a research project kicking off or getting underway, and we want to understand a bit more about a particular problem, I'll fire up a survey and get it out.”
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Tom also highlighted the value of Lyssna’s Recordings feature. "I absolutely love the Recordings feature for our prototype tests. Previously, prototype tests were great at showing us click paths and heat maps, but they often left us wondering, 'why are they clicking there?'”.
“Now with Recordings, you can hear what they're saying. You can see where they're clicking. You can see what they're doing wrong. It's just added so much more context to the prototype tests that we would have never got before. I definitely love that.”
Tom Alcock
UX Researcher
In addition to the various testing methods, Lyssna’s flexible participant recruitment options has been highly beneficial for Tom. Since Vestd’s audience is primarily made up of founders, CEOs, directors, and HR leaders — niche roles — Tom mainly self-recruits participants from their existing customer base, which helps keep costs down.
Tom adds that he also recruits from their internal teams, "like our customer success and sales teams, because they are direct frontline to the customers and they can provide any additional customer feedback and insights.”
However, he points out the need to filter through biases: “I can get a lot of information from them but do have to sift away their own biases to get to the root of the problem. It's still incredibly important to use Lyssna for this.”
The team uses the Lyssna research panel when implementing a UX change, for example, moving a button from the top right to the top left.
“We want to see if people can still find it. If a person not familiar with Vestd can't do it, then our customers aren't going to have any chance. It's the logic we go with, and using Lyssna makes it perfect value for money for us.”
“The main benefit is being able to capture feedback very quickly from your panel. You can do it in less than a day, which is great when we're trying to get a UX challenge out the way. We can get it done with Lyssna.”
Tom Alcock
UX Researcher
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Results
The impact of using Lyssna has been significant for Vestd. One notable success story that Tom shared was a survey conducted to gather feedback on their annual notification process.
This process is a regulatory requirement, where Vestd’s customers must inform His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) about their share schemes – essentially updating the government about performance from the last year.
“Our customer support team wanted to get some feedback on the process, because they'd seen a couple of comments coming from customers who had struggled with it. So we fired up a survey that went out to those customers and we got some great feedback,” shares Tom.
The feedback gathered from the survey “helped shape a brand new design that went live just before this years’ annual notification season kicked off. And it performed better than it did last year.”
“We had a 31% increase in customers using the platform to do their annual notification in 2024 compared to 2023. We also saw users take more time using the feature, up from 4 minutes 30 seconds in 2023, to 13 minutes 5 seconds. This increase in time was a good thing, as it meant customers were reviewing all of the information correctly before submitting everything to HMRC,” shares Tom.
The feedback gained from a seemingly simple survey has been pivotal in refining Vestd's product and addressing the pain points that its customers faced.
“It’s a brilliantly simple tool for capturing feedback of any kind. Anything that you want to find out, use Lyssna.”
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