Why End-User Experience Matters

Spending time and resources monitoring your end-user experience can have a massive impact on your enterprise’s operational efficiency, customer retention, and employee productivity — all quantifiable metrics that are proven to increase your company’s profits. Still, the data behind the end-user experience seems hazy for many enterprises. It’s also hard to gauge what the ROI would be, so there’s often diminished motivation to invest in end-user experience monitoring.

Companies Continue to Ignore End-User Monitoring Investments

In fact, in Gartner’s recent study on the importance of end-user performance monitoring for gathering data and improving troubleshooting, companies who were surveyed are still investing conservatively in performance monitoring tools. As new user populations continue to expand, end-user experience monitoring becomes seemingly less accessible in the eyes of the enterprise — but now is exactly the time it should be playing a more central role in a business’s strategy. So, what’s the hang-up? Where are enterprises going wrong with their end-user performance monitoring?

The disconnect can be found in how enterprises are viewing the concept of the end-user experience. Having satisfied end users is, of course, the ultimate goal. However, it feels like a goal that’s been painted with a broad brush. It’s often vague and unquantifiable, making large enterprises uneasy when it comes to investing. But in an age where consumers and employees are increasingly digital and tech-focused, it’s time for enterprises to change their approach in order to keep up and stay competitive.

Seeing the Dollars and Cents of User Experience

End-user experience monitoring and the investment in performance monitoring tools isn’t just a method for achieving optimal customer service. Instead, it should be viewed as a new business practice that’s integrated into your existing strategy. Performance monitoring, and investing in the tools that make it possible, will increase your profits and reduce the hit that negative end-user experiences have on your bottom line.

Understanding the behavior of your application as well as having the visibility to see and correct technical problems on the user’s side is a proactive way of doing business. By investing in proactive end-user monitoring, you are investing in productivity by reducing time wasted by IT teams trying to correct technical problems that have already reared their ugly heads. Plus, end-user monitoring frees up your team’s time to focus on improving existing software or developing new applications.

Performance monitoring also increases workplace productivity by troubleshooting events that could negatively impact user experience, such as application lag, system crashes, etc. To hone end-user monitoring focus, businesses can set baselines and attainable goals, and carefully track key performance indicators to take actionable steps toward solving real end-user problems.

This idea of proactively closing your business’s visibility gaps, monitoring both physical and virtual devices where your applications run, or even using synthetic monitoring to emulate the experience of your user may seem intimidating. Remember that this isn’t a feel-good, customer service-focused investment. Proactively getting involved in end-user experience monitoring is a strategic business move that will help you and your teams save both time and money — both of which are entirely quantifiable metrics that justify investing, and not just conservatively.