What are customer exposure hours?

Customer exposure hours are the number of hours a team spends observing customers interacting with their products, websites, apps, designs, or experiences. 

The biggest predictor of customer experience success 

One of the easiest ways to know if your customer experience efforts are making a difference is to tally up your team's customer exposure hours. Teams that spend at least two hours every six weeks observing their customers see far greater outcomes than teams that don’t. And we’re not just talking about researchers. To reap the benefits of customer exposure hours, each team member needs to get feedback from real people while using their products or interacting with their website or brand to build empathy and challenge their assumptions. 

As Sarah Lerner, Sr. Product Manager at Google (formerly Microsoft), says, according to research, customer exposure hours are the number one predictor of success in improving usability and CX.

Getting more time with your customers, regardless of how much it is still beneficial. Catherine Richards, Head of Customer Design at Tesco Bank, shares her top tips for staying customer-obsessed via exposure hours. Professionals don’t have to spend much time watching or interviewing customers. Just try to do more than you’re doing now. 

Related listening: Check out The Human Insight Podcast episode where Catherine Richards discusses building a CX culture through positive disruption.