CCC’s Customer Experience First (CX1) program strengthens our team’s commitment to prioritizing our customers in everything we do. While it’s easy to point to our award-winning Customer Service group as proof of this, our dedication to satisfying our customers runs much deeper, and is evident in the value of our products and services. As part of CCC’s ongoing CX1 Velocity of Content blog Q&A series, we talk with Aaron Reid, Sr. Product Manager, to find out how our customers’ input has impacted the launch of—and subsequent updates to—CCC’s new transactional e-commerce platform, Marketplace.
CCC recently made some pretty comprehensive enhancements to its Marketplace. Can you tell us about what Marketplace is and about these improvements?
AR: Marketplace is our innovative new e-commerce site. It’s where all our customers now go to purchase pay-per-use permissions. In creating Marketplace, we had to migrate customers and partners from our legacy ecommerce system. We started the migration process by talking to customers to find out what they wanted in their workflows. We showed them mock-ups of our ideas and treated their feedback as if it were gold. Marketplace is 100% a customer-driven product.
What was the impetus for the enhancements to Marketplace?
AR: The biggest driver in making these changes was our commitment to improving our customers’ experience with the product. We created Marketplace to provide more services and capabilities to our customers and to be able to respond more quickly to our market, yet we had to manage a seamless transition for tens of thousands of buyers. When we made the switch, we again looked to our customers for their input on our workflows and capabilities: “Are there any tripping points? How can we make this easier for you? Are there any capabilities we’re missing?” We wanted to uncover it all so we could incorporate as much as possible.
Can you give an example of one of these enhancements?
AR: Through one of our usability sessions—essentially informal customer feedback forums—we found that after our customers added an item to their project, they wanted to be navigated back to their search results so they could stay within their previous search workflow. We added this capability into our next product release and had it updated shortly after the initial launch.
By remaining agile, it’s enabled us to stay in alignment with our customers, which is incredibly important in providing the best possible customer experience.
Can you talk about the impact these enhancements are having on customers’ experience within Marketplace?
AR: Because of the latest enhancements, our customers are experiencing more seamless workflows. We want their experience to be smooth and intuitive. If we can save our customers time and provide a better experience, then we know our efforts have been successful.
Can you share any behind-the-scenes examples of CX1 in action at CCC?
AR: Our product team and business analysts work closely with our customers. We’re acutely aware of what our clients want to see next and we work hard on the backend to deliver their requests. Just about all of our enhancements focus on user experience. In fact, we try to look at everything from the customer’s perspective. Our team is often guided by this simple phrase: “As a user, I want this capability so I can achieve this result.” It helps us pinpoint not only what we want to achieve for our clients, but what it will help them accomplish.
Any other customer-focused enhancements in the works that you know of?
Absolutely. Our product development work is never done. There’s always a way we can refine a process or improve a workflow or remove clicks to save our customers time. We’re currently working on enhancing our notifications within the user interface and adding more capabilities, such as the ability to delete projects. It’s a constantly revolving door of ways we can improve our customers’ experience. As soon as one enhancement is done, we’re on to the next!
Aaron Reid is a senior product manager at Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) and is responsible for CCC’s transactional e-commerce platform, Marketplace. He manages the prioritization of development efforts, customer outreach and usability testing, and the roadmap definition for Marketplace. Aaron joined CCC in 2015, initially working on CCC’s Republication Licensing Service (RLS) prior to taking ownership of and launching the new Marketplace. He holds an MFA in screenwriting from Emerson College and an MeD in elementary education from Salem State University. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, two sons, and three cats.
