Every touchpoint is a decision. Make sure it works in your favour.
Customer and user experience research captures what people actually feel, think, and do at every interaction with your brand, from first awareness to post-purchase loyalty. At Haystack, we combine observational methods, qualitative depth, and quantitative measurement to give you the full picture of what is working, what is not, and where the biggest opportunities lie.
About the solution
What is Customer & User Experience research?
Every contact point a customer has with your brand, a retail shelf, a product interaction, a service encounter, a delivery, is a moment of decision. They either deepen their relationship with your brand or they start looking elsewhere. The gap between what brands assume those moments feel like and what customers actually experience is where loyalty is won and lost.
At Haystack, CX research is the discipline of closing that gap. We design research programmes that map the full customer journey, identifying the moments that matter, the friction points that frustrate, and the experience drivers that build lasting loyalty. UX sits within that framework as the lens we apply when a specific touchpoint, a product, a retail environment, a service interaction, requires deeper behavioural scrutiny.
CX as the strategic frame
Customer experience research at Haystack starts with the full journey: who your customers are, what they encounter at each touchpoint, how those encounters shape perception and behaviour, and where the gaps between expectation and reality are largest.
UX as the diagnostic lens
When a specific touchpoint needs closer examination, Haystack's UX capability zooms in. Usability testing, eye tracking, and behavioural observation reveal the friction points that satisfaction scores alone cannot locate and that consumers themselves rarely articulate clearly.
The experience research every customer-facing team needs
Every team that touches the customer journey has a stake in experience research. Haystack's CX and UX programmes give marketing, service, and innovation teams a shared, evidence-based picture of what customers actually go through, and what to do about it.
All customer-facing teams
Build a shared experience map that aligns marketing, product, and service around the moments that matter most, giving every team the same evidence base for their decisions.
Innovation & product teams
Validate product and service interactions before they reach scale. Usability testing, observational research, and shop-alongs reveal what real consumers actually do with your product, not what they say they would do in a survey.
Marketing & brand teams
Understand how your brand promise lands at every touchpoint, and where the gap between what you communicate and what customers actually experience is widest. Sharper CX intelligence means sharper brand decisions.
Customer experience & service teams
Satisfaction scores tell you something is wrong. Haystack's CX research tells you where and why. We identify the specific moments, interactions, and friction points that drive declining sales, loyalty, and advocacy, and translate them into concrete service design recommendations.
You can't fix what you can't see
Most experience problems are invisible until they show up in declining sales, falling satisfaction scores, or a competitor gaining ground. Haystack's CX research programmes are designed to surface those problems at the moment of interaction, so you can act before they become something harder to fix.
Ideal Partner
Why partner with Haystack Consulting for Customer & User Experience research
CX research is only useful when it drives action. The difference between a satisfaction report and a strategic CX programme is the quality of the insight behind it and the clarity of the recommendations that follow.
At Haystack, we bring three capabilities to every CX programme that most agencies keep separate: the observational rigour to capture what actually happens at a touchpoint, the qualitative depth to understand why it happens, and the quantitative scale to measure how widely it happens across your customer base.
Our CX work has shaped journey redesigns, product and service improvements, retail environment overhauls, and brand positioning corrections for clients across FMCG, retail, food service, financial services, and automotive. The goal is always the same: close the gap between the experience your brand intends and the experience your customers actually have.
Unique process
Two lenses. One complete experience picture.
CX research at Haystack runs across three capability streams, observational and behavioural, qualitative, and quantitative, each designed to answer a different dimension of the same question: what is your customer actually experiencing, and what does that mean for your brand?
OBSERVATIONAL & BEHAVIOURAL — QUALITATIVE
- Shop-Alongs & In-Context Observation
- Usability Testing
- Eye Tracking & Behavioural Observation
- Customer Journey Interviews (IDIs)
- Focus Groups & Experience Workshops
- Online Communities & Diary Studies
QUANTITATIVE
- Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty Measurement (CSAT, NPS, CES)
- Customer Journey Surveys
- Experience Driver & Segmentation Analysis
Brand aligned
A partner who turns experience data into experience improvement
Measuring customer experience is not the goal. Improving it is. Haystack's CX programmes are designed to close the gap between measurement and action, at every stage of the journey.
Behavioural truth at the moment of experience
Observational methods, eye tracking, and in-context research capture what customers actually do and feel at the moment of interaction, not what they recall in a survey three days later. Real behaviour beats recalled behaviour every time.
The full journey in view
Every CX programme at Haystack is designed around the complete customer journey, from first encounter to loyalty or defection. We don't analyse touchpoints in isolation; we map how they connect, compound, and ultimately drive the brand relationship.
From insight to intervention
Our CX reports don't stop at diagnosis. Every programme includes specific, prioritised recommendations for the touchpoints, interactions, and experience elements most worth improving, structured for the teams that need to act on them.
Qual depth where it matters, quant scale where it counts
CX programmes are built to combine the methods that reveal why experiences fail with the measurement frameworks that show how widely they fail, and whether the interventions you make are actually working.
How we design and deliver your CX research programme
From journey mapping to final delivery, every step is built around your business question. Our integrated team means observational, qualitative, and quantitative expertise sit in the same room from day one, so no insight falls through the gaps between methods.
Alignment
We map your customer journey, identify the touchpoints worth scrutinising, define the research objectives for each, and agree on the right methodology mix, whether that's observational, qualitative, quantitative, or a combination.
Fieldwork
Where possible, in-context observation and usability testing run first, capturing real behaviour before recall shapes the qualitative narrative. Qualitative depth follows, and quantitative measurement provides the scale and statistical validation.
Delivery & activation
Outputs range from topline journey health summaries to full strategic CX analyses with journey redesign recommendations. Activation workshops are available to align teams around findings and agree prioritised action.
Journey framework design
We build the research programme around the specific journey stages, customer types, and experience hypotheses that matter most. Every element, from discussion guide to survey architecture to observation protocol, is purpose-built for your question.
Analysis & integration
Observational data, qualitative narratives, and quantitative scores come together in a single journey map, with friction points, loyalty drivers, and gap analysis across all touchpoints and customer segments, presented as one coherent picture.
Alignment
We map your customer journey, identify the touchpoints worth scrutinising, define the research objectives for each, and agree on the right methodology mix, whether that's observational, qualitative, quantitative, or a combination.
Journey framework design
Every CX programme at Haystack is designed around the complete customer journey, from first encounter to loyalty or defection. We don't analyse touchpoints in isolation; we map how they connect, compound, and ultimately drive the brand relationship.
Fieldwork
Where possible, in-context observation and usability testing run first, capturing real behaviour before recall shapes the qualitative narrative. Qualitative depth follows, and quantitative measurement provides the scale and statistical validation.
Analysis & integration
Observational data, qualitative narratives, and quantitative scores come together in a single journey map, with friction points, loyalty drivers, and gap analysis across all touchpoints and customer segments, presented as one coherent picture.
Delivery & activation
Outputs range from topline journey health summaries to full strategic CX analyses with journey redesign recommendations. Activation workshops are available to align teams around findings and agree prioritised action.
Don’t just take our word for it
"Great team to work with. Always innovating research agency for sensorial research!"
"Haystack brainstorms with us as a partner to create challenging, innovative, and custom-made projects."
"We have great professional experience with Haystack! They are reliable, dynamic, pleasant and highly flexible. They are specialised in sensory research among others."
"Haystack has a critical approach embedded in their company culture and methodologies. That is why we prefer to work with Haystack."
Ready to see your customer journey through your customers' eyes?
The experience your customers have with your brand is being shaped at every touchpoint, whether you are measuring it or not. If you are ready to see exactly what they encounter, feel, and decide, we would love to talk.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between CX and UX research?
Customer experience (CX) research covers the full relationship a customer has with a brand across every touchpoint — from first awareness through to loyalty or defection. User experience (UX) research focuses specifically on the interaction a person has with a product, service, or physical environment. At Haystack, CX provides the strategic frame and UX provides the diagnostic lens we apply when a specific touchpoint requires deeper behavioural examination.
How many touchpoints can be covered in a single CX study?
The scope depends on your objectives and methodology mix. A large-scale journey survey can cover the full journey across 8–15 touchpoints in a single wave. Qualitative programmes typically focus on 3–6 journey stages for sufficient depth. Observational and usability work is designed around specific touchpoints where behavioural evidence is most valuable. Haystack advises on the right scope during the alignment phase — covering everything shallowly is rarely more useful than covering the right things deeply.
Can Haystack run CX research across multiple markets or channels?
Yes. Our qualitative, observational, and quantitative capabilities are deployed across key European and international markets, with local-language fieldwork, in-market research teams, and cross-market analytical frameworks that allow genuine comparison without flattening real market differences. Multi-channel programmes — covering in-store, online, and service interactions within the same research design — are a standard part of our CX offer.
How is a full CX research programme different from a standard NPS survey?
NPS measures the outcome of the experience — how likely someone is to recommend — but tells you almost nothing about which specific interactions drove that score or what to do about it. A full CX programme combines journey mapping, driver analysis, qualitative depth, and behavioural observation to identify the exact touchpoints, interactions, and experience failures that are driving satisfaction and defection. NPS is a metric. CX research is the intelligence that tells you how to improve it.
Why do observational methods add value that surveys can't?
Surveys capture what consumers remember and are willing to report. Observational methods capture what they actually do at the moment of experience — including the behaviours, hesitations, and reactions that happen below the level of conscious awareness and never make it into a questionnaire response. For any experience question where the gap between stated and actual behaviour matters, observation is not optional.
Every touchpoint is a decision. Make it count.
The gap between the experience your brand intends and the experience your customers actually have is where loyalty is won and lost. A strong CX research programme makes that gap visible and gives you the evidence and direction to close it.
If you're ready to understand what your customers actually experience at every touchpoint, we would love to talk.
