From Frustration to Efficiency: The Case for User Experience Monitoring Solutions

For every business, now more than ever, there's a critical need to bridge the gap between the digital experiences users encounter at home and those they face in the workplace. While we all have grown accustomed to a certain level of seamless application usage in our homes, this experience often fails to translate seamlessly into the workplace.  

This disparity can lead to frustration for individuals who expect a similar level of performance but encounter issues due to factors unique to the workplace environment. 

How many times have you heard your employees or colleagues saying, “I just got disconnected from my session” or “Is anyone else having trouble accessing X application?” or more normally “The WiFi here is terrible” … 

Even though your network reporting dashboards are showing ‘green’ and ‘100% healthy’, your user’s experience is so often a completely different story. This is made significantly harder to monitor when you may have multiple locations to manage. 

Now the challenge, as an IT leader, is how do you find the time to figure out what the issue is and correctly allocate resources to remediate it?  

Diving Deeper: Workplace Connectivity and Its Impact on User Experience 

Let’s touch on ‘factors unique to the workplace environment’ in a little more detail. How users use their work devices is usually a lot different from how they use their personal devices. For instance, an individual at home accessing a streaming service, isn’t going to require as many resources compared to that same individual in the office, using their work laptop, connecting to their work’s Intranet (where potentially another 30 employees are doing the exact same!).  

Like most things nowadays, it comes down to the data. Not necessarily what the data is made up of, but more the transporting of that data from one place to another: the data signals. For the individual at home with a glass of wine, eating popcorn, watching a film – the transport of their data signals is minimal. Their data signal journey will consist of something like:  

From them > to the app in the cloud > and back to them. 

Compare this digital experience to the one that occurs in the workplace, they are worlds apart.  

Let’s create a scenario here. Say you are a Nurse in a hospital who must go around a ward of patients, run blood tests, and log the time you have done this on the work tablets through the in-house app; which then connects to the Hospital’s main database and may travel through switches and firewalls.  

Now let’s say that you’ve lost connectivity. How is this impacting you and the people you are responsible for? Not only does this reduce efficiency in the business, but it also leads to bad morale as users become irritated at the systems and the IT staff.  

Wi-Fi issues is the number one user complaint that affects every business. Which means you’re probably very used to a flood of tickets with angry and urgent requests to “FIX THE Wi-Fi!”. This is where the challenges start. How/Where do you start in troubleshooting devices when they look like they are working? The list of potential culprits is a minefield with factors like thick walls, dark spots, and the overall misuse of Wi-Fi being only a few of the ones to mention. What’s more, it may well not even be the Wi-Fi that is the culprit! 

Keep in mind that a lot of times in these workplace scenarios, there may be more than one person doing the same role, or at least more than one person requiring access to the same applications. And if one user is having a bad experience, it’s more than likely others are.  

This means connectivity reigns supreme. And with the rise of IoT devices and the ever-growing demand for uninterrupted connectivity, the need for Wi-Fi and network monitoring solutions has never been more pressing. Or more precisely, user experience monitoring solutions. 

Enter WhiteSpider's Watchman

Watchman is WhiteSpider's creation for all things Wi-Fi and network monitoring. Watchman provides a detailed view of network path, highlights performance metrics at each hop, and unlocks end-to-end network visibility. With data-driven insights into Wi-Fi and network performance and access to on-demand customised scripts, individuals can establish exactly where connectivity issues are occurring. 

At its core, Watchman aims to enhance the digital experience for users by visualising network performance and the overall 'health' across various networks and services. By providing real-time insights into end-user experience degradation, Watchman empowers IT operations to optimise efficiency and improve overall performance. 

What sets Watchman apart from other monitoring solutions is its granularity and cost-effectiveness. Unlike competing products with limited customisation options and complex pricing structures, Watchman offers granular customisation at a competitive price point. With no cap on the number of tests, Watchman ensures that organisations of all sizes can access cutting-edge Wi-Fi and network monitoring capabilities without breaking the bank. 

Summing It Up: Solving Workplace Connectivity Issues with Watchman 

The disparity between the digital experiences we encounter at home versus those in the workplace highlights the critical need for businesses to monitor their Wi-Fi and network connectivity. As employees increasingly rely on digital tools to perform their tasks, any interruption in connectivity can lead to frustration and decreased productivity. Whether it's a nurse in a hospital unable to access critical patient information or a team in an office experiencing connectivity issues with vital applications, the impact on operations can be significant. 

In a landscape where connectivity reigns supreme, investing in user experience monitoring solutions is no longer a luxury but a necessity.  

For more information on WhiteSpider's Watchman, read our brochure.