#159 - Building Cross-Functional Research Impact with Judy Xu of Salesforce

Awkward Silences

Creating strong stakeholder relationships is important for UX researchers at any company. Doing this at "enterprise" companies—large organizations with many products and an international footprint—can feel daunting. Our guest, Judy Xu, has successfully navigated the scale of enterprises like Hubspot, Meta, and Salesforce, where they work as a Senior Researcher.

They join Erin to take us inside the enterprise, unpacking how research "happens" and what this has taught them about building cross-functional relationships. Specifically, Judy shares the value of using environmental inputs (like whether it's B2B or B2C) to map stakeholder structures, identify (and start using) meaningful metrics, and choose the right method for the moment.

Together, these strategies have helped Judy create lasting UX impact, building influence and trust with key stakeholders. Listen to learn how you can start creating more impact inside your organization, whether it's an enterprise or a startup.

Highlights

• 06:16 Learning and Research Challenges in Large Organizations
• 10:56 B2C vs B2B: User Metrics vs Revenue Focus
• 15:43 Adapting Research Insight Presentation to Stakeholder Needs
• 17:43 Collaboration with Key Stakeholders and Functional Diversity
• 22:39 Understanding Matrix Structures: Cross-Functional Roles & Incentives
• 26:55 Embrace Details: Mastering Business Processes Efficiently

About Judy
Judy is a Senior Researcher at Salesforce, where she uses I use qualitative (e.g., interviews, codesign) and quantitative (e.g., text analysis, surveys) approaches to tackle strategic, exploratory, and evaluative research questions. She has worked at Meta, Hubspot, and Simplisafe, and has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University.

Resources

• Learn the fundamentals of business with this free course
• Use these five steps to calculate the ROI of UX research
• These skills build credibility and influence for more impact