One of the key elements of success for customer retention is adoption and usage of the product or solution. By making sure the right customers are using the right functionalities, and seeing value, you will benefit from higher retention rates and customer satisfaction. If your customers paid for your products and are not adopting them well into their business processes, churn rates will increase.
Product adoption efforts are a mix of ongoing Success Programs as well as constant monitoring and applying SuccessPlays when meaningful events are identified.
Here's a typical customer Adoption SuccessBLOC. You can customize it for your own business, but it will give you a good starting point.
Good product adoption translates into high license utilization, usage frequency, use of the high-value features and more. Please keep in mind that different types of products may need only a few of these elements.
Ensure High License Utilization
To ensure high license utilization you must look at the number of customers below 60% license utilization, for example, not more than 10 customers below 60% utilization. Then you will need to factor in the average portfolio license utilization, which an example would be more than 70% license utilization. Then you will look at the number of customers that increased their license utilization by more than 10% in the last 30 days.
Ensure High Usage Frequency of Product
To ensure high usage frequency of the product first you must look at the Daily Active Users versus the Monthly Active Users. Then factor in the number of customers that are using the product at least on a weekly basis.
Ensure High Value Feature Adoption
To ensure high-value feature adoption you must start by looking at the number of customers that are using your features in the right ways and right frequencies.
Ongoing Value-Driven Communication with the Customer
To provide ongoing value-driven communication with the customer you must be reviewing a quarterly business review with customers once onboarding is completed.
Customers, after onboarding, should be adopting your product.
Customers that are no longer in the onboarding stage
Customers with a significant drop in their usage or frequency
Top customers: using your product the most
Low license utilization customers: Less than 60% license utilization
Increase utilization: customers with an increase of more than 10% utilization in the last 30 days
Help your team with company and industry best practices to shorten learning and training time and create consistency across your engagements.
Customer Adoption User Manual
What’s the Value of Customer Adoption
Q&A For Customer Adoption
Document and automate consistent and structured engagement models for your team during customer adoption.
Low License Utilization
For Low License Utilization you must conduct a review with the customer and create a plan to increase utilization. The Account Executive should be notified to evaluate commercial risk.
Low Adoption of Main Features
Conduct a training session for the customer team when there is a significant drop in utilization or frequency. Connect with the customer key contact to identify the issues or reasons for the drop. Once this is done you can address the issues discovered and if needed create a mitigation plan to track whether the changes implemented lead to improve utilization.
Increase Utilization
Reach out to the team to emphasize the value and explore more opportunities. Start a customer feedback program for the customers that are no longer in the onboarding stage and filled a Net Promoter Score (NPS), send the NPS score and then reach out to customers that had negative feedback to address their concerns.
Re-establish Key User Leave the Company
Reach out to the team in order to re-establish a connection, identify a new champion, and then reach out to the old contact to see if there is an opportunity for a new sale.
Low Engagement After Onboarding
Look at customers that are 30 days after onboarding. One of the possible triggers may be a key user leaving the company. To resolove this issue for example. Reach out to the CSM to understand if the team has seen any value. Identify if product awareness is low and if so schedule training.
Low Growth in Usage
Analyze customer data.
Engage with the customer for gathering more insights.
Arrange training if needed.
Automate your communications on behalf of the company or the customer success manager using campaigns to send automated emails triggered by various goals. Here are a few examples:
New User Welcome Email
“Welcome [John] to [Company/product]. Here’s what you should be using”
Goal Orienting new users and guiding them to the right features they need to be using
Targeting New users of accounts after onboarding
Drive Feature Usage Email
“You’re missing out on [value]”
Goal Driving feature usage
Targeting Users that are not using a specific feature
Progress/Status Email
“This is what you’ve done/accomplished so far”
Goal Exposing champions to their company usage and value they are getting
Targeting Customer champions
Winback User Email
“We miss you”
Goal Identifying why users stopped using and driving them back to use your product
Targeting Users who were active in your product and recently stopped
Post-Feedback Follow Up Email
“Thank you for sharing your experience with us, we would love to hear more”
Goal Reach out and follow up with users once they share their feedback
Targeting Users who filled in an NPS
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