Can you share any success stories or specific examples of customer accounts where you were able to significantly increase product adoption?
Two examples, one SMB and one enterprise:
SMB:
Theme: work backwards from what you want: customer is well-trained —> product adoption —> high retention.
A long time ago I worked for a company entirely focused on SMB (think single users up to 20). With that, we worked backwards from what "good" looked like (high retention) and then determined what they would need to do (use cases in the product) and then we saw the results.
Put differently, we put together a list of customers who were hardly using the product, performed outreach campaigns of phone calls for 1:1 coaching, emails, and webinar invites, and many of those customers took us up on the offer and we met with them at least once, and then followed-up with email content. It was hit or miss because many of those users who struggled in the beginning also struggled later on because they were either 1) constantly distracted or 2) were intimidated by learning a new piece of technology. However, the ones who engaged truly outperformed their peers. This was measured by 1) logins and 2) each area of the product.
Enterprise:
At a different company, we put together a 'maturity model' for different use cases. With this, we were able to show the customer how they stacked up against their peers, and also where they stand in terms of adopting the product. Being able to show customers how they stack against their peer group is natural and extremely motivating. Then they developed internal plans to adopt more of the product.
Go to:
https://pulselibrary.gainsight.com/
Search for Product Adoption and you will see a lot of customers sharing their stories and journeys. Note that this is a Gainsight agnostic content shared during our customer success industry event. Here is how you can search for content.
Yes!
In the past, we had various approaches to driving adoption in our accounts that would cause temporary boosts but didn't result in sustained adoption. Now we have a motion that's working!
First things first: you have to understand why users do/don't adopt to move the needle on this.
When/where do the users get value from using your product (things that would make them come back)? How easy is it for them to pick the product up and use it without instruction? What use cases are easiest to start with?
For us, we learned that users do best when their leaders are setting the tone: why they purchased the product, when/how they should use it, and what metrics the organization will start to rally around from the product.
We are leaning into that with a motion of Rollout and Adoption planning (which is a flavor of success planning) which was actually invented by some members of our CSM team:
Identify key user groups and use cases that align to the outcomes our customers want to achieve. This is done through a focused conversation with our executive/champion in the account.
Prescribe use cases (simple to advanced) that align to those outcomes.
Provide the customer with templates to communicate those to their users about Why, When, How to use the platform.
Orient user training (both online and live) around those key use cases and help train the users.
Measure results, discuss them with the customer
Rinse and Repeat
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