How to communicate big changes in product when these changes have some benefits but require a big effort from your customers to enjoy them?

Welcome to the fun world of Enablement! And there are internal + external aspects of this. External Message x Value & benefits: What's in it for your users? Migration is a pain in the ass. Before you get to the logistics, you have to sell them on the why Transition plan: What's the step-by-step guide? Is it one size fits all, or does it require different approaches for different types of users? These need to be documented and clearly laid out.  Timing & cadence: Give your customers enoug ...Read More

Make it as easy as possible for your customers. Cannot emphasize enough that every decision you make should be prioritizing the customer journey and imagining how it will affect them. If it feels impossible, or as difficult as switching to a competitor, figure out how to fix it. No matter how exciting the benefits are, they may not outweigh the perceived “cost of switching.” Research: Do customer research to deeply understand how the customer will approach what you’re asking them to do. Can they ...Read More

My initial reaction to this question was - why would you do this? :D If you are asking a customer to make a big effort, your overall benefits should far outweigh the work needed to achieve it. So instead of "some benefits, big effort" you're really targeting "some effort, big benefits." But I think what this question is actually asking is about a breaking change, such as a forced migration or a deprecation. These are hard but necessary situations and the approach to take is to overcommunicate, r ...Read More

The first step is defining the customer journey and making sure your key functiona teams understand that journey. Then, recognizing that there may be stop gaps that need to be implemented to ensure customers can take advantage of the feature. What needs to happen on the delivery side of the house so CS and technical teams are enabled? How can we over communicate and document docs and materials for our teams and customers? What kinds of enablement efforts do we need to account for to make sure cu ...Read More