Improving first software use

Software publisher

The software offering had 300 customer accounts and was losing about 15% of its customers each year. Management was considering a conversational assistant.

Approach

1. 01

   Frame

   We had to choose an intervention that improves adoption, with $72,000 CAD in initial investment. The first test covered usage at 30 days, before assessing renewals.

2. 02

   Investigate

   Support requests, the journeys of 60 accounts and 15 interviews showed that several customers did not complete their initial setup. Recurring questions came after they got stuck.

3. 03

   Explain

   Insufficient support and an overly complex start-up were compared. The observations pointed mainly to the setup steps and to how responsibilities were split on the customer side.

4. 04

   Build

   We compared a conversational assistant, a guided path with a kickoff meeting, and a price reduction, using the existing path as the reference.

5. 05

   Test

   Three groups of 30 new accounts were tested. The thresholds set were 70% activation and a fifteen-point advantage over the existing path. The guided path reached 80%, the reference 60%, and the assistant alone 53%.

6. 06

   Decide

   Management selected the guided path and stopped development of the standalone assistant. AI is still used to prepare the teams’ work.

7. 07

   Steer

   At 90 days, activation held at 78%. The annual churn rate cannot yet be observed for these cohorts, so the retention forecast remains conditional.