“What we have here… is a failure to communicate.” The succinct classic line from the 1967 film “Cool Hand Luke” is often applied in many different situations, and churn is definitely one of them. Customers buy solutions, see them onboarded, and then walk away some time after. There may be many reasons given, but the inescapable foundation is the disconnect between desire and fulfillment. The challenge is to reveal that essential disconnect in time to effectively act upon it. When customers fail to adopt the solutions they’ve bought, what can Customer Success groups and their companies do to Define the situation, Detect when it begins to occur, Determine the Cause, and Deploy resources to preserve the relationships?
Define
The AI response to the definition of Software Adoption is that it is: “…the process where users learn, embrace, and consistently integrate new software into their daily workflows to achieve its intended value, boosting productivity and ROI, going beyond simple usage to becoming habitual, value-driven engagement that supports business goals. It involves a transition from merely using a tool to actively leveraging it to solve problems, making it integral to operations rather than just a deployed asset.” It’s not enough to check that modules have been successfully implemented, licenses have been activated and that users are logging into the system — that’s not adoption. Adoption may only begin to develop after those onboarding tasks have been achieved.
Detect
How do you know that your customers are regularly leveraging your product to solve real problems and to accomplish tangible tasks? Does your software product inherently track specific feature usage? Or have you bolted on a feature usage tracker like Pendo or Mixpanel to provide that data? (The Customer Success Directory’s TechMap page has a list of apps that can help with this requirement.)
Having the usage data is only a beginning. Are you analyzing it and connecting it to real business tasks and value outcomes? If a customer’s usage starts to plateau or to decline, does the system alert a CSM to react? Is there someone on your team that is the authentic owner of adoption? Even better, is there someone who owns the CRV metric: Customer Realized Value?
Determine the cause
The alarm bells have gone off; we’re not in a Code Red scenario yet but we definitely don’t want things to get that far. What’s going on? Is this a product issue? Did Sales make inappropriate promises? Was onboarding incomplete? Is more training needed? Is there a Support case that has not been resolved?
Deploy an appropriate response.
Now that we know a) There is a problem, and B) what seems to be the cause, what can you do about it? What resources are required? And what lessons can be learned from the exercise that might help prevent other customers from taking this path?
The continuing discussion
We’re discussing this topic in The Customer Success Forum on LinkedIn. To join us, log into LinkedIn and then click here.
If you have insights to privately offer on this subject, or if you’d like assistance with the process, let’s talk. Use the Contact Us link in the upper right corner of the page.
Recommended Reading
Do You Know What Your Customers Are Doing With Your Application’s Feature Set?
Customer Success and the Catalog of Outcomes and Values
Customer Realized Value: A New Metric for Customer Success Teams
