With the evolution of the digital age, companies are getting more specific in their areas of business. What seemed like a vague area to look before, now there are specialized software for deeper look into them. With evolving needs, companies are buying new solutions available in the marketplace. But do they fit right in their workforce? To answer that, we have to consider the concept of user adoption.

User adoption is the process that ensures a user has become successful in achieving their goals while using a product. Only when this happens, would the user truly become a regular user of the product and accept it. The purpose of the product is achieved when it is able to provide a solution for what it was made. 

Companies implement this adoption process for various reasons. The first and foremost need is to gain the solution for the challenges they were facing for which they bought the product. Then comes the need to train the employees to become competent enough to use the new product. 

While implementing the adoption process, managers make sure that they reach the first time value at the earliest. It is the point when all the processes in the initial setup of the product is complete and the company starts gaining the value from it. The time spent to reach that point is also counted as the cost apart from the cost of the product. All in all, the final aim for implementing the adoption process from the buyers side is to achieve the ROI as soon as possible. And for the seller is to make their product a regular and indispensable commodity in their customer’s business.

But it is all easier said than done. Many companies make mistakes in achieving these results and we are going to discuss them below.

#1 Not considering the end user’s perspective

Most of the SaaS companies get so involved in the marketing and sales process that totally forget about their end-users. The difference here to notice is that vendors are interacting with the decision makers of customer’s organization. Oftentimes, these decision makers are not the end users. 

Customer success managers often design the whole process of product orientation from a business perspective. Because these are the stakeholders who are in constant interaction with them initially. And this is where they miss out on including the end-users perspective who might not be from the business background. They can be anything from a statistician, a software developer, a tester or a team lead. 

Hence, considering the end-user’s skillsets is crucial while designing your onboarding and training materials.

#2 Checking vanity metrics

While metrics are quite important to strategize your user adoption plan, not knowing which ones to use can be harmful. You must know how to make the best of the metrics and hence, which ones to use. Checking the login and logout times of the users are going to give you some information but that is not enough. You must be able to monitor their usage data at a more detailed level. 

Number of downloads of your app is another vanity metric which doesn’t guarantee the business growth. It is not going to help you until you find through the right metrics about how users are engaging with the product. What features are they using? Is it according to your adoption plan or are they going off-track? 

Metrics like Daily active users or Monthly active users will give you a fair amount of idea about your apps popularity. But not until they make use of a good spread of all the features in the app, you can be sure of their product adoption. They must be able to derive value from the product in the way it was made. 

#3 Unstructured product orientation program

While designing the product orientation program you must be eager to tell how great your product is. And in an attempt to do that, you may create a structure of the program which becomes overwhelming to the customer. Remember that you have spent months and years with this product, sometimes right from its development phase. Whereas it has hardly been a week or so that the customer has heard about it for the first time. 

Hence, they need to immerse in your product experience slowly and gradually. Not giving breaks after you covered a training module would be the biggest mistake in user adoption. They need some time to try their hands on the product about the features they learnt. You must give them that space so they get enough time to absorb the new features of the product.

#4 Unable to decide which engagement model is right

When your customers are from different backgrounds with different business profiles, it becomes difficult to decide whom to serve first and how. You tend to give more attention to your high-profile customers and keep minimum interaction with the lower ones. But that’s not always right. 

You have limited resources in your organization to meet customer’s needs. Hence, you have to allocate them wisely so that all your customers feel privileged and encouraged to do more business with you. You cannot give personal attention to everyone. Hence, using tech-touch engagement tends to serve the purpose of extending your hands to everyone in user adoption. 

Apart from the customer’s business profile it is also necessary to note in which stage of customer journey they are. The ones who have adopted your product and have become regular users need less attention than the ones who just onboarded recently.

#5 Unable to show value to multiple stakeholders

Your customer organization might be having different stakeholders who are interacting with you at different levels. Some might be at the business level, while others might be at the mid-management level while the rest are the end-users. To show the value of your product, your CSM must be able to interact with all of them through different perspectives. 

To the top executives, the CSM must show the business value of the product and demonstrate how it helps in generating more revenues or greater profit margin. While to the end-users or the team leaders, they must demonstrate how the product is able to drastically reduce their workload.

Talking with everyone from the same perspective is one of the common mistakes companies make.

Final Take

If you don’t act on correcting these mistakes, your user adoption process would always be lagging behind. You must be patient and consistent in your efforts for helping the customers adopt your product. Customers take their own time to adapt to a new technology or a product. They are already occupied with myriads of work and you must understand that. Whatever time they are allocating to your new product must add immense value to their product experience.

Along with a great product experience, a great customer experience is also important. They are not only becoming a user of your product but commencing a new relationship with your brand as well. Correcting the mistakes you come across in these processes is most important in your evolution. And only through continuous learning and process of improvement can you shape a great business.

WRITTEN BYRohan Sheth

Rohan has over 11 years of experience in client services, marketing and hospitality field. Previously, he was head of digital marketing for a hi-tech mobile application. Rohan is driven by new challenges and the possibility of making an impact on individuals and businesses.

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