Improving an existing product

KnowItAi case study

Overview

KnowItAi (a modified name for confidentiality) is a company whose core product helps users save time with analytics and automation by automatically identifying issues in their workflows and helping them decide actions to solve them. Designed with a non-technical approach, it primarily serves Operations Managers who need to optimize resources as their business scales. Due to strict security requirements, their processes were complex, presenting a unique challenge for me to tackle.

The Customer Success team noticed that the onboarding experience wasn’t working as well as it should. Users weren’t engaging as expected, and internal teams were spending too much time chasing after them to get them set up. It was clear that the process needed a fix—not just to help users, but to free up resources and make things more efficient.

We set out to improve the experience by smoothing out key steps making onboarding more intuitive, as well as connecting different services in a smarter way to help our internal teams to step in at the right moments.

Solution areas

Behavioral economics, onboarding experience, automation products, complex processes simplification.

Starting point

We interviewed Customer Success Managers to understand their processes and challenges. These conversations revealed four key issues holding the onboarding experience back.

1. Users were dropping off midway because they didn’t even realize they were in an onboarding process —it was happening through a cumbersome form and series of interviews without clear guidance.

2. Customer Success Managers were spending too much time chasing after clients, creating an inefficient workflow.

3. 50% of the clients were low-touch and brought in little revenue, making the high-effort follow-ups unsustainable.

4. Since customers weren’t completing the initial setup, they couldn’t start testing the product, which always led to churn.

Key behavior

'Every new low-touch customer account manager, on their own, enter the platform and complete the initial onboarding setup form in no more than one session.'

This behavior is both measurable without third-party tools and completely objective, unaffected by customer sentiment.

Behavior map

The next step was to map out every step the customer had to take to achieve the desired key behavior.

Behavior map. Click to enlarge

Barrier detection

With the entire journey mapped out and insights from interviews, we were able to identify the barriers—both psychological, such as a lack of information, and logistical, like processes with too many steps to reach a goal.

Behavior map with barriers. Click to enlarge

Ideation

At this stage, we began gathering all the information we could about the users' context and the interconnection between their journey and the one for the Customer Success Managers. We defined the personas, tasks and needs.

Barrier reduction

Now it was time to reduce these barriers—simplifying processes when possible, introducing default values, addressing key cognitive biases like loss aversion or endowment among others, to create a smoother experience.

Barriers and Biases

Demanding credentials in two different services.
Lack of understanding of some decisions they need to make.
Many sections in the form are not based on information the target role has.
Security configuration early on for a different role.
Not understanding the benefits of using the app; long process before they find value.
Users don’t remember to finish the process after abandoning.

Improvement proposal

“Single Sign-On” and other service integrations.
One default option, with clearer explanatory copy.
Improved, simplified form with only mandatory information for this stage and role.
Security information set up later by the technical role.
Highlight the time-saving benefits of completing the form. Demo project available.
Simple form to be completed and completion visibility.

Benefits analysis and proposal

When we analyzed the main benefit customers gained from completing the onboarding, a secure and personalized experience to get better insights with time, we realized it was purely functional and focused on future impact—the worst combination of benefits for motivating people to do something.

For that reason, we brainstormed more immediate and emotional benefits that could be easily built to make this process more engaging:

Benefits matrix. Click to enlarge

Proposed solution

Our solution addressed the problem from three iterations:

First, we simplified the form by personalizing it to the target user’s role, adding default options, pre-filled information and skippable steps to reduce friction.

Then, we introduced demo projects and helpful tips, and early exposure to the app’s benefits to keep users engaged.

Lastly, we implemented a notification system for Customer Success Managers, allowing them to step in only when users got stuck or needed to purchase additional resources, rather than constantly following up.

Wireframes

We created wireframes through an iterative process, collaborating closely with the Success team and customers in the company’s collaboration program. By going back and forth with feedback, we ensured the designs addressed both business needs and user pain points effectively.

Product Discovery

Personas

We extracted insights from interviews with Customer Success Managers into persona cards to understand the motivations and tasks of the actors involved in the whole onboarding process.

Personas exercise. Click to enlarge

Behavioral economics approach & Desired behavior

Since the setup process involved two key parties, and one of them—the customer—had tools to complete it independently but wasn’t following through, we first set out to understand what was preventing them from finishing. With those insights, we then interviewed our Success team to identify the challenges they faced and uncover additional bottlenecks in the process.

We started with identifying the Desired Behavior:

Visual design

Impact and Takeaways

240%

increase in completed autonomous setup

13%

growth in upsell opportunities & additional services

26%

boost in early-stage retention

Higher engagement led to increased revenue opportunities – As more customers successfully completed onboarding, we saw a slight increase in resource sales. With a better understanding of the platform, they became more open to exploring advanced reports and training.

Collaboration led to bigger, more effective solutions – Working with the Success team revealed process challenges beyond onboarding. This led to simple yet impactful improvements, like a low-cost notification system that had a significant positive impact on their workflow.