December 3, 2024 • 31 mins
As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I think that old chestnut really sums up the product onboarding to adoption pipeline; just because a user has found your product doesn't mean they'll end up paying for it. I get it; it's frustrating when new users seem to arrive at your product, take a sniff, and gallop off into the sunset. But we're not here to commiserate about runaway users, we're here to zoom out on this kooky little analogy and understand how to get that horse to drink. Because when you look at the context around successful product adoption, you'll notice that many parts of that journey actually begin long before and continue long after user activation.
My guest today is Ramli John, author of Product-Led Onboarding and the founder of Delight Path, a product onboarding consulting firm. Ramli is like, THE guy for product-led onboarding wisdom. So we were really lucky to have him come on and share some practical frameworks, tactics, and tools for figuring out how to evaluate and refine your user onboarding journey.
Resources from this episode:
- Subscribe to The Product Manager newsletter
- Check out this episode’s sponsor: Wix Studio
- Connect with Ramli on LinkedIn
- Check out Delight Path
- Product-Led Onboarding: How to Turn Users Into Lifelong Customers
- Ramli John’s New Book — EUREKA: The Customer Onboarding Playbook for High-Growth B2B Companies
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hannah Clark (00:01):
As the saying goes, you can lead
a horse to water, butyou can't make it drink.
I think that old chestnutreally sums up the product
onboarding to adoption pipeline;just because a user has found
your product doesn't meanthey'll end up paying for it.
I get it; it's frustratingwhen new users seem to arrive
at your product, take a sniff,and gallop off into the sunset.
But we're not here tocommiserate about runaway
users, we're here to zoomout on this kooky little
(00:24):
analogy and understand howto get that horse to drink.
Because when you look at thecontext around successful
product adoption, you'llnotice that many parts of
that journey actually beginlong before and continue
long after user activation.
My guest today is RamliJohn, author of Product-Led
Onboarding and the founderof Delight Path, a product
onboarding consulting firm.
Ramli is like, THE guy forproduct-led onboarding wisdom.
(00:46):
So we were really lucky tohave him come on and share
some practical frameworks,tactics, and tools for figuring
out how to evaluate and refineyour user onboarding journey.
So to come back to thathorse analogy, it behooves
you to try them out.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Let's jump in.
Welcome back to TheProduct Manager Podcast.
We are here today with RamliJohn and we are very excited
(01:07):
to have you here today.
Thank you for joining us, Ramli.
How are you doing?
Ramli John (01:10):
Pretty good.
How about yourself, Hannah?
Hannah Cla (01:11):
Feeling really good.
Can you tell us, to startoff, a little bit about your
background and how you gotto where you are and your
whole journey in product-ledgrowth and onboarding?
Ramli John (01:19):
Yeah, I got in, I've been working on
SaaS for quite some time.
I got a chance to work ongrowth and onboarding with
SaaS and then eventuallyconnected with Wes Bush.
He wrote the book Product-LedGrowth and people don't know
this, we actually went to thesame university, University of
Waterloo, but 10 years apart.
He's 10 years younger than I am.
(01:40):
Yeah, that's how we connected.
I got a chance to work withhim and work with product-led
companies and help them withonboarding and I got on to
work at Appcues as well.
It's a product adoption softwarefor product-led companies.
You can probably see thepattern is all product-led
and now I'm in Delight Path.
Or I help product-ledcompanies with their product
onboarding experiences.
So just a little bit aboutme in 60 seconds or less.
Hannah Clark (02:01):
Yeah, perfect.
Well, and this all connectsto our core topic of the day,
which is product-led growth.
Product onboarding is part ofthat product-led growth process.
So let's kick it off.
What are some of the keymisconceptions, as far as
your experience has shown you,that you think product teams
have about activation and userretention in that whole journey?
Ramli John (02:20):
Yeah, I think in terms of activation
itself, people think, firstof all, there's a few ones.
One that really gets tome is like the whole, the
classic example with justhave seven friends in 10 days,
that's a Facebook metric.
I think that is a greatmetric because it's easy to
explain, but the challengewith that is even the head of
(02:42):
growth at Facebook, they werestraight up saying that it's
not fully based on full data.
Like they don't have the fullcorrelation because it's hard.
And for a lot of B2Bcompanies, they don't have
enough data to do that.
They picked that number becausethey found a pattern and
it was easy to communicate.
And there's obviously alot of different variables
that get into stickiness.
And that's why teams that Iwork with I need to get that
(03:04):
seven friends in 10 days metric.
It's you're overcomplicating it.
Just pick a deal moment, likea sticky moment or a moment
where it requires commitmentfrom the user and just
get users to do that once.
And that's a good place tostart in terms of activation.
That's a common one.
Second thing is oftenthat it, they see it
as a product problem.
(03:25):
And often onboarding isactually such a very cross
functional issue thatmarketing has input into it,
especially the positioningand messaging that I got a
chance to chat with the folksat Fletch, Anthony and Rob.
And really, if you don't haveyour messaging and positioning
nailed down, then it's reallygonna impact what people
(03:46):
expect from your product.
And if people come in withunrealistic expectations
of the profit there's noproduct experience onboarding
or in product guidance ortours that can really help
them get to that aha momentcause they had a different
aha moment in their minds.
It's not really goingto happen there.
So I think there's just a coupleI can keep going on and on.
We could probably dedicatea whole episode of this, but
(04:07):
I think those are a coupleof common ones in terms of
misconceptions about activation.
Hannah Clark (04:12):
So you're the founder of Delight Path product
onboarding consulting firm.
You're the author ofProduct-Led Onboarding.
Very well respectedliterature in the space.
And you also have developed afive step framework called the
EUREKA framework for onboarding.
I want to dig into theframework because I don't
think we've got time to gothrough everything in the book.
Can you walk us through how thathelps the organizations that
you work with user activation?
Ramli John (04:32):
Yeah, of course.
I think touching upon it first,that misconception I mentioned.
When I approach it,this is like five step.
It's an acronym for EUREKA andone of them is the two letters.
So it becomes four orfive steps into it.
First one is really aboutestablishing that team,
the cost for show team.
If you're like, Oh, round me, weneed help fixing our onboarding.
(04:52):
And as somebody fromproduct, I'm working
with a team right now.
And it's from somebodyfrom product-led growth,
their product team.
It needs to be cross functional,especially if it's B2B.
Customer success is an input.
Marketing has an input.
Sales has an input into it.
So I bring that team together.
And the first step in theEUREKA is establish that team.
So E.
The next I walk themthrough some exercises.
(05:13):
And it's U.
U stands for understandingsuccess for your users.
So even before we think aboutin product, out of product,
onboarding emails, let'sfirst figure out what does
your users think is success?
Because if we don't havethat nailed down, then we're
going to build the wrongpath to the wrong success
state for your users.
That's the second one.
(05:33):
The third is RE, sothat's reverse journey
map, the happy path.
So it's really aboutreverse engineering.
What does your bestcustomers, what do they do
in the first seven minutes,in the first seven days,
in the first seven weeks,in the first seven months?
And map out like what they'redoing already and see,
Hey, this is what they do.
(05:54):
Let's create the samepattern and reverse engineer
what success is like.
And then K stands forkeeping the new user engaged,
figuring out both in product.
So like product tours andchecklists and out of product,
like onboarding emails, humaninteraction and educational
content, like the right kindof mix to get the right users
engaged throughout this journey.
(06:15):
And the very last step isA, which is about applying
these changes and repeatingit for different kind of use
cases and personalize that fordifferent "jobs-to-be-done"
or customer jobs that yourusers are trying to get to.
So that's the EUREKA frameworkis five steps into it.
And if you wanted to dig intoeach one, I'm happy to do so.
Hannah Clark (06:33):
I think we'll come back to that because I'm
actually very curious aboutthe reverse engineering path.
So let's put a littlepin in that one.
But I want to talk alittle bit about friction.
I think it's often pinned asthe main obstacle in onboarding.
And I think there's just,there's many opportunities
for users to hit friction.
But you said in the past thatthere's three types of friction.
So there's productfriction, there's social,
there's emotional.
Can you break down thedifferent types of friction
(06:53):
and how each one of themaffects the user journey?
Ramli John (06:56):
I was inspired by, he was the former head
of product at LinkedIn.
His name is Sachin Gupta.
And I've adopted itto apply to the jobs
we've done in framework.
And he called it thehierarchy of user friction
in terms of user experience.
But I said, in B2B,actually, it's different.
So the very bottom is productfriction, like you mentioned.
Those are things that arebarriers in the product itself.
(07:18):
Things like too many stepsor overwhelming them with
showing too many fieldsor pop ups or whatever's
in the product friction.
The one above that, that peopledon't often think about, it's
the social kind of friction.
And I think this appliesto both consumer products.
Especially social productswhere you show your friends
and colleagues, but more so inB2B as well, where sometimes
(07:42):
you need buy in from your team.
And this applies to bothproduct-led and sales-led.
So for product-led, the usersigns up and they need to
get the buy in from theirmanager or director to Hey,
we should pay for this.
It was like that social frictionwhere they have a challenge
within the organization tosell the product itself.
And then in a sales site orgwhere it's top down, sure, the
(08:03):
buyer, maybe this executivelevel bought the software
for the team, but they'retoo ingrained in what they're
doing already that they'relike resistant to that change.
So social friction is, it'sall about that politics,
that organizational barriersthat can block your customer
from fully adopting it.
And then at the highestlevel is emotional friction.
(08:24):
And that's like deep seated,psychological fear about change,
things like adopting somethingnew could be threatening.
There's a saying that you cannever go wrong buying IBM.
There's a reason why they saythat is because it removes the
risk of making the wrong choice.
And for a lot of companies,if you pick the wrong product,
(08:44):
your job could be on the line.
And especially if it's anexpensive product that it
promises, it's going to10x your productivity or
bring in 10x the revenue.
If that doesn't happen,emotionally, you're like fear
of my job is on the line.
I could look bad infront of other people.
And that is part of the wholeonboarding that people don't
think about as a change.
(09:05):
Like onboarding is not justonboarding them to the product.
You're onboarding them to a newway of doing work or doing life.
And change is usually ascary thing for most people.
So those are the three levelsof friction that a lot of teams
don't think enough a lot about,they often just think about,
let's just tackle productfriction 'cause it's easy.
(09:26):
But social and emotionalfriction are something that
often you can't tackle withjust a simple product change.
Hannah Clark (09:32):
We actually talked a little bit about this
in an episode previously withGeorge Brooks on, I think is
something that the effect of thebarriers to product onboarding
aren't what you think.
It had a lot to do with thatlike like, social and emotional
friction that kind of takesplace outside of the purview
of the, analytics that we'recollecting that we're trying
to gauge, what's going on?
Why are we losing people?
Why are we not getting theadoption levels we want?
So I'm curious from yourperspective, is there any way
(09:55):
that we can bake accountingfor those factors into the
process of evaluating howadoption is going and rather
than just going, well, it'snot being adopted the way
that we expect, it's gotto be a product problem.
Ramli John (10:06):
Yeah, I would say the two, both the social
and emotional, the high aboveproduct you mentioned is a
lot harder to measure becauseyou're just seeing a drop off
in people like not doing that.
I would say that's wherehuman interaction is very
clerical and qualitativedata is really important.
We're trying to understand thewhy behind why they're not fully
(10:28):
adopting it and understandingwho are the other stakeholders
involved and figuring that out.
That's why I'm a big fan ofespecially earlier on doing
one on one onboarding process,especially for companies
that are more product-led.
Cause those things are thingsthat you can uncover to figure
out like, Hey, we'd love tohelp exactly why the challenge
(10:49):
is to this step not happening.
And they can provide some kindof explanation or other things
like that in terms of that.
I would also suggest tryingto figure that, if you already
have some recordings fromyour customer onboarding as
well as sales process, thatcould definitely be something
that could be mine forinsights like those as well.
(11:09):
So anytime they can use wordsthere's conflict or any kind
of barriers in terms of gettingbuy-in, I think those are
critical things that is okay,there's a challenge here.
How do we add a human oreducational content or the
right kind of email whenwe know that the reason why
they're not completing acertain step in onboarding
is not necessarily productfriction is actually barriers.
(11:31):
An example I can think of iswhen I was working at Appcues,
one of the key steps, and thisis for a lot of B2B products.
Where they had to installa code snippet to their
production code base.
And often the person signingup a product manager is
not the one who has accessto the code snippet.
And that is something thatoften we found that a human
(11:51):
interaction and asking forhelp and what kind of technical
limitations or challengesthey're facing was the critical
path as well as if they saythey're a product manager,
right, and the onboarding.
How do we Hey, here'show you can invite and
provide the right kind ofinstructions to engineering,
because we know that thisis not a product friction.
It's a social and also anemotional friction, because if
(12:12):
the code breaks your production,that's not a good experience
for your users itself.
So I think there's just somekind of tips and example of
how this can be baked intothe whole onboarding process.
Hannah Clark (12:23):
And I like this train of thought too, because as
you mentioned earlier, like thisis a cross functional endeavor.
So have you had any other kindsof breakthroughs in the past
that have been like, ah, likethis is an antidote to some
of the silos that are reallyinhibiting us from really
creating this really seamlessproduct onboarding journey.
That's like leading to higheradoption rates or any kind of
like breakthroughs that you'vebeen able to conquer with, you
(12:46):
know, your consulting clientswhere it's just ah, like if
only everyone was doing this.
Ramli John (12:49):
Yeah, I would say the first thing, and
this is, I'm going to go fromthe hardest way to do it to
the easiest way to do it.
Maybe let's startwith a quick win.
I think that's acommon quick win.
It's like aligning the differentteams into a common metric, a
success goal in terms of howit would impact them as well.
For example, rather than tellingthe sales, Hey, we need you to
(13:12):
like, tell us exactly why, whatare the challenges in terms
of your sales process that areactivation rate is falling off.
Instead of saying that, Ithink it's getting everybody
on the common ground.
Hey, If we can get this right,then it's going to be easier
for all of us to not justsell the product, but actually
to keep those customersgoing on, going forward.
(13:32):
There needs to be a champion whowould explain exactly why that
is such a critical moment foreverybody and tying them, okay.
The reason why activationimpacts sales is if we
know that they're the rightkind of people coming in.
And they're more likely toclose and how it's going to
impact marketing is that weknow that based on this kind of
channels here are the ones thatare actually bringing this in.
(13:53):
Often I find that thechampions for this experience
is somebody from customersuccess, and they bring that
in and tie everything together.
That's, I think I would sayquick when it's not really
quick when, because it ispulling everybody together.
One that I found easiest thatwe actually did at Appcues,
it's when there's executivebuy in from the leadership
(14:14):
level, they actually got achance to form a growth squad.
We call it the tiger team,essentially, where it's a
cross functional team andthey found a business problem.
Our trial to payconversion rate was low.
So how do we fix this?
So they form like across functional team.
Somebody from marketing, Iwas part of that, somebody
from customer success,somebody from product.
And for six months, we metevery week to just hey, we
(14:36):
need to raise this twicewhat it is right now.
How do we do that?
What are the thing, differentcomponents that we can impact
in terms of product, in termsof marketing, in terms of sales,
in terms of customer success.
So together we're tacklingthis problem from different
lenses that we all come from.
And that is, for me, theideal situation where you
can pull everybody together.
(14:57):
When I work with teams,that is the first step
I do Hey, Ramli, we needhelp fixing our onboarding.
I like, I'm going to do thisonboarding audit workshop, and
it's going to be multiple peoplefrom different teams that are
coming into this so that wecan get all on the same page.
Because often those teamsdon't talk to each other,
they don't really understandwhat, first of all, what is
(15:18):
the aha moment or activationmoment for the product itself.
And that's what happenedto us at Appcues, where
product and customer successand marketing, we all had
different definitions.
And if you can't even definewhat initial success is for
the user, then good lucktrying to get them, fixing
your onboarding and gettingthem a seamless experience.
Those are just a couple ofways I think that could really
make a big impact in terms ofgetting everybody on the same
(15:40):
page and working together.
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Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, cause I think this isjust like every organization,
especially remote organizations.
So always a struggle totry and get folks to work
together the way that weenvision that should work.
(16:26):
So I reallyappreciate those tips.
But I think this is a reallygood kind of segue into going
back to the reverse engineeringpart of the framework, EUREKA
framework, because I thinkthat in general, we accept that
reverse engineering success isa good, best practice, but how
that actually looks is murky.
Like how do we applythat physically?
Would you be able to pulllike an anecdote or tell us
the story of an actual kindof like process that you've
(16:49):
used to reverse success.
Like how did thatfunctionally go?
How can we like copy and pastethat into our own strategy?
Ramli John (16:55):
Yes.
This is how I think about it.
I start off at the end.
So the end in mind with anexample, I got a chance to
work with a team SparkToro,which is like a audience
intelligence software orplatform where I know that
sounds like a buzzword, butit's actually to help you
find where your audience hangsout online so that you can do
co-marketing with influencersor find the right kind of
(17:19):
places to market your product.
So that's what they do.
They have this databasethat you can search
for specific keywords.
One of the questions I got achance to chat with their team,
Ren, Amanda, and Casey wasstarting with the end in mind.
So the question I have iswhat is the ultimate win?
What is success forthe user itself?
What would they do that you'relike, Oh yeah, they actually
(17:39):
got something valuable.
And one of the things that theyhad in terms of end success is
when you find something valuablein terms of okay, my audience
hangs out at this Subredditat reddit.com or they listen
to this specific podcaster.
What they would do and whatmost people would do at
Airbnb or in other kind ofsearch type functions is
(18:01):
they save it to a wishlist.
So they have a list functionand that to us was like, okay,
this is a leading indicatorthat yes, they found something
and they've added it to a list.
That's the ultimate win.
So we work there.
So what are the, I callit the win mapping.
What are the mini winsalong that way that gets
them to that ultimate win?
So if they need to get him ona list, so first of all, they
(18:23):
need to do a first search.
So that's another win.
So they find a firstsearch, like search I
don't know, product manageror some kind of keyword.
What do they needto know before that?
So they need to, first ofall, understand what search
works and what, find theresult and get a good result.
And another win iscreating like a list.
So creating, actually creatingand naming a list is actually
(18:45):
important before they canget to the ultimate win.
So rather than like mappingout all the steps, I'm just
like, Hey, what are the keymilestones, but I call it, what
are the key mini wins or winsto get them to that ultimate
win and along that way, okay,here's like this ideal journey.
So first win is makethat first search.
Second win is, it's actuallycreate a list and then the
(19:07):
ultimate win is actually finallysaving an item to that list.
We found that it tookabout two to five searches
before they found that.
So we talked about how dowe reduce and refine the
search and kind of offer themsuggestions as autocorrect
to get them there as well.
So that's how Iwould think about it.
Obviously for more complicatedproducts, there could
be like seven or eightwins, many wins until they
(19:28):
get to the ultimate win.
And even for more complexproducts, let's say Appcues,
where the ultimate win cantake two to three weeks because
they need to set up some stuff.
One of the things I suggest tothose teams is like, is there
like a same day win that you cando for your users within them?
So the Appcues, we focusreally on getting them to
(19:48):
start building right away.
So building a tour or achecklist and any kind of other
in product experience, becausewe found through customer
interviews, it's like, Oh,That's like an aha moment,
like an early aha moment.
And the ultimate win was gettingit published live and then
actually getting data with that.
So that's like ahigh level approach.
So find your ultimatewins, first step.
Second step is what is likethe mini wins along the way.
(20:11):
And the third step isactually filling in all
the steps along that, likethe minimum number of steps
under set up that mini wins.
Hannah Clark (20:18):
I really liked that process.
That kind of reminds me, I don'tknow if you ever did in school.
There was this exercise, Iremember doing it in like
middle school where they'relike explaining instructions
to open a jar of peanut butterand make a peanut butter
sandwich or something like that.
And you have to really think isso much of it is muscle memory
because you're so close to that.
It's just so, every daythat you don't even think
about the steps, like themany steps that lead to like
(20:39):
that, like ultimate goal.
So like thinking about it,like really granularly,
what are even just likethe foundational knowledge?
Well, you have toknow to do this.
It's a process thatmerits a lot of thought.
Since we're talking aboutbrass tacks, I want to
move on to something alittle bit more concrete
as well, which is tooling.
I think that's somethingthat we don't talk about
enough on this show.
What tools would you sayare essential for product
(21:00):
teams when you're designingonboarding experiences?
We're thinking about thiscross functionally, but
I'm thinking more in thescope of the product team.
Ramli John (21:06):
Yeah, okay, in the scope of the product team.
I think in terms of theproduct team, I would
look at a few things.
I would, first of all,look at gathering insights,
and then second is likeactually implementing the
in-product experience.
And then third, I wouldbe looking at how do you
experiment with that?
So I think in terms of the datain analytics itself, there's
(21:27):
some great tools out there.
I'm not associatedwith any of these.
I've never worked for them.
I'm not paid by them at all.
Things like Amplitude, I thinkAmplitude and Mixpanel is great.
One of the things that I likeabout this couple of tools
there, they can cheat sheetand what they do is they try
to find the correlation or tryto figure out the exact user
actions that lead to retention.
(21:48):
So they're like a based on yourbest user, they do this three
things in the first week, whichis like super cool for them to
be able to pull in that insight.
Obviously there's othertools like June that I saw
is great for more B2B stuff.
So I think analytics like that.
So that's more analytics.
There's also usersession recording.
I'm a big fan of Fullstory andPostHog, where you can actually
(22:11):
watch your users, click aroundand surf, which is great.
The great thing about Fullstoryis you can actually, they
have some kind of algorithmthat kind of figures out
when users are rage clickingis what they call it.
We're like, they're clickingsomething multiple times because
they're frustrated or they'reangry, or there's a error
code in the product itself.
So those ones are, and Ithink in terms of the last
(22:32):
one in terms of analytics,it's gathering information.
So like qualitative surveys,like in product wise.
So, when you're signing fora product, there will be a
thing that would pop up onthe side that would say, Hey,
What made you sign up today?
Or what kind ofchallenges do you have?
So things like ServingMonkey,I think can do that.
Appcues can do that as well.
And then that's thefirst set of tools.
The second set oftools is around like
in product experience.
(22:53):
So obviously I used towork at Appcues, heads up.
Appcues is one of them.
There's also a bunchof other ones that have
similar capabilities.
Things like Userpilot,Chameleon, there's Pendo,
different tools like that.
And then I think in termsof the experimentation
side, I think that's whereI find huge challenge.
And I think I've heard Googleexperiment can do this and
(23:13):
Appcues and Chameleon andPendo can also do split testing
where they send you usersto different experiences.
And based on that,they can analyze that
as well as amplitude.
So I think those are just afew tools that I know, there's
so many tools out there.
I would look at those threethings to start off with.
Like, how do you measuresuccess for your users?
And how do you knowthey're getting there?
Second is like, how do youdeploy in app experiences
(23:36):
in product experiences?
And third is like, how doyou experiment and continue
to improve over time?
Hannah Clark (23:42):
Yeah, awesome advice.
Yeah, always love to hearrecommendations from folks
who are really in the space.
Recently, we did a panelevent that you were part of.
Thank you so much fordoing that, by the
way, that was awesome.
And we talked a little bitabout the intersection between
AI and product-led growth.
But it was a very, folkscan check out the panel.
It's all available on ourwebsite if you're interested,
but I would like to reiteratesome of those points and talk
(24:03):
a little bit about how AI kindof, how some of these new AI
features that exist in sometools are helping to facilitate
and optimize onboarding.
Can you talk about some ofthe ones that you found to be
like the most ROI positive?
Ramli John (24:18):
I think in terms of AI and specifically, let's say
more focused on, I think thiscould apply to both product-led
and sales-led company thatI got a chance to work with.
What they did was like, Ohmy goodness, this is so cool.
What they do is theytake 5 or 10 of the best
customer onboarding calls.
There's one on onesfor enterprise.
They fed it into a ChatGPT andfunneled it in to Hey, learn
(24:41):
what these people are saying,what are the challenges.
They train the model andthey ask straight up,
just what are key momentsthat people struggle?
What are steps that they'restruggling with and how
do we deal with them?
So like what kind of likethings did our customer
onboarding managers or customersuccess team members do to
overcome this challenges?
So mining hours of calls andjust getting data from that
(25:04):
to improve your in productexperience is so, so powerful.
And one thing that I suggestedto them as well, it's like,
why don't you go furtherand get your best, maybe
even your worst sales callsand put it into that model.
And ask like, where arepeople getting confused?
Cause that's where copy withinthe product experience can also
inform okay, here are where mostpeople are getting challenged.
(25:26):
Where, how do we overcomethat in product as well?
There's one waythat I've seen it.
There's another one thatI'm really excited about.
I'm seeing some teamslike hatched together
in product experience.
So based on what users aresurfed on the website itself,
they actually tailor likean in product experience for
them so that they can actuallysee a different guidance and
(25:47):
a different tool based onwhat they've done as well.
That's another great exampleof one where it leads them
to a different path basedon what they've done.
And the third one that I'mseeing more and more teams
apply AI for is a lot ofthis tools that require data.
They have something calledthe blank page problem.
Where you come in,there's no data.
So what do you do?
And often the approach is okay,let's just give them dummy data.
(26:10):
So let's give them likefake call or records, Bruce
Wayne at brucewayne.com,something like that.
Whereas I guess obviously afake support ticket or fake
contact in the CRM, but I'mseeing more products, they
actually use AI to like.
What are you trying to do?
An example is Zapier.
Zapier is like anautomation tool.
They have different zaps.
They have millionsof zap potential.
(26:31):
They're like, whatare you trying to do?
Hannah Clark (26:32):
Big fan of Zapier, by the way.
Ramli John (26:34):
Yeah, same.
And you can just say,Hey, straight up, this is
something they implementedin the last year.
We're like, what areyou trying to do?
Are you trying toconnect this and this?
It's well, here are thetop three recommendations
for zaps for you, whichis like super cool.
So I'm seeing more tools do useAI to kind like, tailor, custom
recommendations or as wellas build teaching or training
(26:54):
path for them specifically.
Hannah Clark (26:56):
I always love a really actionable, really useful
recommendation for AI becausethere's so many features.
It's hard to tell which onesare actually worth the squeeze.
So I appreciate that very much.
Last question here,out of left field.
Talk a little bitabout feedback loops.
How can teams create feedbackloops during onboarding to
keep iterating and improving?
Cause we're talking alittle bit about like
improving things over time.
I think that's a really goodway to put a bow on this.
Ramli John (27:18):
Yeah, I think in terms of making sure
that there's clear feedbackloops, it goes back, yeah,
I think you mentionedit putting a bow on it.
It goes back to, there aresome valuable insights that
sales as well as customersuccess, who are always
chatting with your customers,as well as your prospects.
They have insights therewhere it's so valuable to
(27:38):
have that connection withthem as often as possible.
So that you're pulling in thoseinsights and getting feedback as
to especially cause if you havea one on one customer onboarding
experience, or even like ahuman led customer onboarding
experience, where it could beone to many, where it's like
a live webinar with multiplecustomers, new customers,
there's so much insightswhere like you're hearing
(28:00):
straight up customers saying,I'm struggling to do this.
I don't know how to do this.
That is such great feedbackthat often like that is lost in
terms of the loop cause there'snot that much connection.
I keep going back to Appcuesbecause like we were trying
to be as product-led aspossible, even for us, that
feedback loop back to productteam from customer success
(28:20):
often was like, how do we havethe right kind of process?
How do we send this insightinto product, the product team
so that they can get actionit, whether it's through a
spreadsheet or a Slack channelthat's focused on customer
onboarding feedback thatwe're getting, whatever it is.
I think that really needsto be tied back to the
product team as well.
I think the second thingin terms of feedback loop,
(28:42):
it's making sure thateverybody has like a clear
line of what the successfor our users looks like.
Because if we see a drop as ateam in terms of users getting
there on a specific week or aspecific cohort of users, then
that is something that needs tobe tackled together as a team.
And okay, where did it go wrong?
Or what was the challenge?
Is it because we marketingdid our campaign and it
(29:03):
was targeting a lot ofFacebook users and they
don't get activated.
So it's not a product issue.
It's actually more of a channelissue or versus like product
team actually released a newfeature and it messed up the
whole onboarding experience.
Or is it the sales team?
Did they promise somethingout of left field that
nobody knew about?
Now people are not gettingto that success or aha or
(29:23):
ultimate win for your product.
Or is this something else where,there was a lot of people in
customer success that was sickand then they weren't responding
to the there's so many possibleissues and it needs to be really
needs to be pulled in together,especially if you have a common
metric that you're like, this iswhat's exciting for our users.
If it's, we're not hittingthat, then we need to have a
(29:45):
discussion together as a team.
Hannah Clark (29:46):
Legit.
That concludes our discussiontoday on product onboarding.
This has been fantastic.
Thank you so muchfor joining us.
Where can our listeners followyour work or, access some of the
resources you mentioned today?
Ramli John (29:57):
Yeah, for sure.
They can find me on LinkedIn.
I'm quite active there.
Ramli RJ John.
I'm also have all my content,my newsletter, as well as
the new book I'm writingin 2025 delightpath.com.
So the new book is calledEUREKA, which the framework
that we talked about isI've refined it for fast
high growth B2B companies.
(30:18):
So this all in delightpath.com.
Hannah Clark (30:20):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so muchfor sharing that and for
for joining us today.
It's always a pleasure, Ramli.
Ramli John (30:24):
Thank you so much.
Hannah Clark (30:27):
Thanks for listening in.
For more great insights,how-to guides and tool reviews,
subscribe to our newsletter attheproductmanager.com/subscribe.
You can hear more conversationslike this by subscribing to
The Product Manager, whereveryou get your podcasts.
As the saying goes, you can lead
a horse to water, butyou can't make it drink.
I think that old chestnutreally sums up the product
onboarding to adoption pipeline;just because a user has found
your product doesn't meanthey'll end up paying for it.
I get it; it's frustratingwhen new users seem to arrive
at your product, take a sniff,and gallop off into the sunset.
But we're not here tocommiserate about runaway
users, we're here to zoomout on this kooky little
(00:24):
analogy and understand howto get that horse to drink.
Because when you look at thecontext around successful
product adoption, you'llnotice that many parts of
that journey actually beginlong before and continue
long after user activation.
My guest today is RamliJohn, author of Product-Led
Onboarding and the founderof Delight Path, a product
onboarding consulting firm.
Ramli is like, THE guy forproduct-led onboarding wisdom.
(00:46):
So we were really lucky tohave him come on and share
some practical frameworks,tactics, and tools for figuring
out how to evaluate and refineyour user onboarding journey.
So to come back to thathorse analogy, it behooves
you to try them out.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Let's jump in.
Welcome back to TheProduct Manager Podcast.
We are here today with RamliJohn and we are very excited
(01:07):
to have you here today.
Thank you for joining us, Ramli.
How are you doing?
Ramli John (01:10):
Pretty good.
How about yourself, Hannah?
Hannah Cla (01:11):
Feeling really good.
Can you tell us, to startoff, a little bit about your
background and how you gotto where you are and your
whole journey in product-ledgrowth and onboarding?
Ramli John (01:19):
Yeah, I got in, I've been working on
SaaS for quite some time.
I got a chance to work ongrowth and onboarding with
SaaS and then eventuallyconnected with Wes Bush.
He wrote the book Product-LedGrowth and people don't know
this, we actually went to thesame university, University of
Waterloo, but 10 years apart.
He's 10 years younger than I am.
(01:40):
Yeah, that's how we connected.
I got a chance to work withhim and work with product-led
companies and help them withonboarding and I got on to
work at Appcues as well.
It's a product adoption softwarefor product-led companies.
You can probably see thepattern is all product-led
and now I'm in Delight Path.
Or I help product-ledcompanies with their product
onboarding experiences.
So just a little bit aboutme in 60 seconds or less.
Hannah Clark (02:01):
Yeah, perfect.
Well, and this all connectsto our core topic of the day,
which is product-led growth.
Product onboarding is part ofthat product-led growth process.
So let's kick it off.
What are some of the keymisconceptions, as far as
your experience has shown you,that you think product teams
have about activation and userretention in that whole journey?
Ramli John (02:20):
Yeah, I think in terms of activation
itself, people think, firstof all, there's a few ones.
One that really gets tome is like the whole, the
classic example with justhave seven friends in 10 days,
that's a Facebook metric.
I think that is a greatmetric because it's easy to
explain, but the challengewith that is even the head of
(02:42):
growth at Facebook, they werestraight up saying that it's
not fully based on full data.
Like they don't have the fullcorrelation because it's hard.
And for a lot of B2Bcompanies, they don't have
enough data to do that.
They picked that number becausethey found a pattern and
it was easy to communicate.
And there's obviously alot of different variables
that get into stickiness.
And that's why teams that Iwork with I need to get that
(03:04):
seven friends in 10 days metric.
It's you're overcomplicating it.
Just pick a deal moment, likea sticky moment or a moment
where it requires commitmentfrom the user and just
get users to do that once.
And that's a good place tostart in terms of activation.
That's a common one.
Second thing is oftenthat it, they see it
as a product problem.
(03:25):
And often onboarding isactually such a very cross
functional issue thatmarketing has input into it,
especially the positioningand messaging that I got a
chance to chat with the folksat Fletch, Anthony and Rob.
And really, if you don't haveyour messaging and positioning
nailed down, then it's reallygonna impact what people
(03:46):
expect from your product.
And if people come in withunrealistic expectations
of the profit there's noproduct experience onboarding
or in product guidance ortours that can really help
them get to that aha momentcause they had a different
aha moment in their minds.
It's not really goingto happen there.
So I think there's just a coupleI can keep going on and on.
We could probably dedicatea whole episode of this, but
(04:07):
I think those are a coupleof common ones in terms of
misconceptions about activation.
Hannah Clark (04:12):
So you're the founder of Delight Path product
onboarding consulting firm.
You're the author ofProduct-Led Onboarding.
Very well respectedliterature in the space.
And you also have developed afive step framework called the
EUREKA framework for onboarding.
I want to dig into theframework because I don't
think we've got time to gothrough everything in the book.
Can you walk us through how thathelps the organizations that
you work with user activation?
Ramli John (04:32):
Yeah, of course.
I think touching upon it first,that misconception I mentioned.
When I approach it,this is like five step.
It's an acronym for EUREKA andone of them is the two letters.
So it becomes four orfive steps into it.
First one is really aboutestablishing that team,
the cost for show team.
If you're like, Oh, round me, weneed help fixing our onboarding.
(04:52):
And as somebody fromproduct, I'm working
with a team right now.
And it's from somebodyfrom product-led growth,
their product team.
It needs to be cross functional,especially if it's B2B.
Customer success is an input.
Marketing has an input.
Sales has an input into it.
So I bring that team together.
And the first step in theEUREKA is establish that team.
So E.
The next I walk themthrough some exercises.
(05:13):
And it's U.
U stands for understandingsuccess for your users.
So even before we think aboutin product, out of product,
onboarding emails, let'sfirst figure out what does
your users think is success?
Because if we don't havethat nailed down, then we're
going to build the wrongpath to the wrong success
state for your users.
That's the second one.
(05:33):
The third is RE, sothat's reverse journey
map, the happy path.
So it's really aboutreverse engineering.
What does your bestcustomers, what do they do
in the first seven minutes,in the first seven days,
in the first seven weeks,in the first seven months?
And map out like what they'redoing already and see,
Hey, this is what they do.
(05:54):
Let's create the samepattern and reverse engineer
what success is like.
And then K stands forkeeping the new user engaged,
figuring out both in product.
So like product tours andchecklists and out of product,
like onboarding emails, humaninteraction and educational
content, like the right kindof mix to get the right users
engaged throughout this journey.
(06:15):
And the very last step isA, which is about applying
these changes and repeatingit for different kind of use
cases and personalize that fordifferent "jobs-to-be-done"
or customer jobs that yourusers are trying to get to.
So that's the EUREKA frameworkis five steps into it.
And if you wanted to dig intoeach one, I'm happy to do so.
Hannah Clark (06:33):
I think we'll come back to that because I'm
actually very curious aboutthe reverse engineering path.
So let's put a littlepin in that one.
But I want to talk alittle bit about friction.
I think it's often pinned asthe main obstacle in onboarding.
And I think there's just,there's many opportunities
for users to hit friction.
But you said in the past thatthere's three types of friction.
So there's productfriction, there's social,
there's emotional.
Can you break down thedifferent types of friction
(06:53):
and how each one of themaffects the user journey?
Ramli John (06:56):
I was inspired by, he was the former head
of product at LinkedIn.
His name is Sachin Gupta.
And I've adopted itto apply to the jobs
we've done in framework.
And he called it thehierarchy of user friction
in terms of user experience.
But I said, in B2B,actually, it's different.
So the very bottom is productfriction, like you mentioned.
Those are things that arebarriers in the product itself.
(07:18):
Things like too many stepsor overwhelming them with
showing too many fieldsor pop ups or whatever's
in the product friction.
The one above that, that peopledon't often think about, it's
the social kind of friction.
And I think this appliesto both consumer products.
Especially social productswhere you show your friends
and colleagues, but more so inB2B as well, where sometimes
(07:42):
you need buy in from your team.
And this applies to bothproduct-led and sales-led.
So for product-led, the usersigns up and they need to
get the buy in from theirmanager or director to Hey,
we should pay for this.
It was like that social frictionwhere they have a challenge
within the organization tosell the product itself.
And then in a sales site orgwhere it's top down, sure, the
(08:03):
buyer, maybe this executivelevel bought the software
for the team, but they'retoo ingrained in what they're
doing already that they'relike resistant to that change.
So social friction is, it'sall about that politics,
that organizational barriersthat can block your customer
from fully adopting it.
And then at the highestlevel is emotional friction.
(08:24):
And that's like deep seated,psychological fear about change,
things like adopting somethingnew could be threatening.
There's a saying that you cannever go wrong buying IBM.
There's a reason why they saythat is because it removes the
risk of making the wrong choice.
And for a lot of companies,if you pick the wrong product,
(08:44):
your job could be on the line.
And especially if it's anexpensive product that it
promises, it's going to10x your productivity or
bring in 10x the revenue.
If that doesn't happen,emotionally, you're like fear
of my job is on the line.
I could look bad infront of other people.
And that is part of the wholeonboarding that people don't
think about as a change.
(09:05):
Like onboarding is not justonboarding them to the product.
You're onboarding them to a newway of doing work or doing life.
And change is usually ascary thing for most people.
So those are the three levelsof friction that a lot of teams
don't think enough a lot about,they often just think about,
let's just tackle productfriction 'cause it's easy.
(09:26):
But social and emotionalfriction are something that
often you can't tackle withjust a simple product change.
Hannah Clark (09:32):
We actually talked a little bit about this
in an episode previously withGeorge Brooks on, I think is
something that the effect of thebarriers to product onboarding
aren't what you think.
It had a lot to do with thatlike like, social and emotional
friction that kind of takesplace outside of the purview
of the, analytics that we'recollecting that we're trying
to gauge, what's going on?
Why are we losing people?
Why are we not getting theadoption levels we want?
So I'm curious from yourperspective, is there any way
(09:55):
that we can bake accountingfor those factors into the
process of evaluating howadoption is going and rather
than just going, well, it'snot being adopted the way
that we expect, it's gotto be a product problem.
Ramli John (10:06):
Yeah, I would say the two, both the social
and emotional, the high aboveproduct you mentioned is a
lot harder to measure becauseyou're just seeing a drop off
in people like not doing that.
I would say that's wherehuman interaction is very
clerical and qualitativedata is really important.
We're trying to understand thewhy behind why they're not fully
(10:28):
adopting it and understandingwho are the other stakeholders
involved and figuring that out.
That's why I'm a big fan ofespecially earlier on doing
one on one onboarding process,especially for companies
that are more product-led.
Cause those things are thingsthat you can uncover to figure
out like, Hey, we'd love tohelp exactly why the challenge
(10:49):
is to this step not happening.
And they can provide some kindof explanation or other things
like that in terms of that.
I would also suggest tryingto figure that, if you already
have some recordings fromyour customer onboarding as
well as sales process, thatcould definitely be something
that could be mine forinsights like those as well.
(11:09):
So anytime they can use wordsthere's conflict or any kind
of barriers in terms of gettingbuy-in, I think those are
critical things that is okay,there's a challenge here.
How do we add a human oreducational content or the
right kind of email whenwe know that the reason why
they're not completing acertain step in onboarding
is not necessarily productfriction is actually barriers.
(11:31):
An example I can think of iswhen I was working at Appcues,
one of the key steps, and thisis for a lot of B2B products.
Where they had to installa code snippet to their
production code base.
And often the person signingup a product manager is
not the one who has accessto the code snippet.
And that is something thatoften we found that a human
(11:51):
interaction and asking forhelp and what kind of technical
limitations or challengesthey're facing was the critical
path as well as if they saythey're a product manager,
right, and the onboarding.
How do we Hey, here'show you can invite and
provide the right kind ofinstructions to engineering,
because we know that thisis not a product friction.
It's a social and also anemotional friction, because if
(12:12):
the code breaks your production,that's not a good experience
for your users itself.
So I think there's just somekind of tips and example of
how this can be baked intothe whole onboarding process.
Hannah Clark (12:23):
And I like this train of thought too, because as
you mentioned earlier, like thisis a cross functional endeavor.
So have you had any other kindsof breakthroughs in the past
that have been like, ah, likethis is an antidote to some
of the silos that are reallyinhibiting us from really
creating this really seamlessproduct onboarding journey.
That's like leading to higheradoption rates or any kind of
like breakthroughs that you'vebeen able to conquer with, you
(12:46):
know, your consulting clientswhere it's just ah, like if
only everyone was doing this.
Ramli John (12:49):
Yeah, I would say the first thing, and
this is, I'm going to go fromthe hardest way to do it to
the easiest way to do it.
Maybe let's startwith a quick win.
I think that's acommon quick win.
It's like aligning the differentteams into a common metric, a
success goal in terms of howit would impact them as well.
For example, rather than tellingthe sales, Hey, we need you to
(13:12):
like, tell us exactly why, whatare the challenges in terms
of your sales process that areactivation rate is falling off.
Instead of saying that, Ithink it's getting everybody
on the common ground.
Hey, If we can get this right,then it's going to be easier
for all of us to not justsell the product, but actually
to keep those customersgoing on, going forward.
(13:32):
There needs to be a champion whowould explain exactly why that
is such a critical moment foreverybody and tying them, okay.
The reason why activationimpacts sales is if we
know that they're the rightkind of people coming in.
And they're more likely toclose and how it's going to
impact marketing is that weknow that based on this kind of
channels here are the ones thatare actually bringing this in.
(13:53):
Often I find that thechampions for this experience
is somebody from customersuccess, and they bring that
in and tie everything together.
That's, I think I would sayquick when it's not really
quick when, because it ispulling everybody together.
One that I found easiest thatwe actually did at Appcues,
it's when there's executivebuy in from the leadership
(14:14):
level, they actually got achance to form a growth squad.
We call it the tiger team,essentially, where it's a
cross functional team andthey found a business problem.
Our trial to payconversion rate was low.
So how do we fix this?
So they form like across functional team.
Somebody from marketing, Iwas part of that, somebody
from customer success,somebody from product.
And for six months, we metevery week to just hey, we
(14:36):
need to raise this twicewhat it is right now.
How do we do that?
What are the thing, differentcomponents that we can impact
in terms of product, in termsof marketing, in terms of sales,
in terms of customer success.
So together we're tacklingthis problem from different
lenses that we all come from.
And that is, for me, theideal situation where you
can pull everybody together.
(14:57):
When I work with teams,that is the first step
I do Hey, Ramli, we needhelp fixing our onboarding.
I like, I'm going to do thisonboarding audit workshop, and
it's going to be multiple peoplefrom different teams that are
coming into this so that wecan get all on the same page.
Because often those teamsdon't talk to each other,
they don't really understandwhat, first of all, what is
(15:18):
the aha moment or activationmoment for the product itself.
And that's what happenedto us at Appcues, where
product and customer successand marketing, we all had
different definitions.
And if you can't even definewhat initial success is for
the user, then good lucktrying to get them, fixing
your onboarding and gettingthem a seamless experience.
Those are just a couple ofways I think that could really
make a big impact in terms ofgetting everybody on the same
(15:40):
page and working together.
Hannah Clark (15:45):
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Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, cause I think this isjust like every organization,
especially remote organizations.
So always a struggle totry and get folks to work
together the way that weenvision that should work.
(16:26):
So I reallyappreciate those tips.
But I think this is a reallygood kind of segue into going
back to the reverse engineeringpart of the framework, EUREKA
framework, because I thinkthat in general, we accept that
reverse engineering success isa good, best practice, but how
that actually looks is murky.
Like how do we applythat physically?
Would you be able to pulllike an anecdote or tell us
the story of an actual kindof like process that you've
(16:49):
used to reverse success.
Like how did thatfunctionally go?
How can we like copy and pastethat into our own strategy?
Ramli John (16:55):
Yes.
This is how I think about it.
I start off at the end.
So the end in mind with anexample, I got a chance to
work with a team SparkToro,which is like a audience
intelligence software orplatform where I know that
sounds like a buzzword, butit's actually to help you
find where your audience hangsout online so that you can do
co-marketing with influencersor find the right kind of
(17:19):
places to market your product.
So that's what they do.
They have this databasethat you can search
for specific keywords.
One of the questions I got achance to chat with their team,
Ren, Amanda, and Casey wasstarting with the end in mind.
So the question I have iswhat is the ultimate win?
What is success forthe user itself?
What would they do that you'relike, Oh yeah, they actually
(17:39):
got something valuable.
And one of the things that theyhad in terms of end success is
when you find something valuablein terms of okay, my audience
hangs out at this Subredditat reddit.com or they listen
to this specific podcaster.
What they would do and whatmost people would do at
Airbnb or in other kind ofsearch type functions is
(18:01):
they save it to a wishlist.
So they have a list functionand that to us was like, okay,
this is a leading indicatorthat yes, they found something
and they've added it to a list.
That's the ultimate win.
So we work there.
So what are the, I callit the win mapping.
What are the mini winsalong that way that gets
them to that ultimate win?
So if they need to get him ona list, so first of all, they
(18:23):
need to do a first search.
So that's another win.
So they find a firstsearch, like search I
don't know, product manageror some kind of keyword.
What do they needto know before that?
So they need to, first ofall, understand what search
works and what, find theresult and get a good result.
And another win iscreating like a list.
So creating, actually creatingand naming a list is actually
(18:45):
important before they canget to the ultimate win.
So rather than like mappingout all the steps, I'm just
like, Hey, what are the keymilestones, but I call it, what
are the key mini wins or winsto get them to that ultimate
win and along that way, okay,here's like this ideal journey.
So first win is makethat first search.
Second win is, it's actuallycreate a list and then the
(19:07):
ultimate win is actually finallysaving an item to that list.
We found that it tookabout two to five searches
before they found that.
So we talked about how dowe reduce and refine the
search and kind of offer themsuggestions as autocorrect
to get them there as well.
So that's how Iwould think about it.
Obviously for more complicatedproducts, there could
be like seven or eightwins, many wins until they
(19:28):
get to the ultimate win.
And even for more complexproducts, let's say Appcues,
where the ultimate win cantake two to three weeks because
they need to set up some stuff.
One of the things I suggest tothose teams is like, is there
like a same day win that you cando for your users within them?
So the Appcues, we focusreally on getting them to
(19:48):
start building right away.
So building a tour or achecklist and any kind of other
in product experience, becausewe found through customer
interviews, it's like, Oh,That's like an aha moment,
like an early aha moment.
And the ultimate win was gettingit published live and then
actually getting data with that.
So that's like ahigh level approach.
So find your ultimatewins, first step.
Second step is what is likethe mini wins along the way.
(20:11):
And the third step isactually filling in all
the steps along that, likethe minimum number of steps
under set up that mini wins.
Hannah Clark (20:18):
I really liked that process.
That kind of reminds me, I don'tknow if you ever did in school.
There was this exercise, Iremember doing it in like
middle school where they'relike explaining instructions
to open a jar of peanut butterand make a peanut butter
sandwich or something like that.
And you have to really think isso much of it is muscle memory
because you're so close to that.
It's just so, every daythat you don't even think
about the steps, like themany steps that lead to like
(20:39):
that, like ultimate goal.
So like thinking about it,like really granularly,
what are even just likethe foundational knowledge?
Well, you have toknow to do this.
It's a process thatmerits a lot of thought.
Since we're talking aboutbrass tacks, I want to
move on to something alittle bit more concrete
as well, which is tooling.
I think that's somethingthat we don't talk about
enough on this show.
What tools would you sayare essential for product
(21:00):
teams when you're designingonboarding experiences?
We're thinking about thiscross functionally, but
I'm thinking more in thescope of the product team.
Ramli John (21:06):
Yeah, okay, in the scope of the product team.
I think in terms of theproduct team, I would
look at a few things.
I would, first of all,look at gathering insights,
and then second is likeactually implementing the
in-product experience.
And then third, I wouldbe looking at how do you
experiment with that?
So I think in terms of the datain analytics itself, there's
(21:27):
some great tools out there.
I'm not associatedwith any of these.
I've never worked for them.
I'm not paid by them at all.
Things like Amplitude, I thinkAmplitude and Mixpanel is great.
One of the things that I likeabout this couple of tools
there, they can cheat sheetand what they do is they try
to find the correlation or tryto figure out the exact user
actions that lead to retention.
(21:48):
So they're like a based on yourbest user, they do this three
things in the first week, whichis like super cool for them to
be able to pull in that insight.
Obviously there's othertools like June that I saw
is great for more B2B stuff.
So I think analytics like that.
So that's more analytics.
There's also usersession recording.
I'm a big fan of Fullstory andPostHog, where you can actually
(22:11):
watch your users, click aroundand surf, which is great.
The great thing about Fullstoryis you can actually, they
have some kind of algorithmthat kind of figures out
when users are rage clickingis what they call it.
We're like, they're clickingsomething multiple times because
they're frustrated or they'reangry, or there's a error
code in the product itself.
So those ones are, and Ithink in terms of the last
(22:32):
one in terms of analytics,it's gathering information.
So like qualitative surveys,like in product wise.
So, when you're signing fora product, there will be a
thing that would pop up onthe side that would say, Hey,
What made you sign up today?
Or what kind ofchallenges do you have?
So things like ServingMonkey,I think can do that.
Appcues can do that as well.
And then that's thefirst set of tools.
The second set oftools is around like
in product experience.
(22:53):
So obviously I used towork at Appcues, heads up.
Appcues is one of them.
There's also a bunchof other ones that have
similar capabilities.
Things like Userpilot,Chameleon, there's Pendo,
different tools like that.
And then I think in termsof the experimentation
side, I think that's whereI find huge challenge.
And I think I've heard Googleexperiment can do this and
(23:13):
Appcues and Chameleon andPendo can also do split testing
where they send you usersto different experiences.
And based on that,they can analyze that
as well as amplitude.
So I think those are just afew tools that I know, there's
so many tools out there.
I would look at those threethings to start off with.
Like, how do you measuresuccess for your users?
And how do you knowthey're getting there?
Second is like, how do youdeploy in app experiences
(23:36):
in product experiences?
And third is like, how doyou experiment and continue
to improve over time?
Hannah Clark (23:42):
Yeah, awesome advice.
Yeah, always love to hearrecommendations from folks
who are really in the space.
Recently, we did a panelevent that you were part of.
Thank you so much fordoing that, by the
way, that was awesome.
And we talked a little bitabout the intersection between
AI and product-led growth.
But it was a very, folkscan check out the panel.
It's all available on ourwebsite if you're interested,
but I would like to reiteratesome of those points and talk
(24:03):
a little bit about how AI kindof, how some of these new AI
features that exist in sometools are helping to facilitate
and optimize onboarding.
Can you talk about some ofthe ones that you found to be
like the most ROI positive?
Ramli John (24:18):
I think in terms of AI and specifically, let's say
more focused on, I think thiscould apply to both product-led
and sales-led company thatI got a chance to work with.
What they did was like, Ohmy goodness, this is so cool.
What they do is theytake 5 or 10 of the best
customer onboarding calls.
There's one on onesfor enterprise.
They fed it into a ChatGPT andfunneled it in to Hey, learn
(24:41):
what these people are saying,what are the challenges.
They train the model andthey ask straight up,
just what are key momentsthat people struggle?
What are steps that they'restruggling with and how
do we deal with them?
So like what kind of likethings did our customer
onboarding managers or customersuccess team members do to
overcome this challenges?
So mining hours of calls andjust getting data from that
(25:04):
to improve your in productexperience is so, so powerful.
And one thing that I suggestedto them as well, it's like,
why don't you go furtherand get your best, maybe
even your worst sales callsand put it into that model.
And ask like, where arepeople getting confused?
Cause that's where copy withinthe product experience can also
inform okay, here are where mostpeople are getting challenged.
(25:26):
Where, how do we overcomethat in product as well?
There's one waythat I've seen it.
There's another one thatI'm really excited about.
I'm seeing some teamslike hatched together
in product experience.
So based on what users aresurfed on the website itself,
they actually tailor likean in product experience for
them so that they can actuallysee a different guidance and
(25:47):
a different tool based onwhat they've done as well.
That's another great exampleof one where it leads them
to a different path basedon what they've done.
And the third one that I'mseeing more and more teams
apply AI for is a lot ofthis tools that require data.
They have something calledthe blank page problem.
Where you come in,there's no data.
So what do you do?
And often the approach is okay,let's just give them dummy data.
(26:10):
So let's give them likefake call or records, Bruce
Wayne at brucewayne.com,something like that.
Whereas I guess obviously afake support ticket or fake
contact in the CRM, but I'mseeing more products, they
actually use AI to like.
What are you trying to do?
An example is Zapier.
Zapier is like anautomation tool.
They have different zaps.
They have millionsof zap potential.
(26:31):
They're like, whatare you trying to do?
Hannah Clark (26:32):
Big fan of Zapier, by the way.
Ramli John (26:34):
Yeah, same.
And you can just say,Hey, straight up, this is
something they implementedin the last year.
We're like, what areyou trying to do?
Are you trying toconnect this and this?
It's well, here are thetop three recommendations
for zaps for you, whichis like super cool.
So I'm seeing more tools do useAI to kind like, tailor, custom
recommendations or as wellas build teaching or training
(26:54):
path for them specifically.
Hannah Clark (26:56):
I always love a really actionable, really useful
recommendation for AI becausethere's so many features.
It's hard to tell which onesare actually worth the squeeze.
So I appreciate that very much.
Last question here,out of left field.
Talk a little bitabout feedback loops.
How can teams create feedbackloops during onboarding to
keep iterating and improving?
Cause we're talking alittle bit about like
improving things over time.
I think that's a really goodway to put a bow on this.
Ramli John (27:18):
Yeah, I think in terms of making sure
that there's clear feedbackloops, it goes back, yeah,
I think you mentionedit putting a bow on it.
It goes back to, there aresome valuable insights that
sales as well as customersuccess, who are always
chatting with your customers,as well as your prospects.
They have insights therewhere it's so valuable to
(27:38):
have that connection withthem as often as possible.
So that you're pulling in thoseinsights and getting feedback as
to especially cause if you havea one on one customer onboarding
experience, or even like ahuman led customer onboarding
experience, where it could beone to many, where it's like
a live webinar with multiplecustomers, new customers,
there's so much insightswhere like you're hearing
(28:00):
straight up customers saying,I'm struggling to do this.
I don't know how to do this.
That is such great feedbackthat often like that is lost in
terms of the loop cause there'snot that much connection.
I keep going back to Appcuesbecause like we were trying
to be as product-led aspossible, even for us, that
feedback loop back to productteam from customer success
(28:20):
often was like, how do we havethe right kind of process?
How do we send this insightinto product, the product team
so that they can get actionit, whether it's through a
spreadsheet or a Slack channelthat's focused on customer
onboarding feedback thatwe're getting, whatever it is.
I think that really needsto be tied back to the
product team as well.
I think the second thingin terms of feedback loop,
(28:42):
it's making sure thateverybody has like a clear
line of what the successfor our users looks like.
Because if we see a drop as ateam in terms of users getting
there on a specific week or aspecific cohort of users, then
that is something that needs tobe tackled together as a team.
And okay, where did it go wrong?
Or what was the challenge?
Is it because we marketingdid our campaign and it
(29:03):
was targeting a lot ofFacebook users and they
don't get activated.
So it's not a product issue.
It's actually more of a channelissue or versus like product
team actually released a newfeature and it messed up the
whole onboarding experience.
Or is it the sales team?
Did they promise somethingout of left field that
nobody knew about?
Now people are not gettingto that success or aha or
(29:23):
ultimate win for your product.
Or is this something else where,there was a lot of people in
customer success that was sickand then they weren't responding
to the there's so many possibleissues and it needs to be really
needs to be pulled in together,especially if you have a common
metric that you're like, this iswhat's exciting for our users.
If it's, we're not hittingthat, then we need to have a
(29:45):
discussion together as a team.
Hannah Clark (29:46):
Legit.
That concludes our discussiontoday on product onboarding.
This has been fantastic.
Thank you so muchfor joining us.
Where can our listeners followyour work or, access some of the
resources you mentioned today?
Ramli John (29:57):
Yeah, for sure.
They can find me on LinkedIn.
I'm quite active there.
Ramli RJ John.
I'm also have all my content,my newsletter, as well as
the new book I'm writingin 2025 delightpath.com.
So the new book is calledEUREKA, which the framework
that we talked about isI've refined it for fast
high growth B2B companies.
(30:18):
So this all in delightpath.com.
Hannah Clark (30:20):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so muchfor sharing that and for
for joining us today.
It's always a pleasure, Ramli.
Ramli John (30:24):
Thank you so much.
Hannah Clark (30:27):
Thanks for listening in.
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