We will often see customers sign up for a trial without a clear idea of what their goals are. They know they have a general problem and they know that they need to do something but they have a tough time defining exactly what the problem or explains exactly how they plan on solving it.
I think a few examples here will best illustrate what I am talking about. Many times we will talk to a customer who is on a trial of our product and ask them what their goals are. A common response is, "Well, we know we need to do something because we don't have very good documentation." Or they might say, "We want to have a killer documentation site for our customers." Those may sound like good goals, but they aren't. Those goals don't map to business outcomes. Unless the business is going to enter a competition for the "best software documentation site" then simply having a killer documentation site isn't going to do the business any good.
If we dig a little deeper we can help them identify better goals. Usually we will ask, "What do you want to accomplish with your documentation site?" Many times they aren't really sure so we will suggest a few goals that our successful customers have set. For us this include:
- Decreasing customer support requests
- Improving customer onboarding
- Increasing feature adoption
- Improving customer education
Usually as we offer these suggestions, one of these goals will resonate with them. Sometimes they will say that they want to accomplish all of those goals. We usually suggest that they focus on one primary goal first. Then once they have accomplished that, they can move onto secondary goals.
By helping your customer clearly map their goals to business objective you will do several things:
- You will help them use your product with a stronger focus on business outcomes 2. You will help them communicate the value of your product to the rest of their team 3. You will be able to give them a clearer path to a successful outcome with your product
