A core area of Customer Success is about understanding how your customers use your product. To achieve this, it's essential to build a good foundation for measuring usage health — and it goes beyond measuring mere logins and is more about the meaningful actions customers take to achieve their goals. By effectively measuring usage and then analyzing the usage metrics, you can predict potential churn, increase customer engagement, and drive NRR growth. But what does meaningful usage look like across different SaaS products and why is it crucial to measure these actions? Let's find out.
Meaningful Usage
Meaningful usage refers to the specific actions and behaviours that indicate a customer is effectively using your product to meet their objectives. These are not just superficial interactions but deep, value-driven engagements that align with the customer’s goals.
Key Characteristics of Meaningful Usage
- Goal Alignment: Actions that contribute directly to achieving the customer’s objectives.
- Engagement Frequency: Regular use of core features indicating ongoing engagement.
- Depth of Use: Using advanced features showing the customer is leveraging the full potential of the product.
- Integration: Connecting the product with other tools to create a seamless workflow.
Meaningful Usage in different products
CRM Software
- Regular Updates: Frequently logging in to update contact information. Helps track the consistency of customer engagement with the CRM, ensuring that the database remains current and relevant for decision-making.
- Pipeline Management: Creating and managing sales pipelines. Indicates how actively customers are using the CRM to manage their sales processes, providing insights into their reliance on your tool for critical business functions.
- Reporting: Utilising reporting features to analyse sales performance. Shows how customers leverage analytics to make informed decisions, reflecting the value they derive from data insights.
- Integrations: Integrating with other tools (e.g., email, calendar). Highlights how embedded your CRM is within the customer’s broader workflow, indicating long-term commitment and dependency.
Project Management Tools
- Task Management: Creating and assigning tasks. Reveals the level of daily engagement and reliance on your tool for organising and delegating work, essential for productivity.
- Progress Tracking: Monitoring project milestones. Shows how customers use your tool to stay on top of their project timelines, ensuring projects are on schedule.
- Collaboration: Engaging in comments or file sharing. Indicates how effectively teams use your platform to communicate and share resources, critical for teamwork and project success.
- Dashboard Usage: Using dashboards to track project status. Provides insights into how customers monitor project health and make decisions based on real-time data.
Customer Support Platforms
- Ticket Management: Logging and resolving support tickets. Reflects how customers use your platform to track and resolve customer issues, crucial for support efficiency.
- Knowledge Base: Creating and updating articles. Indicates how often customers rely on self-service resources, reducing support load and enhancing customer satisfaction.
- Metric Analysis: Analysing support metrics and feedback. Shows how customers evaluate their support performance and make improvements, reflecting deeper engagement with your platform.
- Channel Integration: Integrating with other customer communication channels. Reveals how customers streamline their communication processes, enhancing overall support effectiveness.
Marketing Automation Software
- Campaign Execution: Building and sending email campaigns. Shows how customers use your tool to reach and engage their audience, directly impacting their marketing success.
- Journey Management: Managing customer journeys or workflows. Reveals how customers automate and personalise their marketing efforts, indicating sophisticated use of your platform.
- Segmentation: Targeting specific audiences using segmentation features. Indicates how effectively customers can target their campaigns, reflecting the precision and effectiveness of their marketing strategies.
- Performance Analysis: Analysing campaign performance through analytics. Shows how customers measure and optimise their marketing efforts, demonstrating the value they gain from actionable insights.
E-commerce Platforms
- Product Management: Adding and managing products. Reveals how frequently customers update their inventory, reflecting active use and reliance on your platform for business operations.
- Order Processing: Managing orders and inventory. Shows how customers use your tool to fulfil orders efficiently, crucial for customer satisfaction and business success.
- Marketing Tools: Creating promotions using marketing features. Indicates how customers drive sales and attract new customers, highlighting the effectiveness of your platform’s promotional capabilities.
- Sales Analysis: Analysing sales data and customer behaviour. Shows how customers use data to understand their market and improve their business strategies, reflecting deep engagement with your platform.
Analytics and BI Tools
- Dashboard Access: Regularly accessing dashboards and reports. Indicates how frequently customers check their key metrics, demonstrating ongoing reliance on your tool for business insights.
- Data Visualisation: Creating custom data visualisations. Shows how customers tailor insights to their needs, reflecting the customisation and utility of your platform.
- Report Sharing: Sharing insights and reports with team members. Indicates collaborative use of your tool, enhancing team alignment and decision-making processes.
- Source Integration: Integrating with other data sources. Reveals how customers centralise their data within your platform, increasing its value as a comprehensive analytics solution.
HR Management Systems
- Attendance Tracking: Tracking employee attendance and leave. Shows how customers use your platform to manage workforce availability, ensuring accurate records and compliance.
- Payroll Management: Managing payroll and benefits. Reflects how customers rely on your tool for critical financial operations, essential for employee satisfaction and retention.
- Recruitment Features: Using recruitment and onboarding features. Shows how customers streamline hiring processes, attracting and integrating top talent efficiently.
- Workforce Analysis: Analysing workforce data and performance. Indicates how customers leverage data to improve HR strategies, enhancing overall workforce management.
Collaboration Software
- Team Communication: Participating in team chats or video calls. Shows how frequently and effectively customers use your tool to stay connected, crucial for remote and hybrid work environments.
- Document Sharing: Collaborating on documents. Indicates active collaboration, reducing version control issues and improving document accuracy and efficiency.
- Task Tracking: Using task management features. Shows how customers organise and monitor their work, ensuring project management efficiency and timely completion of tasks.
- Team Updates: Engaging in regular team updates or status meetings.
Indicates how customers keep their teams informed and aligned, crucial for successful project execution.
Leveraging Usage Metrics for Customer Success
Data-Driven Decisions: Use historical data and current usage indicators to forecast and prevent churn. Regularly analyse these metrics to understand how your customers are interacting with your product.
Proactive Customer Engagement: Maintain continuous engagement with customers to ensure they are achieving their goals. This proactive approach helps in addressing potential issues before they lead to churn.
Internal Advocacy: Customer Success teams should be involved in strategic decisions, including pricing, to provide context and prevent negative impacts on retention. Advocate for the inclusion of usage health metrics in these discussions.
Conclusion
By focusing on usage health and effectively measuring usage through meaningful usage metrics, you can gain invaluable insights into customers. Then you can predict and prevent churn, get deeper engagement, and ultimately drive growth. Understanding and optimising meaningful usage is key to ensuring customer success and long-term retention.
Want to start measuring usage meaningfully?
