How to boost adoption within the first 30 days of onboarding

Katherine Bentley

Hello, I'm aware gaining members' interest within the first 30 days is crucial for renewal. So what is the best way to drive adoption of a community within the first 30 days?
What steps would you advise to take to drive engagement post 30 days? Thanks so much.

Andrew Shoaff

Hi Katherine,

Whew, huge topic here.  I think we could have an entire conference dedicated to the first 30 (n) days of a customer relationship.  But short story in my experience is client buy-in.  Does the customer know exactly what they need to do in those first 30 days?  Do they have the resources to do it?  Most critically, has the customer decision maker effectively charged their team with the 30 day adoption plan?  

Again, in my experience the most important step is getting full buy in on day 1 of what the objectives of the 30 days are, the outcomes expected if all tasks are completed on time and who is responsible for what.  Establish accountability inside the customer - ie, if your POC isn't on time with something, what is the escalation not to you (the vendor) but to the customer decision maker?  If the only person/group upset if a POC misses a deadline is the vendor, then you are in a bad position.  If the POC/customer implementation team has internal accountability their incentive to remain on task is far great. 

Again, so much more to this topic.   But if you have the accountability set up then I've found everything else tends to fall in line.  

Happy to chat offline anytime: 703.786.5672.

Andrew

Scott Morgan

Hi Katherine,
I echo what Andrew S. states. Have a success plan that has the customers buy in during pre-sales. Before the sales contract is signed the customer knows what is expected of them and what they can expect. Once onboarding is complete, have sufficiently frequent value add communication with the customer to keep the customer engaged.
You mentioned Community. To encourage the use of community have valuable information like tips and tricks to improve efficiency or value. Encourage customers to engage each other by asking questions to the group. Support issues and resolutions are helpful to have in community.
/scott

Jeremy Mulder

Hi Katherine - Thanks for your question. My thoughts:

A starting point: think from your customer's perspective, and answer these 3 questions:

1. Where am I now?
2. Where do I want to be in 30 days? 
3. What is the next required action I can take to step towards that destination?

Not sure, then talk to your customers. It's exciting to learn the answers together. 

Once you have this basic framework in place, I'd recommend two things:

1. Reflect on "how's it going?" and
2. Ask "how can I make it better?" so you can take action.

Benedict Fritz

Definitely agree with everything else mentioned in this thread! Buy-in, expectation setting, accountability, and communication are all huge!

A couple other things I'd add:

1. Try to get to a win as quickly as possible

The quicker you can get a customer to an a-ha moment, where they understand *why* they're adopting your product, it reinforces the whole process. They're suddenly much more motivated to adopt the product when they've had a taste of the outcome the product provides.

2. Write things down

It's great to get buy-in, establish goals, and everything else that makes adoption go smoothly, but it really helps if you write it all down. Everyone has so much going on, it's easy to forget what you agreed on in a meeting a week ago (not to mention a month ago). Writing things down also helps if there's turnover on your side or the customer's side.

I made a template of a document you might share with your customer where you can track all of this stuff. Might be helpful for getting an idea of the sorts of things to track: https://arrows.to/resources/implementation-plan-template/

Hope that helps!