Value or Adoption for healthscore

Effie Mansdorf

I am setting up our CSM healthscore, that is set up into 4 separate categories - relationship, advocacy, operation and value. I am debating if I should switch out the "Value" section with "adoption", since high adoption scores may indicate that the user has found value. I think we can all agree that value and adoption are not one of the same. A customer can see value, but fail to adopt for a variety of reasons. However, if a customer has adopted your product, does that mean that they see value in it? Would a user adopt a product that they do not see value in?

Marijn Verdult

Advocacy, Value, and Adoption are all three very much intertwined, right? Adoption leads to value, and value (plus other things) leads to advocacy. As well, seeing potential and experiencing value are different things all together.

I think it comes down to what is measurable for you, how you will use it, and which factors really play a role for you. 

In my opinion, health score should lead to action, so the earlier you can take action the better, hence I'm a big fan of Leading Indicators. That's why I always would include adoption in it.

Does this help?

Effie Mansdorf

It does Marijn - thanks. I am currently leaning towards replacing value with adoption. Since all of the above leads or is lead by value. 

Jim Jones

As @Marijn Verdult correctly stated - they're all intertwined. I think of adoption as a lagging indicator, value as leading. Customers (generally) don't get to value until adoption starts to happen and/or increase. And potentially, the more adoption that occurs the more value they'll find in the tool or in various features of it, etc., etc.

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

Whatever you want to label it is fine, as long as value and adoption are factored

Effie Mansdorf

@Kevin Mitchell Leonor - So again to my question. If value is measured as high, there may not be adoption for several reasons ( product complexity, customer not having the right resources to maintain etc;). However, the opposite may not be true. If you measure adoption and it is high, would it stand to reason that the value is automatically recognized as well? Would a customer adopt if they don't see value? @Jim Jones answer above seems to reflect that yes, if there is adoption, then there is automatic value realization but not the opposite. Thoughts?

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

ok so I was under the impression that value metric is ”value attained” not “value perceived”. 

I guess the question to ask is have you ever adopted something you didn’t find value in?

personally i think the likelihood that I find value in something I adopt is 99%. it is rare but it does happen. But it is rare. Take for example my customer at Duetto. The end users hate my product. however, if they don’t use it, they can’t work. Their leadership chose our solution despite the fact that the end users prefer our competitor. They adopted anyways. So if you want to get a decent measurement of value adoption, use a weighted score that is like percentage of adoption multiplied by NPS score or some other sentiment measurement.

this behavior of leadership support is a contributing factor in the Adoption Readiness score I co-created

David Ellin

@Kevin Mitchell Leonor touches on a very important difference between Adoption and Value. Adoption can be forced, Value can't. Just because your boss tells you to adopt something doesn't mean you see value in it.

For this purpose (when measuring value), your health score will be very different if you are measuring economic buyers versus users. For the former, you'll show high value achieved. For the latter, you'll likely show low value achieved. It can be very misleading.

If end users hate your product, your renewal is always at risk. At some point, the economic buyer is going to get tired of hearing all the complaints.

I like measuring value and using adoption as one component of value.

Effie Mansdorf

Just because a user hates using your product, does not mean they don't see any value in it. If they can't work without your product - there is the value right there. They may prefer your competitor because their solution is cheaper, easier to implement, more intuitive etc'. I would guess they don't fully adopt it as they would if they had full buy-in. I would probably assume that their advocacy is low but their value measurements won't be 0. 

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

I agree that the value to the end user is that they are forced to use it. i don't think that is quantifiable value that we should include in any customer health score. It's an unhealthy behavior. especially since if that end user ever becomes the decision maker, they will trade us out in a heartbeat. by giving it a positive value, we are skewing the numbers further away from the truth which is counterproductive to what a health score is supposed to represent.