Users who reached a Habit of using your product are the best monetization target. For product, marketing and sales.

What if we structure our incentivization and targeting framework in our organization like that?

A habit is a synonym for experienced user value in a specific timeframe. This is highly correlated to other metrics. Habit is formed by reaching a Eureka Moment. An extended Value is experienced.

A Eureka Moment can only be reached if the user has an Aha moment. Experiencing the core value of the product once.

Experiencing the product is only possible if you are "set up". Creating an account is a typical setup moment.

In order to get to the setup moment we need to capture users in some form.

Creating/capturing a demand with an interesting Value proposition does just that.

Structuring your functions while focussing on customer success

Visualizing and structuring the user's journey to Habit this way does a couple of things.

We can internally structure our goals by function. Product vs. Marketing/Sales (or Growth). At the same time, we let users flow between these functions.
We don't "care" where a high-intent buyer comes from. Nothing special so far, but we can incentivize moving these users.

Recognizing which signals are hard to reach we can also incentivize our functions in this direction. Product people understand this visualization the most but sales and marketing need it as well:

A demo account that experienced a Eureka moment is more valuable for us than one that never touched their demo.

We can even gate any outreach from sales/marketing/product: Only if Habit is reached you are allowed to outreach with an offer or monetization attempt.
We are not blocking self-serve of course in any way, but a company vision that is aligned like this becomes powerful.
Sales will drive customer success. Marketing doesn't stop at the value proposition, they're only getting started.

'Product' is reducing friction for anyone that uses the product over time.

The result is a shift in management goals. They spend time understanding and defining the direction of customer success.

Alignment over micromanagement.

On Word of Mouth - Optimizing your NPS

I really hate the NPS as an operational metric and I make no secret of that, I prefer the CES over it.

But here we are, you probably also use it. So what can we do with it if the main purpose is to indicate Word-of-Mouth strength?

It's time to flip it again and look at the negative metrics. What if we split our NPS into cohorts? Passives, neutrals, and "bad" brand actions like leaving bad reviews? 🤯

No alternative text description for this image — The connection of negative NPS reviews to user actions

Are there actions we can measure and map that lead to this particular behavior? Turns out we can. And we can put actual numbers on it. A fast support response time might be the difference between creating a detractor vs. a passive one.

Same for refund requests, these are actions that don't happen often but if they do, they better work. "Time to value" in this regard is crucial. Otherwise, you risk a review meltdown. If you don't want to fix this afterward, prevent it altogether.

As with the first iteration of this map where we looked at churn we can center teams with the most leverage on it, regardless of their channel.

Also, certain actions indicate intent where others actively trigger "bad" behavior that we want to avoid at any cost.

Stop trying to retain customers that already made a decision to leave (Mobile providers are notorious for this). Let's help these customers to offboard to not damage brand perception.
All you do is push short-term revenue while damaging your long-term value.

Pick your battles, you can still stay friends.

Leah’s ProducTea

Forming Habits and Word of Mouth