Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
This is part three of the interview with Pulkit Agrawal of Chameleon.
If you haven't heard parts one and two, you'll find those in itunes or just head over to ConversionAid.com122.
In this episode, we talk about onboarding and how to do a better job at explaining your product or business to your customers.
Whether you have a software product or an online business, you want to make sure that you're not wasting time and marketing money to attract customers if you can't hold onto them.
So in this episode, we explore some best practices to help you do just that.
Okay, Pulkit, welcome back.
Guest (01:10.910)
Great to be back.
Omer (01:12.190)
All right, so let's talk about what successful user onboarding looks like.
In the last two episodes, we've talked about how you came up with the idea, how you raise money.
We've talked about what you've done to go and acquire customers, some of the lessons you've learned along the way around about growth, competitors, and customers.
But let's, let's spend some time trying to understand user onboarding itself.
So I'm kind of curious on what some of the lessons are that our listeners can take away when they're thinking about their product and what they can do whether they use Chameleon or not, to do a better job at user onboarding.
Guest (02:00.110)
Well, guess what?
This is my favorite topic, so I'm glad you asked.
So, yeah, happy to talk about this.
I think let's begin with saying that this is not just about better design.
There is, you know, there's a framework for success for user onboarding, and there are, you know, from the experience that I've had and from all the customers that I've worked with, happy to outline a few of those lessons from this framework for success for user onboarding.
Omer (02:30.800)
Okay, great.
So what's the first lesson?
Guest (02:35.360)
The first lesson, I think, is you have to figure out who's responsible for user onboarding.
I think what happens, especially at smaller companies, is, is that it kind of falls through the cracks.
And maybe somebody who's interested, it could be a designer or it could be a pm or it could be an engineer, just picks it up and runs with it.
And they'll run with it.
They'll do a little project, there'll be some iteration, and then it'll be done and then it'll be forgotten about.
And I think that is one situation.
The other situation at slightly larger companies, what happens is there's no one centrally thinking about it.
Every PM for every feature thinks a little bit about it.
You have a separate marketing team who might publish a blog post about a new feature release, some separate team that looks at the website.
And so no one's really given the ownership, the responsibility, the accountability to consistently improve new user activation by better user onboarding.
So I think my first lesson is figure out who on your team a single person is going to be the person who runs with this.
Or if you've got, you know, if you're working within a broader organization, can you get a group together or can you, you know, create some team that actually thinks about how they're going to improve user onboarding over time?
So ideally it's the same team that thinks about it across, across features, across the product and across time.
But having some central group that does this is going to be really, really helpful and you continue to iterate, continuing to improve and continue to create success.
Omer (04:06.300)
Is there a particular team or group that you've seen this be more effective with?
Like should the engineering team own this?
Should it be the product management team, marketing or doesn't it really not matter as long as somebody is thinking about it?
Guest (04:23.890)
Well, slightly.
Some of the more mature startups, it's often a growth team that fits really well.
Growth team often has some autonomy that they can execute quickly, they can make decisions, they can use whatever they need to get stuff done.
And that growth team will be cross functional.
So you'll probably have a pm, a couple of engineers, maybe some access to design or data resources or research resources.
So probably a cross functional team, probably sitting within growth.
If you're at that stage, if you're small, then a pm, I think, or your head of product should be the person really responsible for this.
It sits in your product.
But we have seen lots of different roles that think about it.
It could be a product marketing manager, could be an onboarding specialist, a customer success rep.
There is a.
Because it's not very clear.
It depends a little bit on your organization.
It's not so important who does it as long as somebody is responsible for it.
Omer (05:17.990)
Okay, great.
So that's the first lesson.
Decide who's responsible and then make sure that they're held accountable for that.
So what's the second lesson?
Guest (05:28.230)
The second lesson is touching on this gripe that I mentioned in the last episode about people thinking that good onboarding is an intuitive product.
And let me explain why it's not.
So, firstly, just go back to theory a little bit, which is why people take actions.
And there is a professor at Stanford who runs this lab called Persuasive Technology.
It kind of tells you what he thinks about, and he says, you know, there's three things that are really important to get people to take actions.
One is that they need to be motivated.
They need to want the result.
They want to.
They need.
They want to be successful.
That's motivation.
The second lesson is they need to have the ability to succeed.
They need to believe and see that if they take certain actions, they can get to their goal.
So first lesson is motivation.
Second lesson, they need to have ability.
The third lesson is what actually causes them to take action in that moment.
And that's a trigger.
So this can be an internal trigger, like, I'm feeling lonely, I might go to Facebook.
Or it could be an external trigger.
I read something, and that reminds me of something else.
So motivation ability triggers are what you need to drive action.
Now, when you translate this into products and product design, well, how does it.
How does it translate?
Well, essentially, your motivation angle is your value proposition.
Are people believing in the value proposition?
Do they understand what value they'll get from using your product?
The ability relates to the interface.
Like, do they understand how to use the interface?
Do they have the ability to succeed?
And the last thing the triggers relates to prompts that you send them.
How do you communicate with them, how do you trigger stuff?
So you have to think about all of these three things to get them to engage and get them to believe, you know, take these actions.
The intuitive interface is the ability part of it.
You can make an interface really intuitive and really simple to use, but if the value proposition isn't clear, and if you're not prompting them, they're not going to act.
And conversely, that.
You've probably seen examples where the interface is fairly confusing or not very intuitive, but the value proposition is strong.
And.
And so people do take action.
And Snapchat is a great example.
People are still confused how to use it, but they want to use it, so they'll figure it out.
So it's not just a question of the intuitiveness of the interface.
You have to balance all three of these things.
Omer (07:43.220)
Okay, good, Good.
I like that.
Okay, so lesson two is understand that behavior requires motivation, ability, and triggers.
Um, how about the third lesson?
Guest (07:57.580)
The third lesson is to figure out what is success for onboarding.
And this is.
Can be more easily understood by thinking about an aha moment.
Like, what is the time when someone, a user using a product, says, aha, I get it.
I understand.
They essentially have internalized the value that you're trying to provide to them.
And you know, most products, you can have this.
They, you know, users, they sign up, they're trying to figure it out, and then they get it.
They're like, ah, yeah, I get it.
And so you need to know that what that moment is for your product.
And if you don't, then you need to go find that out.
And you can do that by just talking to your existing customers and find out what value they really get or what they're really impressed with, or what was the first point where they clicked for them.
Or you can look at the data and see what things need to happen for users to be engaged.
But if you don't know, try and do some discovery, figure out some hypotheses, and then test them.
Like, is this the aha moment?
So once you know the aha moment, you know what your goal is, where you're trying to get to with your onboarding.
And once you've got your aha moment, what you do is you figure out the path for users to get there.
What are the three steps or the 10 steps that it takes for a user to get to that Aha.
And then once you know those steps, you can either refine those steps, like, do we need all of these 10 steps to show them the value of our product?
It's asking a lot from them.
So maybe we can reduce it to four steps.
And then when we have four steps, do they know what the next step is?
Are we teaching them and are we educating them to go through the next step?
Because, you know, products are confusing.
There's lots of options.
So figuring out the aha that allows you to then think about the path to get to aha, reduce and optimize that path, but then also guide users along that path.
Got it.
Omer (09:40.950)
Okay.
So this is figure out success or the aha moment.
And it's the point where your customer says, I get it.
And the best way to go and do that is to go and talk to them to figure that out.
And then you can kind of reverse engineer that and figure out how you can make that path easier for everybody else who comes after.
Guest (10:01.260)
Yeah.
Omer (10:02.219)
Okay, great.
So let's go on to lesson four.
Guest (10:07.340)
So now, when you're trying to educate customers about this path and you're trying to guide them along this path, what you should not do is just rely on email.
But you should rely on all of the channels that are available to you.
Our ways of engaging customers and users are becoming more sophisticated.
And three examples are, well, you have the email, but you now have chat or in app messaging and then you have product tools like tooltips or guidance that way.
And you should use a combination of those channels.
Each channel is one valuable in its own way.
Email is great for re engagement.
Someone's not signed in for a week or two.
You don't really, can't really engage them in any other way.
That's your only real access to them.
So the email is the right channel for that.
But then don't try to teach them about a feature in that email because they're reading that email.
They might be reading it on their phone, they might be shopping at the same time.
What you should tell them about in the email is motivate them to return by telling them about the benefits or explaining a use case or a case study, something that can read and digest something that's interesting.
Now, when they're already in the product, that's a really good time to teach them and educate them about stuff that they can act on inside of the product that they're already in the same context.
So then you can teach them about features and you can use chat or conversation or you can use in product notifications or messages.
And for example, you can tell them, oh, you know, this is something that's about to change or hey, you know, beware, this is what's going to happen in the product next week we're doing a design update or, or you can tell them that go and explore this area.
Or we've introduced a new feature.
Watch a video, you can deliver a marketing video again, driving motivation, helping engage them.
And then the last channel is product tools.
And these are much more kind of nitty gritty handheld.
And so you've released a new feature, you've made a change and you want to highlight that by getting users to actually act on what you're telling them.
Because the way that users are going to learn is if they actually act on what they're reading or what they're learning that will help them remember it.
So you can use those to guide people through new features or feature discovery.
So you have different channels available to you.
Use all of them in the right manner possible.
Don't just email people for onboarding.
Great.
Omer (12:30.280)
So listen for use a combination of channels, whether it's email in app messages, product tours, or something else.
Guest (12:38.020)
Yeah, exactly.
Omer (12:38.660)
Okay.
And then finally lesson five.
Guest (12:41.460)
Lesson five is about not doing this as a set and forget type of flow.
This is not something that you do once and then you return to it in six months or a year.
And that's linked to having the same team or person thinking about it, you need to iterate and, you know, think about the first website that you might have built or the first version of a product and it might have been good, it might have been great, but it's not the best version of that product because when you learn, after you put it in the hands of users, you get feedback, you can iterate and improve.
And so the idea isn't to spend a big amount of effort building an onboarding experience, then forget about it, but continually analyze and iterate on it.
Now, if you don't have somebody that can think about this all the time, but then at least somebody can think about it on a monthly basis or on a weekly basis.
So you should be able to measure how it's performing, how your guidance is doing, whether your tools are working or they're not working.
Is there something that people are confused about?
And then be able to release an update, be able to make some copy changes, be able to do a second version and a b test it.
The idea is by actually making it data driven, you will improve your onboarding, you will improve your conversion and your success a lot more than just by building it once and then forgetting about it and coming back to it in six months.
So try to iterate quickly, reduce the time that you do for iterations, and there's a lot more thinking about metrics, but essentially bringing data and a data driven approach to improving your user onboarding.
Omer (14:12.290)
Great.
I think those are great lessons and principles that should apply to every product.
I think it's interesting that you said that onboarding shouldn't be kind of a thing that you do every six months where.
And I think probably that's one of your biggest challenges right now is that a lot of companies do think of onboarding like that.
Right.
As you mentioned, it's kind of like a project that they do at some point and then maybe they move on to something else.
But when you start to sort of think about the value of onboarding, whether it's user engagement, loyalty, retention, lifetime value, whatever those things are, it seems pretty crazy that you wouldn't be spending more time on it.
It's almost as crazy as saying we do a marketing project every six months or a growth project every six months to get some new customers.
Guest (15:16.320)
Yeah, exactly.
But I understand why that happens, because it's hard and it's hard to prioritize, hard to know what to do.
So that's why using a platform or a tool can be helpful, because you can, then it's much easier to do that and it gives you the power to actually continue to improve.
Yeah.
Omer (15:32.940)
All right, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
Guest (15:40.700)
Okay, let's do it.
Omer (15:41.980)
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Guest (15:46.860)
Focus for customers.
Focus on those that are interested.
Don't waste time on those that are not.
Omer (15:53.690)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Guest (15:57.290)
Siddharth by Hermann Hess.
It teaches that life is a journey.
It can turn upside down, but it's just another phase that you get through towards your ultimate goal.
Omer (16:07.770)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur belief which
Guest (16:14.570)
is related to resilience?
Just being able to deal with stuff changing a lot.
Omer (16:22.080)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Guest (16:27.200)
Post its, writing lists on post its and crossing stuff off.
It gives me a great sense of motivation.
But I'll give you a bonus one, which is voice updates on WhatsApp.
It takes me ages to write stuff out and I don't have time to be looking at my phone, so I record voice updates all the time.
Omer (16:44.430)
Oh, that's interesting.
I never thought about using WhatsApp for that.
Guest (16:47.790)
Yeah.
Omer (16:49.390)
All right.
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Guest (16:54.910)
You know, I think one thing that's close to my heart is mental fitness.
I think we, we are very aware of physical fitness, but we don't have very little idea of what's going on inside our heads.
And we already talked about meditation.
I'd love to make mental fitness accessible, available, popular, so people are training their minds to be really resilient and strong and power powerful.
Omer (17:17.050)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Guest (17:21.850)
I used to be a proud Scotsman, spent four years in Scotland.
I hated the English, had a really strong Scottish accent.
You know, my favorite film was Braveheart.
Omer (17:34.250)
That's funny.
I didn't pick up any, any sense of a sign of a Scottish accent.
Guest (17:39.530)
Things change.
Omer (17:43.580)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Guest (17:47.180)
You know, passion is not something I relate to that much.
But I think on balance, Liverpool Football Club is.
I first moved to Liverpool when we moved to the UK from India and the first day of school I was asked, you know, who my allegiance was and you know, ever since it has been to Liverpool Football Club.
It's what I read on Reddit in the morning and night.
I watch all the games so guess has to be Liverpool.
Great.
Omer (18:13.210)
Pulkin, I want to thank you for joining me today.
It's been great to talk to you to to find out about Chameleon and just generally about how to do a better job at user onboarding.
And for folks who I really should point this out.
We've been having this conversation on Skype and I've been looking at a picture of you with an interesting expression on your face and there's a bunch of sumo wrestlers in the background, so I can see the butt of one of those guys.
It's been hard to kind of keep a straight face, but it's like a
Guest (19:00.730)
combination of a selfie and what is it like a Belfie or something.
Omer (19:06.240)
Now if people want to find out more about Chameleon they can go to try chameleon.com and if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Guest (19:15.920)
Oh, feel free to email me pulkitrikameleon.com P U L K I trycomeleon.com or you can go and message from the website and I read all the messages.
Omer (19:27.120)
Awesome.
Thanks again man.
I really enjoyed this conversation.
Guest (19:29.920)
Me too.
We should do it again sometime.
Omer (19:31.320)
Yeah, definitely.
Guest (19:32.480)
Okay, Cheers.
Thanks Byte.
