Disha Gupta
Time-to-Value: How to Track & Reduce TTV
- Published:
- Updated: July 24, 2024
When users sign up for a product or service, they want to realize value as quickly as possible.
There’s a direct connection between customer satisfaction levels and the time it takes for customers to see value in a product or service. McKinsey research revealed that banks reducing the time to value (TTV) for new account holders led to a customer satisfaction increase between 10% to 30%.
This metric is also significantly tied to revenue and business success, with an abundance of alternatives and competitors your customers can churn to – its critical to accelerate value realization from your customers as much as possible.
In this article, we’ll explore the time-to-value metric, types of TTV metrics, how to track it, and strategies to reduce it.
What Is Time to Value (TTV)?
Time to value (TTV) is a customer onboarding metric that measures the time it takes for new customers to realize value from a product or service,
The exact time to value depends on the complexity of your app, product, or service. Simply services or apps can be instantaneous (think of plagiarism checkers or Google Maps) while enterprise software can be months (like a CRM or ERP system.)
TTV is an important customer retention metric that helps companies make data-driven decisions to enable customers with product-led onboarding experiences and frictionless journeys that drive customer retention
TTV vs. “aha” moment
Time to value measures how quickly a customer realizes the benefits of a product or service. It’s the actual time from when a customer starts using the product or service to when they begin seeing measurable results and value.
The “aha” moment, on the other hand, is the exact moment when a customer has a sudden understanding of a product or service and realizes its potential. It’s a key point in the customer’s journey because it marks the point when they become a committed user or customer.
How to Measure TTV
There are several strategies you can use to measure time to value. The most effective ones for your business will depend on the software you’re offering, your customer’s needs, and your specific business model.
1. Time to upgrade from free to paid
Measuring the time it takes for customers to upgrade from the free version of your software to the paid version will indicate when customers believe your product has value and are willing to pay for additional features.
Measuring time to feature upgrade can be used as an indicator of how quickly a company is able to release new updates or improvements to existing features, which can impact the value that users or customers derive from the product. A shorter time to feature upgrade can indicate that the company is able to quickly respond to user feedback and deliver improvements, which can increase the value of the product to users. Additionally, a shorter time to feature upgrade can also indicate that the company has a streamlined development process, which can allow them to release new updates more frequently.
Measuring time to feature upgrade can also be used to evaluate how well a company is able to adapt to changing user needs, as well as how well the company is able to anticipate the needs of the customer. This could be important for company to ensure customer satisfaction and retain customer loyalty.
2. Customer onboarding time
A lengthy onboarding process could mean your processes are too complicated, which can deter users from choosing your platform because of delays and downtime. A swift onboarding process, enabling customers to use your software faster, can be an incentive for them to choose your solution.
A shorter onboarding time suggests that a customer is able to quickly and easily start using and benefiting from the product, while a longer onboarding time may indicate that there are obstacles or difficulties in the process that are delaying the realization of value. This measurement can be used to identify and address any issues that may be preventing customers from quickly realizing the value of a product or service, and to improve the overall customer experience.
3. Time of adoption for new features
Measure the time it takes for customers to adopt new features after they are released. A slow adoption rate may indicate that the features are not useful or that there are barriers preventing their usage.
Measuring feature adoption time can be used as an indicator of the time it takes for a new feature to provide value to users or customers. The shorter the adoption time, the quicker the feature is providing value. This can be important for businesses, as it allows them to determine how quickly new features are being utilized and if they are achieving their desired impact. Additionally, measuring feature adoption time can help identify any issues or barriers that may be preventing users from quickly adopting new features, allowing the company to address them in a timely manner.
Types of Time to Value Metrics
Time to value (TTV) highly depends on the type of product or service you offer.
With that in mind, here are the five most common types of TTV metrics that companies track:
1. Time to basic value
Time to basic value is the shortest time-to-value metric. It is defined as when a customer realizes they made the correct choice in your product or service and begins to see real ROI and value from your offering. This can occur before a customer purchases a product via a free trial or demo.
Examples of time to basic value could be a user starting to use Canva and immediately being provided a solution to designing visuals and exploring design files.
2. Time to exceed value
This TTV metric measures the time until a customer realizes the value of your product and your offering has exceeded their expectations. This can include a freemium user converting into a paid subscriber or larger upsell opportunities. The more a product or service can improve time to exceed value, the more it can increase customer lifetime value.
Let’s consider the Canva example again. An example of time to exceed value would be a Canva user realizing it has more robust features than initially anticipated, which leads to the user converting into a paid Canva account to gain access to more advanced features. If this user is a graphic designer professional, this could even lead to an upsell for a Canva Business or Team account.
3. Long time to value
This TTV metric is for products that may need to be implemented and learned over time, meaning it will take quite a long time for actual ROI, anywhere from weeks to months. Most SaaS products fall into this category.
Long time to value is incremental. Customer onboarding and success teams must dedicate time to their accounts to ensure proper training and setup. Be sure to highlight wins along the way so highlight to customers the more value they’re extracting from a product or service.
An example of long time to value would be a new CRM or ERP system. While both offer robust features, they’re complex solutions requiring setup, implementation, and end-user training to realize its full value.
4. Short time to value
Short time to value refers to products or services that instantly solve a customer problem. Examples include moving companies, carpet cleaners, and many other consumer-based products. While short time to value is easy to showcase, customers of these products and services have less patience for poor service and can easily churn to competitors who may offer lower prices or more value.
5. Immediate time to value
This is perhaps the easiest to understand of the TTV metrics. Immediate time to value is a metric for services that provide instant gratification and solutions to problems. An example would be Google Drive or Box providing cloud storage services – a user signs up and instantly receives their value.
Create contextual onboarding and support flows while capturing product usage analytics with Whatfix
7 Tips to Reduce Your Time to Value
Your onboarding process is the first thing your customers experience after they decide to try your product. This makes onboarding the perfect opportunity to show value immediately and convince customers they made the right decision.
These strategies will help create a friction-free onboarding experience that clearly illustrates your company’s value.
1. Define clear goals and objectives
Defining clear goals and objectives helps reduce time to value by providing a clear roadmap for the project or initiative, helping to ensure that all stakeholders are working towards the same end goal.
When the goals and objectives of a project are clearly defined, it allows your project team to focus on the most important tasks and prioritize their efforts accordingly. This can help minimize the amount of time and resources that are required and also ensure that the final product meets the specific needs of your customer.
Clear goals and objectives also help to ensure that your project team is aligned and working together in the same direction, which can reduce delays and increase productivity. Establishing specific milestones and deadlines empowers your team to track progress and make adjustments as needed.
Having clear goals and objectives also allows for better communication with the stakeholders and customers, which can help to prevent misunderstandings and keep everyone on the same page.
2. Create an email drip campaign during customer onboarding
Engage users immediately with a series of emails that begins when they sign up for your service. The first email welcomes the customer and offers the information they need to get started. Then, send follow-up emails weekly to keep your product fresh in the customer’s mind and give them tips about using different features. Save time and effort by using a third-party email scheduler like Autopilot to automate the email onboarding series.
Onboarding emails are an excellent opportunity to highlight parts of the product the customer would find valuable. Even if the reader never clicks through, they still see features they might never have discovered otherwise. This will help them see the benefit of your product without going through every section themselves.
Onboarding emails help customers learn about and engage with your product. One study found that people who receive welcome emails are engaged for 33% longer. This is why even industry giants like Google set up welcome emails for their products:
Google uses its welcome email to inform users of the next step and offer resources, like a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page.
3. Invest in a digital adoption platform (DAP)
One of the reasons customers abandon a product is because they don’t know how to use it.
One survey found that 80% of respondents have deleted an app because they found it difficult or confusing to use. Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) help prevent user frustration and show them how to use each feature.
DAPs have multiple features that allow product managers and customer success teams to create in-app guided content for better user onboarding UX, on-demand support, and reinforcement training, including:
- Interactive walkthroughs
- Step-by-step guided instructions
- Smart tips
- Onboarding task lists
- Videos tutorials
- Knowledge base articles
- Self-help menus
- Compliance alerts and field validators
With a DAP, your customer can learn to use every aspect of your product, making it more likely that they will recognize its value quickly.
The self-guided nature of DAPs also means customers use self-service training and support content and resources to find answers to many of their questions without submitting a support ticket and waiting for a response.
DAPs help your team as well. Customer success teams spend 60% of their time ensuring a smooth onboarding process, facilitating end-user adoption, and reducing churn. A digital adoption platform reduces the support tickets they have to deal with so they can focus on more proactive customer service efforts to increase satisfaction and retention.
Whatfix decreases time to value by walking users through the different features of your product so they can see the benefits for themselves. This decreased TTV leads to higher customer satisfaction and end-user adoption rates. When Dimensions UK implemented Whatfix, they increased their user satisfaction score to 5/5 and raised their three-month user adoption rates from 10% to 50%.
Non-profit Dimensions UK drives adoption of its new products with Whatfix in-app guidance.
4. Assign each customer a dedicated customer success manager
Another way to decrease time to value for your customers is to have a dedicated employee who is responsible for pointing out features the consumer might find helpful.
A customer success manager (CSM) acts as a point of contact for your customer. They answer questions and make the onboarding process as smooth as possible.
CSMs personalize the onboarding process by greeting customers by name in a welcome email and offering tailored recommendations and advice. Because answers and suggestions are personalized for the customer’s experience, they can clearly see the benefits of using your product. And the reduced time to value has a significant impact—almost one-third of surveyed companies said having dedicated customer success efforts resulted in a 20% or more rise in annual recurring revenue.
Proposify, a business proposal software, has a dedicated customer success team. Their CSMs act as inside advisers to their customers, showing them how Proposify’s software can solve their business problems. Managers even consult with the product team about what new features to add. They can then go back to the customer and show them a new feature added specifically to take care of a customer’s problem.
5. Use behavior analytics and product data to make data-driven decisions
The best way to provide frictionless onboarding is to identify where customers struggle in the process via product usage data. Track how customers use your product and see whether there are certain features or parts of the onboarding process where they get stuck.
If you find a particular point in the onboarding flow that multiple users have trouble with, you can address the issue and prevent future customers from experiencing it. Track search queries in the knowledge base to see if many people are asking the same questions. Then, you can fix the root cause of user concerns instead of just addressing support tickets one by one.
Look at feature usage data as well. Are there features that only some people are using? If so, consider redesigning them to make their value more obvious or changing their location within your product if they’re being overlooked.
Patreon, a platform where fans can pay creators for content, uses Amplitude to track and analyze subscriber behavior. They watched how potential subscribers moved through the sales funnel and identified several features that increased conversion rates. By implementing these, such as making checkout more secure, Patreon doubled its subscriber conversion rate.
With a digital adoption platform like Whatfix, product managers and customer-facing teams can capture, monitor, and track how users use a product, what friction points they’re encountering, and what’s causing users to experience a longer time to value – all with behavior analytics and product feedback.
With this data, customer success managers can work with product teams to publish, test, and improve in-app onboarding, messaging, and flows to create an effective, streamlined product experience that showcases value fast – and capture and analyze critical product analytics.
You can learn more about Whatfix’s product analytics platform here.
6. Shorten your free trial period
It may seem counterintuitive, but a longer free trial doesn’t necessarily lead to a higher conversion rate. Users with less time to play around with the product work faster to try out all the different features. As a result, they shorten their time to value.
With a shorter free trial, there is less time for your welcome emails and support information to get lost in the customer’s inbox. This is especially important if you offer free trials without a credit card. There is no penalty if the customer simply forgets they signed up. A short free trial will encourage them to start using the product right away, which will help them discover how it can benefit them.
Product management software ProdPad cut their free trial from 30 days to 14. They based their decision on the fact that they could usually predict by day nine if the customer would stay. The strategy paid off: the company saw its conversion rates double.
These strategies serve to show the customer how to use your product and how it can solve their business concerns.
7. Automate repetitive tasks and processes
Automating repetitive tasks and processes can improve efficiency and minimize the need for human intervention, which can often cause delays. By automating tedious, repetitive tasks, your company can reduce the time and resources needed to complete said tasks – which can help to increase productivity and improve overall performance.
Automation can also help to reduce errors and increase accuracy, which can improve the quality and consistency of the results provided to customer. Overall, automation can help organizations to achieve their goals more effectively and can help them to realize value more impactfully.
% of respondents who have deleted an app because they found it difficult or confusing to use.
80%
Analyze and reduce your customer time-to-value with seamless onboarding and support experiences powered by Whatfix
You know the benefits of your product and the problems it solves better than anyone. But you have to convince your potential customers of this. If they have a rough onboarding experience, learning to use the product and see everything it offers is harder.
Adopting customer onboarding technology, like digital adoption platforms, helps make the onboarding process as smooth as possible. This tech helps your customers quickly learn the different features of your product and see the specific value it holds for them. The faster they can learn to use your product effectively, the shorter their time to value.
Maximize your customers’ value by implementing Whatfix’s onboarding and support experiences today.
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What Is Whatfix?
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that provides organizations with a no-code editor to create in-app guidance on any application that looks 100% native. With Whatfix, create interactive walkthroughs, product tours, task lists, smart tips, field validation, self-help wikis, hotspots, and more. Understand how users are engaging with your applications with advanced product analytics.
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