Integrating Account Data

The Problem

Users could not access account-level data in the product, making it difficult to measure account health and understand the impact of their in-app messaging strategies.

Project goals:

• Increase percentage of customers sending us account data properties 
• Increase product stickiness metrics (DAU/MAU ratio)
• Make it easy for customers to access and explore account-level data and activity
• Adjust core data structure to accommodate account-level data

Discovery

To tackle this project I started by:

• Auditing the user-level data and profiles to understand what we have and how users interact with it today
• Interviewing internal Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to gain insights into the data they need for assessing account health and identifying churn risks
• Conducted a quick competitive analysis to understand features and data offered by similar products
  

I shared this info and my insights with my PM and engineering team in our project kick-off meeting

Design

In our kick-off meeting, the team worked together to created a brief with basic requirements. My focus was on:

• A searchable and filterable list of accounts
• Individual account profiles showcasing important details for assessing account health
• Account information, including user details and product usage activity

Validation

After several iterations I narrowed our scope to support a phased delivery approach. Working alongside my Product Manager, we set out to get some early feedback and recruit customers for our Beta launch.

We set up interviews with users in growth-focused roles and provided an interactive prototype to preview the beta release.

Overall the feedback was positive. Some highlights from the interviews were:

• Users were really interested in the usage data and wanted to see their in-product messaging integrated with this data
• Requested benchmark data to help understand if numbers are good or bad
• Wanted to be able to easily share with other teams
• Looked for tips or insights to help them know what to take action on

Implementation

Early in the project we identified several risks that impacted us as we started implementation.

• This work relied heavily on our data team which is small and was already allocated to several other priority initiatives. 
• We required a backend engineer resource, which was challenging to get a dedicated resource and get up to speed
• Only 9% of current customers were sending us account properties, which meant that in order to do so, many would have to re-install
• We’d need to work with multiple internal teams to update installation processes and documentation

Despite our challenges, we released Beta to 120 customers several weeks ahead of schedule. We fully released it to all customers ~3 weeks later.

Results

• Customers sending account data increased from 9.9% to 15%
• Product stickiness increased 2.5% in 3 months

We also received additional gains from adjusting our empty state after the initial release:

• Increased page interactions by 70% in 30 days
• Users sending account data increased by an additional 1%

What's Next

We have several improvement phases planned to:

• Encourage customers to include account data
• Allow users to filter, sort, and save account segments
• Expand account-level data in analytics and reporting
• Enhance data management for better organization and reporting