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Aligning Cross-Functional Teams to Drive Product Adoption
Built cross-functional alignment, reduced churn by 42%, and sped up client feature adoption.
Strategy
Pendo
LMS
Stakeholder Management
Discovery: Strategic Alignment
I noticed a gap in our company: teams that should work together were siloed. To resolve this issue, I researched and found all teams in the company that created educational materials or provided training. From there, I proposed a yearly planning meeting that brought together all company customer education leaders to share plans, pains, and roadblocks for the next year.
A priority in this meeting was to brainstorm how we could work together to accomplish company initiatives and overcome the biggest upcoming challenges. Ultimately, it would culminate in a draft of a Customer Education Roadmap for the following year. This series of meetings led directly to our discovering a gap in how our company served our self-service customers.
The Problem: The "Self-Service" Cliff
- We learned that "self-service" clients purchase online with no human implementation.
- Analytics showed high churn in the first 30 days. Users were stalling at "Initial Setup" and cancelling before seeing value.
- Seven different departments (Implementation, Support, Product, etc.) touched the customer, but no single team owned the "Onboarding Lifecycle".
The "Self-Service" Cliff
Only 34% of self-service users completed onboarding before the Pendo intervention.
Aligning with a Unified Lifecycle Map
- Governance: I facilitated a series of "leadership planning" meetings with leaders from Implementation, Account Management, Support, Product, and Marketing.
- Gap Analysis: I discovered each team had tried individual strategies to help “self-service” customers, but these did not solve the issue.
- Mapping a Solution: I worked with these teams to develop a single intervention strategy that unified the onboarding experience for new customers based on user behavior.
- Standardized Workflows: Want to see how these timelines and milestones were structurally tracked? Explore my Cross-Functional Project Plan in the Portfolio.
Our Solution? Allow Users to Learn at their Own Pace!
We integrated Pendo as "Just-in-Time" Performance Support!
- Built Pendo directly into their regular workflow to catch users when they logged in the first time.
- Configured segmentation rules so guides appear over the course of a user’s first 16 days, allowing new users to move through the program at their own pace.
- Planned out a series of 16 daily pop-ups that gave users 3 easy-to-access options: a relevant elearning course, a relevant activity, or a relevant in-app walkthrough. (The in-app walkthroughs are very popular!)
- Incorporated these options directly into the relevant areas of the software, as well as a focused onboarding page in the learning management system, further adding links to the program into relevant courses.
Business Impact: 12-Month Review
The program initially cut churn by 42% in its first 90 days. A 12-month review of the Realm Inform program proved the strategy's long-term sustainability and deep user satisfaction:
↓ -52.7%
Churn (Accounts with Purchase in Last 12 Mos)
94.1%
CSAT on In-App Walkthroughs
↑ +78.3%
New Accounts Purchasing in Month One
Scaling the Framework: Realm Accounting Launch
Following the success of Inform, product leadership requested this framework be adapted for the Realm Accounting product. I overhauled six courses to include non-profit double-entry bookkeeping fundamentals for admins who aren't trained bookkeepers, worked with my developer to build a new Academy landing page, and deployed targeted in-app Pendo guides.
First 30 Days Impact (Launched July 2026):
↓ -71.3%
Support Tickets (Program Access)
↓ -22.9%
Support Tickets (Add/Edit Transactions)
↑ +106%
Users Starting to Add Transactions During First Month
Month 1 Pendo Activity: 1,321 In-App Guide Views | 2,551 Walkthrough Launches | +241% Increase in First Course Enrollments
Continuous Improvement (Lessons Learned)
Due to this momentum, I am currently architecting a third rollout for the Growth Method product. I am iterating on the learning experience for these programs by incorporating:
- Sharable Action Plans: Downloadable resources that managers can distribute internally to their teams.
- In-Product Strategy: Contextual onboarding tips delivered directly to new users at their exact moment of need.
View the Frameworks I Use
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