I did this exercise when Heap was rolling out it's product-led growth self-service motion for customers onboarding to the tool. I had just joined the team and one of the first tasks I was given was to map the entire customer journey and find the gaps. Of course when you ask people.. they ask for many different things - but you can't do everything at once, you need to prioritize.

We had two basic implementation types - teams with a data lead or data engineer and teams without it. In other words, teams where the Admin and the analyst would be the same person, and teams where they would be two different professionals.

When you're strapped for resources, and focusing on self-serve activation and onboarding - it's best to optimize by JTBD rather than a persona, or specific role and look at what all of them have in common, what is the minimum required to get to value that they all share. When you get to a point of diminishing returns, it makes sense to consider more customized, specific or niche optimizations.

This exercise helps to simplify and scope down initial optimization efforts, focusing on the largest segmentations first - meaning optimizations that will impact 90-100% of the users going through the self-serve Activation and Onboarding flows.

Although we had 4 different pricing tiers, multiple personas, and use cases, when it came to the initial self-serve experience and offer we went to market with - there we 2 relevant implementation types. Only one of them was able to offer a complete self-serve journey at the time.

This table shows that some of the personas share similar JTBDs and platform roles. This is an opportunity to experiment with merging self-serve onboarding enablement content and flows - for similar personas at once.

Some examples:
1. How to set up your account: relevant to PM with access to the production code, to one of the engineers he’s working with.
2. Different personas, same JTBD, critical for getting to value. Run your first query: relevant for PM, Marketer, Analyst (even UX Designer or Customer Success)
3. Create your first dashboard: relevant for ALL personas, and most platform roles

A third-party research firm had already developed these before I joined. But I think if you're a PM or PMM, you should be able to allocate a few days to research and come up with a similar list.

Self-serve content exists - but it's partial, there's room for investment there in the future.

The sources I used for this include existing Jobs to be Done (JTBD) research that the Product organization had commissioned from a third-party about six months ago. If you do not have access to that, you can use the knowledge and understanding you already have, or conduct a quick internal research, which you can find in my Technical Audience research artifact.

In addition to those sources, I also utilized more internal audience research (PMs, Marketers), internal go-to-market (GTM) resources (persona slides), and elaborated on the different personas and relevant value propositions.

If you do not have access to these sources, you can allocate a few days up to one week to gather the information as best you can from internal subject matter experts (SMEs), summarize and analyze it, and then proceed to this step.

ChatGPT helps find the different focal points and angles for preliminary research, then you can validate with additional qualitative and quantitative data.

ChatGPT prompt examples:
- What are the main responsibilities of X?
- What are common pain points for Y role or use case?
- What do Z role do day-to-day?
- Which techstack does an operational manager use?
- How is success measured for role A?

I created a similar table for new users in existing accounts

After doing this exercise, I was able to break this down into swimlanes. It also informed the marketing team and helped us craft messages around JTBD and pain points vs persona type (e.g., product manager). It helped us go broader and increase the TAM by going beyond certain titles and roles.

The "aha" moment was already defined by the Growth team as running the first query with your data.

It's important to remember that the Aha will change based on the role or the JTBD. I use it as a placeholder because it will change based on who we're targeting and what they're trying to accomplish.

Shelly Eisen-Livneh

I created this artifact when mapping the self-serve customer journey at Heap, looking for messaging and enablement gaps, as well as opportunities for initial onboarding customization.

This artifact was produced when I first mapped the self-serve customer journey at Heap in 2021

 and looked for messaging and enablement gaps, as well as opportunities for initial onboarding customization. 

The reason for going through this exercise and analysis

 was to find and prioritize low-hanging fruit around removing self-serve activation and adoption friction during the free trial.

This can be a helpful exercise to help you and your team prioritize optimization efforts for a horizontal platform - where there are dozens of potential use cases, personas, and value props. It was originally presented as a deck.

This exercise informed customer-facing onboarding content creation across teams for the following two quarters. From nurture emails, and in-app guides, to webinars, weekly workshops, and more.

1. Our Main Self-Serve Implementation Types

There is currently only one type of implementation that can be completed end-to-end, self-serve.

In the future, when we open more capabilities in free trial, we can pursue optimization for the additional use case, personas, and motions (specified to the right).

Recommendation: Focus on one implementation type first

I recommend we start by focusing on where we can make the most impact and gain learnings in the short-term first and can add to it incrementally over time.


research firm

partial

Sources: <Redacted>, <Redacted>, <Redacted> 

Generate new differentiating “how-to” content per JTBD.

 By generating this content, there is an opportunity to tap into several strategic initiatives - from Brand Awareness to Demand Gen to driving self-serve Activation. We can generate short and effective how-to content, emphasizing some of our unique capabilities - that unlock faster workflows and actionable or unknown insights.  We can repurpose this content across the customer journey - for continuity and reinforcement, or best practices of JTBD that are external to the product. 

This will require cross-functional alignment and collaboration 

across the Product, Marketing, Education, and Success teams.

3. Self-Serve Customer Journey Messaging Touch Points - 

Personas: Product, Marketing, Data Analytics

Self-Serve Onboarding Customization by JTBD at Heap

Overview

1. Our Main Self-Serve Implementation Types

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