Contextual

Category: context

  • The Product Knowledge Base is dead, it just hasn’t stopped moving yet

    The Product Knowledge Base is dead, it just hasn’t stopped moving yet

    The Product Knowledge Base is dead, it just hasn’t stopped moving yet

    61% prefer to just Google it

    How an App’s customers search for help has rapidly changed – not merely influenced by an “instant gratification” culture (e.g chatbots) but also the user’s context (e.g inApp) and the efficacy of product knowledge bases. 

    A recent Salesforce Survey on customer service and support reveals shifting customer service standards amid COVID-19. The data shows that thirty percent of Americans now contact customer service more than they have in the past. Millennials have ramped up interactions the most (46%) compared to Gen-Zers (42%) and baby boomers (11%).

    The Salesforce data clearly shows that online search is the preferred channel for customer support which is not entirely surprising as technology providers have financial interest in encouraging their customers to self-service support. In their quest  to reduce their support costs, product knowledge bases have increasingly become the only support resource offered by providers.

    The generational cohort preferences also bear out considering Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the USA’s largest living adult generation, according to population estimates from the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data available at the time this article was written.

    But if you have never wondered about the general efficacy of Product Knowledge Bases then you might not be surprised to learn that you may also belong to a large cohort of users that instinctively reach for Google rather than apply their research skills to get support from knowledge base resources provided by the product they are using.

    We at Contextual did wander so we ran a poll using LinkedIn’s Poll feature to find out.  The first question was framed;

    How often do you reach for product knowledge base?

    Our follow-up survey was; 

    When using a Product Knowledge Base how often do you get the answer you need the first time?

    On face value it would be tempting to draw the conclusion that product knowledge bases only have a 20% efficacy rate therefore 86% of users don’t use them. However there is a little more to unpick here.

    What we found interesting about the results was the responses seemed to be  influenced by the roles of the respondents.  For example respondents answering the first survey “it’s my go to resource” 14%  and “Often” 20% in the second survey were mostly involved in highly technical roles such as Software Developer, Product Manager and QA.   

    Respondents who answered the first survey “I just Google it” 61% and “Sometimes” 54% in the second survey also had representation from Software Developers and Product Managers but then also included Product Analysts, Senior Managers, Founders, CEO and Sales Professionals.

    Respondents answering the first survey “Sometimes” 14% and The second Second survey “Rarely” 21% had similar role representations but tended to lean more towards Marketing and Managers.

    What the results “go to resource” 14%  and “Often” 20% results might suggest is that those who are involved in highly technical roles like Software Developers and  Product Managers are more likely using advanced technical products and are better skilled at formulating questions to get the answers they need.  Equally the products they use by virtue of their complexity may have better quality knowledge base resources. This theory was also reflected in the comments section of the survey post.  

    What might be behind the results  “I just Google it” 61% and “Sometimes” 54% is that the roles in that group are more likely to be using productivity tools which are not as complex as the tools used by software developers and don’t have the same level of data quality in their knowledge base.  The range of job roles in this group might also not apply the same level of rigor in their search queries as the previous group.  Comments by respondents indicated that the knowledge base was their first port of call but the answers were often not available.  The “I just Google it” user behavior here seems to be influenced by user experience.  If users don’t get the answer they need the first time often enough they may be more likely to ditch using product knowledge base resources over time and take their chances with Google instead.

    Knowledge Base is a pathway to Digital Distraction

     

     

    If your users are having to leave your application to get help then you are going to risk exposing them to digital distraction.  We have all been there,  you pause a task to get a piece of information to support what you are doing right now and BAM!  you are confronted with a myriad of distractions ranging from a new email demanding your immediate response to any number of reminders of competing priorities.  Studies have shown that digital distraction has a massive impact on productivity with workers talking on average 25 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption.  Bringing focus to mobile users where the digital distraction rate is higher and the screen real estate is limited so users have no option but to go outside to get help and you have an even greater challenge.   If a mobile user has to leave your app to get help before they achieve Activation (In the Pirate Metrics model of Acquisition to Revenue) you be unwittingly helping them become a churn statistic.

    The Future of Help is not self service

    The answer to this problem is giving your users the help they need within the mobile application rather than sending them outside the app and then making them do the work i.e. search.  Offering users an in-app user onboarding walkthrough. The support content can then easily be repurposed as an in-app mobile contextual tooltip or user guide.  Rather than send a user to a website to get an answer, which is an awkward experience especially on a mobile app, you can offer an in-app Contextual FAQ. 

    Mobile User Onboarding Guide Example

    This strategy provides product managers, designers and customer success professionals the opportunity to make the in-app support experience contextual so the in-app mobile tooltip or user guide provides the right answer to the right user at the right time in their user journey.  The payoff is self-evident to those whose roles and success are defined by product adoption metrics.

    If you are a product manager, a UX/UI designer, a growth marketer or a mobile app developer then you already know that producing a user engagement strategy with mobile in-app user guides, tours, walkthroughs or tooltips like the ones shown in these examples is no walk in the park.  Without a no-code tool like Contextual you are limited to hard coding and competing for development resources dedicated to all the features in your product  roadmap.  You will need to incorporate Onboarding tours and Guides and mobile app walkthroughs in your sprints and App Store Google Play releases,  it’s a significant increase in overhead.  This is why introducing an off the shelf, no-code, “engagement layer” product is a winning strategy.

    Besides allowing you to iterate much faster than a traditional software sprint, the beauty of the engagement layer is that it allows you to provide contextual onboarding, contextual tooltips and contextual guides, what this means is providing the right information to the right user at the right time.

    What the survey results do is put a big question mark over the strategy of relying on a product knowledge base to service your customers.The survey results reflect what most know to be true, knowledge base resources fall well short of satisfying customer service and support needs. The future of customer support isn’t self-serve, it’s “in-app” and it’s contextual.

  • For mobile user onboarding. Does the world really love Android more than Apple?

    For mobile user onboarding. Does the world really love Android more than Apple?

    Smartphone manufacturers are clearly the earliest proponents of sophisticated digital product adoption techniques like mobile user onboarding flows and product walkthroughs but how are they faring in their global battle for hearts and minds? 

    A report by Electronics Hub in 2021 showed that out of 142 countries, 74 prefer Android over Apple 65 with Belarus, Fiji and Peru showing a draw.  The survey methodology described in the report was based on sentiment analysis of over 347,000 tweets.

     

    What was remarkable about the survey is that North America overwhelmingly prefers Android (yep you read that right) over Apple with Android averaging 32, over Apple 19 in terms of positive sentiment.  Curiously Poland emerged as the world’s number 1 Android hater with 34% of tweets averaging negative.  Latvia ranked as the world’s number one Apple hater with 35% tweets about Apple averaging negative.

     

    Whatever religious standing consumers hold over either platform the sentiment doesn’t stack up when it comes to B2B and B2B2C mobile apps.  A tally of Apple and Android SDKs for three of the most popular analytics firms Segment, Amplitude and Mixpanel tell a very different story. A sample of Business and Finance apps using SDKs for the aforementioned analytics firms reveal Apple as the clear front runner with almost double the number of SDKs over Android.

     

    Love or hate when it comes to the question of how users feel the apps they use, analytics will provide some insight however they don’t provide any tools enabling quick response to change or influence user behaviour.   App developers are largely limited to hard coding which extends to any user engagement strategies like mobile app user onboarding tours, product walkthroughs, contextual mobile tooltips, in-app FAQ’s and user surveys.  Darryl Goede, CEO and founder of Sparkbox knows first hand how long and painful software development can be, however being able to use a low-code user engagement platform like Contextual allows his team to quickly respond to changes in user behaviour and maintain the love of Spark Pico users

     

    React Native shares the love!. At Contextual we are noticing emerging B2B apps are trending towards Android particularly in Asia and South America however what we are also seeing is a preference for React Native for the development of both Android and IOS business apps.  This is great news for Product Teams looking to accelerate their apps across both iOS and Android platforms.  The good news is Contextual provides a simple easy to implement solution for creating and targeting mobile and web application user onboarding guides and walkthroughs and in-app contextual tooltips, FAQs and user surveys across each operating system.

  • Forget Content Marketing. Context Marketing Has Arrived!

    Forget Content Marketing. Context Marketing Has Arrived!

    By now you are overwhelmed by the daily volume of blog post notifications, newsletters, and relentless social posts on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

     

    A daily tsunami of content marketing fills our inboxes powered by platforms automating: cold-email, drip email and newsletters. Product-led companies use email as low-hanging fruit. The problem is as McLuhan said: “the medium is the message“*.

     

    Your Content Marketing  competes for your user’s inbox attention along with: other SaaS/App/PLG products, marketing companies, e-commerce platforms and plain-old-spammers.  I’ve even noticed one smart startup only emails on Saturday (no weekend rest for you dear reader!)

     

    Your Content Marketing might be well-targeted, but McLuhan tells us the user will just see it as more junk mail. Add to that floods of App push notifications, social media posts, PR strategies, inbound marketing etc. 

     

    The user is fatigued.

     

    Content marketing** in an internet (SaaS/Mobile App) product was popularised by one of the most successful SaaS companies, HubSpot.

    A Brief Description of HubSpot

    HubSpot’s slogan reads: Helping millions grow better. 
    When the company started out in 2004, they were considered trendsetters from the get-go. HubSpot was the first one to recognize that the disruptive marketing strategies of those days were outdated and didn’t seem to work anymore. 
    Hubspot created inbound marketing  – this focuses on offering help to users and clients instead of interrupting and harassing them with advertisements and solely sale-oriented strategies. 
    HubSpot’s strategies attempt effective content marketing, to help the user solve their problem they indicated they had.

    The only problem is:

    1. a) not all leads are qualified
    2. b) the granularity of audience segmentation is rarely nuanced.
    3. c) it often has no way to update based on a user’s journey. (similar to when you still see ads after you bought a product!)

    If Content (inbound) Marketing is perceived by the recipient (not you as the sender) as spam, then we should all stop spamming right? ????
    Well, no….Content/Inbound is a valuable component of bringing the user back into the app – so lets just get better at segmentation.

    From Content to Context

    Product Led Growth is about making your software at the center of the users happiness (and buying) journey.

    Context marketing is the conscious recognition of the 80:20 rule:

    1. a) new user acquisition is costly – 80%
    2. b) existing user retention (if you have a product that solves the user’s JTBD) costs 20%.  Retention is the most effective spend you can make.
    3. c) your App is a Context marketing platform.

    Like Content Marketing, we aim to help and educate the user – but with Context:

    1. a) Your UX and the customers data 
    2. b) the timing of the user journey is available to you. 

    Being contextual is critical when it comes to user journey and experience. The key point here is to be there for the right person, at the right time, in order to deliver the right content. 

    Product-led companies should deliver (or allow self-service) targeted helpful InApp content to their users; then user engagement deepens and user happiness increases.

    Tools, such as Contextual, can simplify parts of the user journey: such as onboarding or feedback. User journey data also helps with identify the best time to trigger availability of specific and unique content based on the user experience.

    Credit: thewayofdamasio.com

    The Importance of Context Marketing

    Context matters. But why? 

     

    Because of the 80:20 rule discussed earlier, we argue that Product Managers and inApp Growth teams are significantly better contributors to company revenue than acquisition personnel!

     

    As mentioned earlier, timing is one of the defining elements of context marketing. With proper timing, product-led companies can easily deliver useful, helpful content that adds to the user experience and boosts user engagement.

     

    But there are other reasons why context is important. 

     

    Let’s consider Dave McClure’s AARRR! Pirate Metrics through the lens of content and context marketing. McClure’s Pirate Metric is a simple tool created to help with product and business growth by analyzing five concepts, as follows:

    • Acquisition
    • Activation
    • Retention
    • Referral
    • Revenue

     

    The five parts of this model each represent a tactic that, once focused on, can help with product adoption and user retention.

    Does Context Matter?

    Based on this model, content marketing responds to Acquisition. Content (or inbound) represents the channel through which potential users get to know your product and your company. They might hear about you through SEO, social media, content creators, and so on. However, this step alone might not be enough to get to Activation, no matter how diversified your content marketing is.

     

    To get to the next step, you need context. Activation is about a potential user familiarizing themselves with your app or product. For this, you need to be more specific with your marketing by finding a niche that resonates with the potential client. Optimization leads to product adoption and to Retention. 

     

    Just like Activation, according to the Pirate Metrics, Retention is also context-dependent. Through context marketing, customers can better understand the benefits your app brings to their workflow and their life. At this stage, the key focus for product-led companies should be reducing user churn by optimizing the content each user sees, be that through email or in-app notifications. Style the content to the user’s needs to make them feel heard and validate their needs.

     

    Referral represents the likelihood of your users sharing their thoughts about your product with their friends. Think of it as the equivalent of the NPS survey’s question: “How likely are you to recommend this product to a friend?” Happy users lead to more referrals. How to make your users happy? Pay attention to context.

     

    Revenue is the sum of the success of the previous four concepts. It grows exponentially with each happy user. 

    We can see that the majority of these concepts are greatly influenced by context marketing vs. content marketing. Optimizing your marketing strategy to be useful and helpful for your users results in happier people who are more likely to go through with product adoption and spread the word about your app. 

    It’s Time to Focus on Context Marketing

    But how do you do that, you might wonder. That’s simple. Use Contextu.al!

    An easy-to-use and helpful platform such as ours can simplify your life when it comes to context marketing. As our name suggests, we are all about context. 

    Contextu.al knows your users and helps them in their user journey to product adoption and retention by putting the most contextual content in front of them. With us, you can also measure the uplift or increased engagement by the user, to know if we helped them! 

    To get the best tips, notifications, and guides for your users, book a demo with us today at contextu.al!


    * The irony is not lost on us that some readers will have seen this from an email newsletter.

    ** Benjamin Franklin is apparently the first content marketer when he published “Poor Richard’s Almanack”

    *** Banner image credit: freepik.com