Overview
This article explains how Reseller Adopt End Users (AEU) can optimize workflows and internal processes by using an analytics-first approach and getting rid of the guesswork.
Scenario
You’re thinking of deploying an in-app guide in the application to help your users file expense reports correctly, but you don’t want to send it out to the entire user base (most of whom file correctly). Maybe you’re not sure at which point(s) in the process to best place the guidance. What’s more, you know there are many different ways to successfully file an expense report (e.g., uploading receipts via the app, scanning one’s credit card and having expenses from it auto-uploaded, etc.) and you don’t want to be overly prescriptive and force people to follow only one of them. You just need to make sure they don’t forget a few critical steps or fall into common “error flows.”
By following the below recipe using an analytics-first platform approach, you will be able to give process owners meaningful answers to key questions:
- What’s the overall time it takes to complete my specified workflow?
- What’s the average time between individual steps?
- Are users completing the process in the most efficient way? If not, what additional or alternate steps are they taking?
- What are users doing before and after the process?
- Are users dropping off to seek assistance before resuming the workflow? If so, at what point?
Steps:
- Create A Workflow
- Review Top Journeys Metrics
- Build A Guide
- Segment Guide by Workflow Completion + Publish
- Measure Success - Review + Iterate
Create A Workflow
- Create a Workflow with a fixed start and completion step around the your process and see all the steps users are taking in between.
- Review the Workflow metrics to understand the completion and attempt rates of your specified process or "happy path." Workflows will also give you the median time it took to complete the process - this is a great place to capture baseline metrics.
By default, the Home tab of your Workflow will show the Workflow Attempts metrics.
You can also click the dropdown to change to Visitor Completion to see percentages of Users that completed, didn't complete, or never started the process.
Review Top Journeys Metrics
- From the Workflows Home tab, you'll navigate to the Journeys tab. Here, you’ll immediately have a view into the quickest path users are taking (which path has the shortest time to completion), which path is the most common, and which has the fewest steps. You can also see how long it takes to complete each step and at what point in the process people are seeking help.
- Journeys are more exploratory and can help you identify problem areas and friction points by learning what your users are actually doing in the process. Not only does this shine a light on where to best place a guide for assistance, it also can help inform the support content itself. You may, for example, discover what is clearly the optimal completion path for users, and leverage insights about what sets that path apart to guide the segment of users who need assistance.
We will always default to the Top Journeys tab. Here you can see the Most Common, Fewest Steps, and Quickest Journeys from your starting to ending point.
To explore further, you can switch to the the All Journeys tab where you can sort by Frequency, Completion Time, or Number of Steps.
If there is a critical middle step to your process that you weren't able to specify in the Workflows setup (as you can only enter a starting and ending point), you can utilize the Must Include filter. To designate that middle step, you can either use the Must Include dropdown under the segment and date filters, or hover over a step in the Journeys for Completed Workflows diagram and select the star icon.
Note: Journeys will only shows data for Users that completed the workflow.
Build A Guide
Now that Journeys has helped you identify the Most Common, Fewest Steps, and Quickest ways to achieve workflow completion, you need to determine what the "happy path" for your users looks like, and build a guide to walk them through those specific steps.
If users are far off your "happy path", you may need a full multi-step walkthrough to show them the entire process. If they are simply struggling to complete the final one or two steps, maybe a single tooltip will do the trick.
Tip: Keep this guide in draft mode! You'll want to make sure to segment based on the next step before you publish.
Segment Guide By Workflow Completion + Publish
Once your guide is built and in draft mode, navigate back to your Workflow and create a Segment by Workflow Completion Status.
1. Select + Create Segment in the top-right of the workflow analytics page.
2. Give your segment a name.
3. Choose Workflow Progress from the first dropdown menu.
4. Choose your workflow from the second dropdown menu. The default selection is the name of the workflow you opened to create this segment.
5. Choose Complete, Incomplete, or Not Started from the third dropdown menu.
6. Choose the date range. The default is the same as the global date range for the workflow. For example, if the workflow's global date range is set to "Last 30 days", the date range in the segment for the workflow is automatically "within last" plus "30" plus "days".
7. Select Save Segment.
Tip: If your guide is a full walkthrough of the process, your segment could target both users that haven't completed or even started the process.
Measure Success - Review + Iterate
After deploying your guide to your intended segment, validate it's effectiveness. Return to the second chart in your Workflow to gauge if the number of Completed workflows has increased based on guide views. Select the guide you want to evaluate from the dropdown menu in the top-right of the second chart, ensuring that the date range for the chart includes the publication date for the guide.
If you are not seeing an increase in process completion, review your Guide metrics - do you need to tweak the guide itself? Are there too many steps of the guide? Are users actually getting to the final step of the guide that coincides with the final step of the process? Review and iterate on your guide here until you see your desired workflow completions rate increase.