In this episode of Direct with Corrina and Taylor, hosts Corrina Owens and Taylor Young sit down with Alfredo Salkeld, Brand Director at Sinch and former marketing lead at Simple Texting, to demystify the world of product-led growth and share actionable insights on building a customer-centric onboarding experience. Alfredo, drawing upon his experience at Simple Texting, emphasizes the importance of prioritizing user education and streamlining the onboarding process to drive product adoption.
Alfredo advocates for a balanced approach to personalization, cautioning against over-engineering onboarding flows based on industry or persona. Instead, he encourages focusing on the core jobs users aim to accomplish and designing the onboarding experience around those key actions. He highlights the importance of understanding that users have different learning styles and preferences. While some may appreciate step-by-step guidance, others prefer a more self-directed approach.
The conversation also underscores the power of leveraging user research and customer feedback. Alfredo shares his experience using session recording tools to uncover points of friction in the user experience and make data-informed decisions. He stresses that these insights should be used to continuously iterate and improve the onboarding process. Alfredo also emphasizes the critical role of collaboration between marketing and customer success teams, highlighting how a dedicated Slack channel helped Simple Texting align their messaging and ensure consistency across all customer touchpoints.
The episode concludes with Alfredo sharing his “OTTP” (Operation: Talk to the People) philosophy, emphasizing the importance of direct customer conversations to gain a deeper understanding of their needs and challenges. This customer-centric approach, he argues, is essential for building products and onboarding experiences that resonate with users and drive sustainable growth.
Featured Guest
Name: Alfredo Salkeld
What he does: Brand Director
Company: Sinch
Noteworthy: Alfredo was a Marketing Manager at Simple Texting before it was acquired by Sinch. In his spare time, he enjoys beekeeping.
Key Insights
Prioritize User Education for Product Adoption
Don’t assume users will instinctively understand your product’s value or how to navigate its features. Alfredo emphasizes the power of user education in driving product adoption. By providing clear, concise instructions and resources, you empower users to experience those “aha” moments and recognize the benefits of your product. Invest in in-app guidance, help centers, videos, and other formats that cater to different learning styles.
Talk to Your Customers!
Direct customer feedback is invaluable. Alfredo highlights the importance of regular conversations with your users to uncover pain points, understand their needs, and identify areas for improvement. This customer-centric approach ensures your product and onboarding process resonate with your target audience. It’s not just about gathering data, but building empathy and understanding.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify (Your Onboarding Process)
A complicated onboarding process can deter users before they experience the full value of your product. Alfredo stresses the need for streamlined onboarding, particularly for SMBs with limited time. Focus on guiding users through the essential steps to achieve quick wins, using checklists, clear calls to action, and by minimizing unnecessary steps. Remember, the goal is to get users to that “aha” moment as quickly as possible.
Episode Highlights
Personalization vs. Streamlined Onboarding
While personalization is often touted as a marketing must-have, Alfredo cautions against over-engineering it, particularly in the onboarding process. He shares his experience of creating overly complex, industry-specific onboarding flows that became difficult to manage and maintain. Instead, he advocates for focusing on the core jobs users want to accomplish and streamlining the onboarding experience around those core actions.
“The key was to zoom out and think about what are the jobs to be done in a generic sense. Ultimately, it came down to two things. Users just wanted to send texts to a large group of people, or they wanted to have back-and-forth conversations via text. Those were the two things.”
The Power of “Passive” User Education
Recognizing that users learn in different ways, Alfredo emphasizes the importance of providing multiple avenues for user education within a product. While some users appreciate step-by-step guidance, others prefer a more self-directed approach. He suggests leveraging “empty states” within the app to offer contextual help and resources.
“Sometimes people feel like a guided tour is getting in the way of them using the product. And so they need a slightly more passive approach where it’s, ‘I want to be able to seek out the help center information at my own pace’, right? Don’t hold my hand the whole way.”
Leveraging User Research to Guide Your Efforts
Data-driven insights should inform your onboarding strategy. Alfredo discusses using session recording tools like Fullstory and Hotjar to understand user behavior, identify points of friction, and make data-informed decisions.
“I can’t remember what the tool was at the time, but we used either Fullstory or Hotjar, right? There’s lots of tools out there that you can use to watch users. Anyone who has watched those, you just want to yell at your screen and be like, ‘Ah, that’s so frustrating. Why aren’t you clicking there?’ And so that was a useful tool. You watch those, and you think, ‘How could I have made this step easier? Or how could I have eliminated steps from this process?’”
Building a Strong Relationship Between Marketing and Customer Success
Alfredo underscores the importance of close collaboration between marketing and customer success teams. He shares how a dedicated Slack channel for sharing customer insights helped Simple Texting align their messaging and ensure consistency between the marketing site, product experience, and customer support interactions.
“Lisa led the customer support team at Simple Texting, and that was invaluable because we really saw each other as partners. It was never, you know, ‘Why the hell does the marketing side say this when our product doesn’t do this,’ right? It was this back-and-forth relationship of, ‘Learn it’. She’s on the front lines, talking to customers, her team is talking to customers, and we had a Slack channel where they would feed those insights to us so that we could improve our content and improve our onboarding.”
