How I Pendo Adoption

Helping users help themselves

See how RingCentral’s marketing team increased app retention by 25% by creating an on-demand resource hub and building in-app tours to educate users on key features

Problem

After creating welcome guides and tooltips for new users, RingCentral’s marketing team examined product usage data in Pendo and found that users who interact with the guides have higher retention rates. This signaled the need to create more (and more convenient) touch points where users could learn about RingCentral’s products and features.

Pendo'ing it

RingCentral started using the Pendo Resource Center, leveraging it as a proof of concept to eventually build their own self-service resource hub into their application. Their resource center now houses support articles, a chatbot, search functionality, and a library of Pendo in-app walkthroughs.

Payoff

In addition to seeing higher retention, DAU/MAU, and feature adoption for users who view their Pendo welcome guides, RingCentral found that users who access their resource center at least twice per month have a 25% increase in app retention, compared to those who don’t use the resource center.

Jean Collings

Director of lifecycle marketing

RingCentral

RingCentral provides businesses with cloud-based unified communications and collaboration solutions—including message, video, phone, and contact center services.

By the numbers

25%

increase in app retention

Pendo enables us as marketers to directly communicate with our users within the product. To me, Pendo’ing means guiding customers through how to use certain features in order to increase adoption and create a better user experience.

In-app is the new email

For marketing teams that embrace product-led strategies, the product becomes the ultimate channel for driving adoption and retention. Pendo helps support these efforts every step of the way.

RingCentral’s marketing team was already leveraging Pendo to create welcome guides and tooltips that appeared when new users logged into the platform for the first time or if they hadn’t yet utilized certain features. The in-app guides highlighted key “sticky behavior” features that the team identified as correlating with long-term usage and retention. 

After seeing success with these guides, RingCentral wanted to add an element of self service to the experience. “Having [the guides] show up automatically is great, but we also wanted to create some sort of inbox where users could go back and look at these in-app tours again on their own,” explained Jean Collings, director of lifecycle marketing at RingCentral.

Putting on-demand on the table

The RingCentral team decided to use the Resource Center in Pendo to create several modules that included their welcome guides, in-app tours, and videos. And this self-service strategy proved successful. “We noticed that users who interacted with the Resource Center had increased app retention over time compared to those who didn’t use the Resource Center,” said Collings. 

RingCentral’s product team took notice of this success, and suggested they build a similar capability into their own product. Their resource center now houses support articles, a chatbot, search functionality, and all of their Pendo in-app walkthroughs. “Now, users have a place to go back to if they want to look at any of our in-app tours on their own time,” Collings noted.

RingCentral’s Pendo in-app guides exist in two key areas of their resource center. First, in the “Discover” area, where new features are highlighted on a monthly basis. Each feature spotlight links out to a guide with either a video, GIF, or full walkthrough within the app. And second, in the “Help” area, where users can find in-app tours for things they don’t know how to do or need a refresher on. For example, if users don’t know how to start meetings from the video tab, they can click into that tour for a guided walkthrough. Collings added, “What’s really good about this is I was able to create a deep link within the ‘Next’ button, so it’ll force users into the video tab and then continue the in-app tour as they walk through the steps.”

Whenever RingCentral creates guides in Pendo, they always establish a control group so they’re able to measure DAU/MAU, feature adoption, and retention. Collings shared, “99.9% of the time, we see an increase in those three metrics for users who see our guides versus the control group.” 

RingCentral also found that users who access their resource center at least twice in one month have an increased app retention of 25%, compared to those who don’t use the resource center at all. “Clearly, the things that are in the resource center are helping users and really making an impact on their experience overall,” said Collings.

Another added bonus is that, with Pendo, the RingCentral team can track which in-app guides are being clicked on the most—potentially signaling the need for additional education or tweaks to the product itself. “It gives us the information and signals of what our users really care about, and allows us to create a better experience either using Pendo or through product development,” Collings added.

Pro tips

  • As a marketer using Pendo, try to stay closely aligned with your product team to ensure you’re creating the best possible experience for customers
  • When creating in-app guides in Pendo, A/B test things like the copy, imagery, and when the guide appears—then turn to the data to see how your tests are performing
  • In addition to automatic welcome guides, create on-demand walkthroughs that users can access when they need help with a particular feature or product area