They say that you get to realize one's value after they leave you.
I am not an expert when it comes to relationships, but there is one thing I can tell you.
The total opposite applies to every product in the SaaS industry; they need to get you to realize their value BEFORE you churn.
Each team, from the customer success team to the product team, works hard to achieve this shared goal. However, no matter how different the actions they take while working towards reaching the intended result, ONE particular concept helps them all along the way: aha moment.
Aha moments are required for your users to recognize the value of your product in the shortest time.
Let's dig deeper into these moments and learn their definition, importance, current practices, formula, and place of use together.
What is an Aha Moment?
Aha moments occur when users understand the value of your product or service. During the processing, users come to have an emotional reaction due to the light bulb lighting up in their minds—which is related to the sudden insight they get regarding the product.
The nature of insight can be attributed to the operation of the product or the positioning of the product. For short, it stems from users' understanding of either the way the product works or the place they can put the product in their lives to benefit from it.
Most of the time, an aha moment (or eureka effect) comes about during the onboarding process as users get to know the product features for the first time and see how they can derive value from these features. However, it is possible for it to take place in another phase of the customer lifecycle.
Additionally, since it is an actor that leads to the activation point, which is a part of the product roadmap, it is safe to say that aha moments may differ from one user to another. This is where you can use user segments, as each segment may find the solution they are looking for in a different feature.
That is also why you should find the aha moments and serve them well enough to make the users appreciate the correlates of insight they get and start integrating the product with their daily life.
Keep in mind that it is not necessary to have ONLY ONE aha moment throughout the user journey. One way or another, each user is bound to have unique aha moments that will help them see the core value proposition of the product and improve different elements according to their intent at the beginning of the onboarding.
How are Aha Moments important for businesses?
As I also mentioned above, aha moments motivate users to activate and purchase your product, too. More users turning into customers means that the subscription rate will increase—which is one of the main objectives of people with a career in sales. However, this is not the end, as there is a sequence of key points here.
A high retention rate calls for a low churn rate as highly engaged customers do not quit using a product or service overnight without reason. Therefore, your customers will stick around as long as you display the aha moments in full and offer a successful customer experience.
Last but not least, all of the elements above will result in an increase in revenue, which is the end goal of every SaaS company out there.
5 Companies That Utilize Aha Moments for Success
You must figure out how a product or service can help you perfectly reach the sudden flash called the aha moment.
To have a better understanding of this concept, let's give some examples from the products that are a big part of our lives.
- The aha moment of Loom is recording videos of your screen and camera for the first time. Users of Loom will not derive any value from surfing the page; they need to shoot a video that will be shared with the team to realize how it could help them out in the long run.
- The aha moment of Semrush is obtaining the data you seek for the first time. Whether it is keywords for your article or gaining insight on the ranking, you will realize the core value once you easily reach the data on the all-in-one platform.
- The aha moment of Zoom is holding your first video meeting. Without going through this step, it would be really hard for users to see how it differs from the other web conferencing tools.
- The aha moment of Uber Eats is ordering, paying for, and picking up your food for the first time. Understanding how easy home delivery is what promotes the application, to begin with.
- The aha moment of Netflix is watching your first content on the platform. Users see the advanced features they can utilize on the interface when they start playing a movie.
How to Find Your Aha Moment in 3 Steps
The product managers may find it easy to identify the aha moments, but you have to make sure that your users find it convenient to pinpoint their sudden flash as well.
Here are the steps you have to follow to guide users to value discovery:
1- Delve into Product Analytics
To find out your aha moment(s), you need to have a detailed report on the activities regarding the user journey. The mentioned actions are divided into two: the ones that lead to retention and the ones that lead to churn.
The ones that lead to retention are the common activation points that occur during your users' initial experience. Observing these points is rather easy since users are more likely to become active after recognizing these points.
The ones that lead to churn are the common actions that are skipped during the user journey—make sure that you do not involve the ones that were a customer for a long time; focus on the ones that churned after using your product for a short time to obtain a more healthy data.
Another thing you have to do is monitor the customer success metrics, which will provide you with more information regarding the user journey. Fortunately, these metrics are the common ones you regularly track, such as conversion rate, renewal rate, and customer lifetime value (CLTV).
2- Make Use of User Feedback
The second step is collecting feedback from both your current and churned users/customers. What you need to ask depends on the recipient; the questions below could be a great start for you to see things from your retained users' point of view:
- What do you like the most about our product?
- What are the features you derive value from the most?
- When did you understand the value of our product?
- Why did you decide to become a customer?
- What made you choose us?
On the other hand, the questions below could help you pinpoint the pain points and the reasons that push users to churn:
- What was the reason you started using our product?
- Where did our product fail to meet your expectations?
- What could we have done to make you stay?
After collecting the data from both parties, you should pay attention to where they differ to see what went wrong for the users who churned. Afterward, you can make a fair observation of the user journey by comparing the data at hand.
3- Test Your Findings
During the data processing, you might reach several conclusions regarding the aha moments of your product. The last step requires you to try it all out.
The best way to test out the findings you have acquired is by designing original user onboarding processes according to the user segments.
By doing so, you will provide your users with an exclusive onboarding that includes and promotes aha moments via interactive guides, checklists, and in-app messages.
Remember that this process, especially the last step, could take some time since constant changes need to be made according to the results that you acquire from the users concerning aha moments.
Using Aha Moments
Aha moments come with many advantages; one of them is suitability for promotion. Therefore, relying on them to convey the value of your product to users should be a practice that your business adopts.
Here are a few methods you can use to push users to their aha moments in the shortest way possible:
1- Product Tours
Each product tour introduces new users to a product and helps them recognize their surroundings by providing them with useful guides—which can be any UX pattern that is suitable for the material that will be presented.
It might sound like a basic tour concerning the product, but it is a one-of-a-kind phase in which users interact with your product. Therefore, the content you prepare must direct them to take actions that will make them realize their aha moment in the end.
When creating a product tour, you must represent the value you offer for users to discover. This will guide them to their aha moment sooner or later. As a consequence, product tours make great devices that lead users to their eureka moment without frustrating them.
2- User Onboarding Checklists
User onboarding checklists are indispensable elements of the user onboarding process due to the support they provide. Additionally, checklists keep an eye on the progress of the users, which helps them track their assigned tasks without getting anxious.
The tasks assigned to users are of high importance because they are the leads that are integrated with aha moments most of the time. Ideally, the tasks on the checklist are used as a pawn that will get the users one step closer to having their aha moment. Once the users complete the tasks, they should be able to see the big picture and decide whether the product would help them fix the problem they have or not.
That is why the items on the checklist must be carefully selected to get the users one step closer to realizing their aha moment, especially before they churn due to the lack of functionality.
3- Customer Support
You might be confused to see customer support on the list; however, it offers great assistance on the way to revealing the aha moments of users. How customer support manages to accomplish this is by helping out the users.
When a question forms in a user's mind, it is customer support's duty to answer them. However, this is not the only element that allows shaping aha moments for users. Customer support constantly listening to users' ideas and concerns regarding the product helps them adjust the system of the product according to the needs and expectations of the users.
Consequently, the product gains more satisfied users who recognize their aha moment, thanks to the help of customer support.
Conclusion
There are many turning points in the SaaS industry—one of them being the aha moment.
What makes the aha moment a vital matter for the product is the ability to retain users and customers. The closer users are to finding their aha moment, the more loyal they will be to your product.
This will not only reduce churn but also increase retention and revenue.
For this reason, you must specify the aha moment and share it with users so that they can grasp the value they can get out of your product with ease.
