Project Overview

Clio offers a comprehensive suite of cloud-based solutions designed to improve the productivity and efficiency of law firms and legal professionals. Lawyaw is the legal document automation software within Clio suite that helps attorneys save time by automating their document creation and management processes.

Upon joining the Lawyaw team at Clio, I discovered their slow, error-prone, and inefficient in-person onboarding process which incurred a high customer acquisition cost of over $200 per customer. Furthermore, customers felt overwhelmed and rushed during these in-person sessions, struggled to understand product features, and often sought help from customer support, leading to some churning their subscription.

As a Product Manager, I successfully oversaw the development and launch of an intuitive self-serve onboarding process for the Lawyaw product. As a result of this initiative, we were able to reduce customer acquisition costs by 70% and improve overall customer satisfaction by 62%.

...

Customer Research

To begin the project, I held several meetings with our onboarding team as well as our leadership to gain a deeper understanding of our current onboarding process and challenges our team was facing, as well as to learn more about our customers and their backgrounds. I then reviewed feedback and comments from customers about their existing in-person onboarding experiences. Subsequently, I conducted 11 remote interviews with customers who underwent Lawyaw's onboarding process in the previous two months. The goal was to identify any pain points or challenges that emerged during the in-person onboarding process for different customer segments.

Customer Segmentation

Based on our initial meetings, customer interviews, and their interaction logs, we have categorized our customers into two primary segments.

Understanding the current onboarding process and Clio's team challenges

After talking to our onboarding and leadership teams, I was able to better visualize the process and understand our customers' journey today. Below, I visualized the overal picture of our customers' journey today.

Pain points of Clio's internal teams

I first idenitfied the main challenges that our onboarding team is currently facing:

• 01. Time-consuming process: The team has raised concerns about in-person onboarding being too time-consuming, which can impact their productivity.
• 02. High cost: Leadership has expressed concerns about the cost of in-person onboarding being too expensive.
• 03. Low customer engagement: The team has raised concerns about keeping attorneys engaged for the full 45 minutes during the onboarding process, which can impact their understanding and retention of critical information.

Understanding the customers pain points duirng in-person onboarding

I conducted remote interviews with recent customers to understand challenges with our existing onboarding process. I then used an affinity diagram to present my findings to various stakeholders throughout the study and break down a complex onboarding issue we were experiencing in our onboarding process into more manageable categories.

• 

Pain points of Clio's customers

I also idenitfied the main challenges that our customers are currently facing:

• 01. Lengthy process: Our onboarding process is lengthy and customers feel rushed and overwhelmed.
• 02. Scatter and inconsistent training materials: Our training materials are scattered and inconsistent, making it difficult for users to locate and access them efficiently.
• 03. Self-served onboarding process: Customers prefer going through onboarding process at their own pace.

...

User Persona

To gain a deeper understanding of our target audience's goals, behaviors, motivations, pain points, and preferences, I created multiple user personas for different customer segments. These personas helped the team to design a feature that meet users' needs, expectations, and desires. User personas also help me to communicate with stakeholders by providing a shared understanding of the users we are designing for.

• 

• 

...

Customer Journey Map

I also visualized customer's journey map to help the team make informed decisions about how to optimize the customer's experience and increase customer satisfaction.

...

Defining and prioritizing product requirements

By gathering input from stakeholders and customers, analyzing impact and implementation time, and prioritizing based on these factors, I had multiple meetings with our cross-functional team to identify the most important features and prioritize them.

General product requirements

Guideline	Impact	Effort	Priority
To enhance clarity and accessibility, consolidate all training materials into a centralized repository and arrange them in a comprehensible manner.	Very high	Medium	P0
Design a self-serve onboarding experience and eliminate unnecessary in-person procedures from the process.	Very high	Hard	P0
Develop in-app tactics to remind customers of their upcoming free trial expiration date and provide them with the option to upgrade their subscription.	Very High	Medium	P0
Create in-app strategies (e.g., onboarding tooltips) to guide customers through different product components and features.	Very high	Hard	P0
Create methods for displaying customers' progress, achievements, and next steps throughout the onboarding process.	High	Hard	P1
Allow users to complete the onboarding process at their own pace, with the option to skip or revisit steps if needed to avoid feeling rushed or overwhelmed.	High	Medium	P1
Develop strategies for obtaining customer feedback after they finish the onboarding process.	Medium	Easy	P2

Technical product requirements

Guideline	Impact	Effort	Priority
Our system should maintain a record of users' trial status, such as the number of days remaining until their account expires.	Very High	Easy	P0
Each email address can only be used once to create an account.	Very high	Easy	P0
We should collect a variety of metrics such as sign-up/sign-in data, session details, time spent on pages, clickstream logs, bounce rates, user demographics, conversion and cancellation rates, among others.	Very high	Medium	P0
It is necessary to enable the Single Sign-On (SSO) sign-up process.	High	Medium	P1
After the expiration of the customers' free trial period, when they log in again, they should be automatically redirected to the upgrade form.	High	Hard	P1

...

User Stories & Acceptance Criteria

User Story	Acceptance Criteria
Our training materials are scattered and inconsistent, users need to locate and access training materials easier.	01. To enhance clarity and accessibility, consolidate all training materials into a centralized repository and arrange them in a comprehensible manner. 02. Ensureerify that all training materials meet specific standards for both audio and visual components.
Our customers have challenges in discovering different features and components in our product.	01. Create in-app strategies (e.g., onboarding tooltips) to guide customers through different product components and features. 02. Provide a video in our training material that gives an overview of all the features in our product.
Customers prefer going through onboarding process at their own pace.	01. Offer users the option of a self-serve onboarding experience, instead of requiring an in-person one. 02. Allow users to complete the onboarding process at their own pace, with the option to skip or revisit steps if needed to avoid feeling rushed or overwhelmed.
Customers may feel uncertain while learning the product, as they may not be sure if they have the necessary knowledge to effectively accomplish their tasks.	01. Provide onboarding checklist for displaying customers' progress, achievements, and next steps throughout the onboarding process.

...

Risks and Mitigation

Risks	Mitigation
Customers don't receive confirmation email right after signing up for the product.	01. Train customer support team to immediately take the required steps to verify the customers. 02. Implement email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to verify that emails are actually coming from their servers and not from spammers. 03. Use a clear and recognizable sender name and email address to make sure customers open and engage with emails.
Less tech-savvy customers are struggling to complete the self-serve onboarding process.	01. Provide customers with the option to speak with a onboarding representative if they need help.
Customers might just skip through the onboarding training without really learning the product.	01. After completing the onboarding training, offer customers a quiz or assessment to test their understanding of the product. If they don't pass offer them to talk to the onboarding team if they need help. 02. If customers have not engaged with the product within 7 days of completing the training, proactively reach out to offer assistance.
Customers not upgrading to the paying customers after their trial session.	01. Make sure that the upgrade process is easy and straightforward. 02. After the trial session, follow up with customers to remind them of the benefits of upgrading to a paid plan. Provide additional information or resources to help them make an informed decision.
Running over budget due to unforseen expenses or poor cost estimates.	01. Create buffer in financial planning. 02. Prioritize the most essential features to ensure that resources are allocated appropriately.
Failing to generate revenue due to poor marketing or business decisions.	01. Regularly conduct market researcht to analyze the market interest in adopting our technology. 02. Be ready to change product strategy or customer segment if needed.

...

Product Launch

Dogfooding

To ensure that our final product meets the highest quality standards and satisfies the needs of our target audience, I facilitated a dogfooding session where every team member was asked to test the new onboarding process for three days. Moreover, to encourage thorough testing and bug reporting, I introduced a prize for the team member who identified the maximum number of unique bugs and issues.

This strategy served two crucial purposes: 1) enabling team members to gain hands-on experience with the new feature and 2)providing valuable feedback and insights into potential issues or bugs, which allowed for proactive resolution before launch.

Product Soft Launch

To ensure that our new onboarding process was effective and ready for a wider release, we conducted a trial with 10 new customers, gathering feedback and testing the product. After the onboarding process, I interviewed each of these customers for 15 minutes to collect their feedback on the experience. Additionally, I checked to ensure that the data we collected during the trial was properly stored in our databases. This allowed us to evaluate the success of the new process and make any necessary adjustments before rolling it out to a larger audience.

• 01. Decrease free trial period to increase sense of urgency: By decreasing the duration of our free trial period, we can instill a sense of urgency in potential customers and motivate them to take action sooner, resulting in a higher conversion rate and ultimately boosting our revenue.
• 02. Provide in-person consultation on demand: A couple of customers expressed concerns about eliminating in-person training altogether. Offering a 30-minute consultation service (if needed) to customers concerned about eliminating in-person training can address their roadblocks and increase satisfaction, while also boosting our conversion rate.
• 03. Enable flexible trial period: Initially, we had a fixed free trial period of 14 days, but some customers requested an extension due to time constraints preventing them from reviewing all materials in that timeframe. To address this feedback, we provided the sales team with the option to extend the trial session for engaged customers who show a high potential for conversion. By offering this flexibility, we can accommodate the needs of our customers and improve our chances of converting them into paying customers.

Product Design and Flow

• 

• 

...

Tracking product success

On June 7, 2021, we launched our new onboarding process. To gauge the effectiveness of this new feature, we implemented a variety of strategies and utilized different methods to track its success:

• 01. Mixpanel data visualizations: I used the Mixpanel tool to visualize various metrics over time, including cancellation rate, bounce rate, the quantity of users who requested 1-1 training, and other relevant data points.
• 02. Fullstory sessions: I used the FullStory tool to analyze user interactions and identify pain points by observing their behaviors while going through the onboarding process.
• 03. Survey: Users were prompted to complete a satisfaction survey to gauge their satisfaction level with their onboarding experience.

• 

...

Achievements and Key Takeaways

• 01. We exceeded our initial objective of reducing the cost of onboarding new customers by 40%, achieving an outstanding 70% decrease. A vast majority of our customers were able to initiate the use of our product without requiring in-person assistance.
• 02. Our original goal was to reduce the churn rate by 30%, however, we fell short of this target, achieving only a 10% decrease in the churn rate.
• 03. Out of the customers who completed our onboarding process, 62% reported being satisfied or very satisfied with the self-serve onboarding process.
• 04. Effective communication is crucial in cross-functional projects. Product managers must prioritize clear collaboration between teams to ensure everyone understands the goals and their roles.
• 05. Flexibility is key in cross-functional projects. Product managers should be adaptable, open to feedback, and willing to pivot the project to align with goals while navigating challenges.