Time to value shows you how long it takes customers to find value in your service. This moment is often described as the AHA moment and decides whether your customers engage further or churn. The AHA moment is an emotional event that should happen early in the customer journey. Keep in mind that the longer your time to value is, the more likely it is that people will churn.

To find your services’ AHA moment, first, reach out to your top customers and ask what is most valuable to them. However, each persona will likely have an individual journey to their own AHA moment.

After evaluating customer feedback, create a list of behaviors that correlate with customer retention. Next, use this list to define your activation metrics. These metrics are individual and vary from service to service. Examples for activation metrics are “10 app usages per month” or “adding two friends within the first week.”

Ask yourself if customers who regularly use your service
• finish the onboarding process?
• interact with the core feature?
• connect with other customers?

Once you complement your customer feedback with your analytics data, it should be clear where people find value in your service. Then think about how you can create a frictionless experience to get people to discover the AHA moment as fast as possible. One of the best methods to bring customers quickly to the AHA moment is onboarding.

• Reduce any friction and unnecessary steps to the AHA moment
• Use meaningful onboarding
• Use valuable e-mails or SMS to guide customers to the AHA moment
• Personalize the customer’s experience