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Guide
A sample onboarding process for SaaS (day 0 through day 30)
Most SaaS onboarding fails not because teams don’t care, but because they never had a concrete process to begin with. They have pieces: a welcome email here, a product tour there, a check-in call for
Joris Machielse
Article
Agent-first SaaS: building with AI agents
Software used to be a tool you picked up and used. You opened it, clicked through it, figured it out. The software sat still. You did the work.
Joris Machielse
Guide
AI user onboarding: the complete guide
Most SaaS products lose the majority of their trial users before those users ever reach value. Not because the product is bad. Because the gap between “signed up” and “got it working” is wider than a
Joris Machielse
Guide
AI-guided user onboarding: what it is, how it works, and why it’s different
Most SaaS companies lose 40 to 60 percent of new users during the first onboarding session. <!-- Source: Custify, SaaS onboarding and retention statistics. 40-60% drop-off rate after signup --> Not be
Joris Machielse
Guide
Average churn rate for subscription services: 2025 benchmarks
If you run a subscription business, your churn rate is the single number that tells you how long your revenue base will last. Not acquisition, not activation, not NPS. Churn.
Joris Machielse
Guide
Companies with strong onboarding: 9 SaaS examples worth studying
Most SaaS products underinvest in onboarding, then wonder why users churn in the first 30 days. A handful of companies do the opposite, treating onboarding as a product problem rather than a support p
Joris Machielse
Guide
Customer onboarding checklist: every step, for every stage
Most companies treat customer onboarding as a handoff problem. Sales closes the deal, Customer Success picks up the baton, and someone cobbles together a project plan in a shared doc that nobody keeps
Joris Machielse
Guide
Customer retention examples: what high-retention SaaS companies actually do
Retention is the one metric that quietly decides whether a SaaS company compounds or flatlines. You can grow fast on acquisition. You cannot build a durable business if the bucket leaks.
Joris Machielse
Article
Customer success without the team
The Customer Success team is one of the most widely copied structures in SaaS. Every series A playbook mentions it. Every VP hire deck includes a headcount model for it. And almost nobody stops to ask
Joris Machielse
Guide
Enterprise user training for SaaS: what works, what doesn’t, and why most programs fail before they start
Most enterprise user training programs measure the wrong thing, teach the wrong way, and blame users when adoption doesn’t follow. The webinars nobody attends. The documentation nobody reads. The LMS
Joris Machielse
Guide
Expansion revenue: growing accounts without growing teams
Most SaaS growth conversations start with acquisition. New logo counts. Pipeline coverage. CAC payback. But the companies compounding fastest are getting a disproportionate share of their growth from
Joris Machielse
Article
Manual onboarding has the best ROI. The problem is you can’t do it with every user.
Everyone in SaaS talks about scaling onboarding. What almost nobody says out loud is that the version they’re trying to scale, the product tour, the checklist, the help doc, is already a compromise. I
Joris Machielse
Guide
Onboarding best practices checklist
Most SaaS onboarding fails the same way: not with a visible crash, but with silence. The user signs up, clicks around for a few minutes, and closes the tab. No error message. No complaint ticket. Just
Joris Machielse
Guide
Onboarding workflow examples: a practical reference for SaaS teams
A new user signed up three days ago. They haven’t touched the product since. No error. No complaint. Just silence.
Joris Machielse
Guide
Product activation and time-to-value in SaaS
Product activation is the moment a new user first experiences the value your product exists to deliver. Not the signup. Not the login. Not the completion of a checklist. The moment they understand why
Joris Machielse
Guide
Product demos for SaaS: what works, what fails, and what AI changes
Most SaaS demos show the product. They just don’t show what the prospect actually needs to see.
Joris Machielse
Article
Product tours vs AI agents: why the static overlay paradigm fails
The product tour has been the onboarding industry’s default answer for ten years. Build a walkthrough. Trigger it on signup. Point at buttons. Ship it.
Joris Machielse
Article
Product tours vs AI onboarding: what’s actually different, and why it matters
Product tours were a reasonable answer to a real problem. They gave every user the same instructions at once, cost nothing per session, and required no human on the other end.
Joris Machielse
Guide
SaaS churn prevention: what actually works (and what doesn’t)
Most churn prevention programs activate too late. By the time a customer submits a cancellation request, sends a non-renewal notice, or simply goes quiet, the decision was made weeks or months earlier
Joris Machielse
Guide
SaaS metrics: the complete guide
Every SaaS company tracks the same list. MRR, ARR, churn, NRR, LTV, CAC. The metrics are not the problem. The problem is that most teams track them passively, reading dashboards after the damage is do
Joris Machielse
Guide
SaaS user onboarding: the complete guide
Most SaaS products die in week one. Not because the product is bad. Because the user never figured out what to do with it.
Joris Machielse
Guide
Scaling customer success: why linear growth can’t keep up with exponential customers
Your customer base doubled last year. Your Customer Success team grew by two people.
Joris Machielse
Article
The churn illusion: why health scores tell you what already happened
Your health score turned red. You scheduled a call. The customer said they’d think about it.
Joris Machielse
Article
The death of digital adoption platforms
Digital adoption platforms solved a real problem. They solved it with tooltips, and that worked well enough for long enough that an entire category was built around the idea. Then SAP paid $1.5 billio
Joris Machielse
Article
The demo problem
The demo is the most expensive part of your sales process. It costs a senior rep an hour of their time, an hour of the prospect’s time, and sometimes a week of back-and-forth to schedule. And most of
Joris Machielse
Article
The feature adoption gap: why announcing features doesn’t make users use them
You shipped a new feature. You wrote the changelog. You sent the in-app announcement. You added a tooltip pointing at the new button.
Joris Machielse
Guide
User onboarding checklist for SaaS
Most onboarding checklists fail before anyone looks at them. They are too long, they bury the action that actually matters, and they treat setup tasks as if users came to SaaS products to complete tas
Joris Machielse
Guide
Ways to increase customer lifetime value in SaaS
Customer lifetime value is the number that determines whether your business model works. Revenue from new logos is the easy metric to celebrate. LTV is the one that tells you what your growth actually
Joris Machielse
Guide
What does customer success mean?
Customer success is the discipline of ensuring customers achieve their intended outcomes while using your product. Not just that they use the product. That they get the result they bought it for.
Joris Machielse
Guide
What is an AI onboarding agent? Definition, how it works, and why it’s different
An AI onboarding agent is software that joins a new user’s session in real time, sees their screen, controls their browser, and guides them through a product via voice conversation.
Joris Machielse
Article
Why product tours don’t work
The product tour is the default answer to a real problem. A new user signs up. They don’t know where to start. You need to show them. So you build a tour: a sequence of tooltip bubbles that walks them
Joris Machielse
Article
Why users skip onboarding
Users don’t skip onboarding because they’re lazy. They skip because you handed them a workbook when they wanted someone to show them around.
Joris Machielse
Article
Your help center isn’t helping. It’s deflecting.
The “deflect to docs” model isn’t a support strategy. It’s an admission that real help doesn’t scale.
Joris Machielse