Time to Value: The Best Strategies to Speed Up Providing Value

What is Time to Value?

Time to Value (TTV) measures the time it takes for new customers to realize the value of a product or service. 

TTV helps you understand how quickly customers can start achieving their desired outcomes from your product after signing up, completing the onboarding process, and fully integrating the software into their workflows.

It can vary across different customer segments. 

Why? Because different groups of customers may have different needs, expectations, technical proficiency, and product use cases.

Now, let’s take a closer look at why the time to value (TTV) is crucial for SaaS businesses👇🏻

Why is Time to Value Important?

The short answer: If you don’t monitor TTV, you won’t beat churn. 

The long answer: TTV helps you make data-driven decisions because it is directly connected to customer lifetime value (CLV).

Here are other key benefits of reducing time to value:

• Enhancing Customer Satisfaction: Customers who realize value faster from your product will become more engaged and drive brand loyalty.
• Boosting Retention Rates: Losing customers to competitors? Shorter TTV means that customers see early and continuous value from your product or service, so they’ll stay. 
• Driving Revenue Growth: Products with faster time to value create satisfied customers who are more likely to upgrade, renew, and refer to other people through word-of-mouth marketing.

Types of Time to Value

Everything would be much simpler if there were only one type of Time to Value.

Alas, there are different types of this metric. But you can turn this into an advantage because value is not a one-size-fits-all concept after all.

This means that you can get a complete picture of how quickly different customer segments or use cases are able to achieve value from your product.

Five main types of time to value are: 

• Time to Basic Value 
• Time to Exceed Value 
• Immediate Time to Value 
• Short Time to Value
• Long Time to Value 

I will walk you through each type with definitions, purpose, and examples.

Time to Basic Value (TTBV)

Time Basic Value (TTBV) measures the time it takes for a new customer to experience a basic, foundational level of value when using a product or service.

TTBV essentially acts as the initial “hook” that keeps new users interested. You give them a glimpse of the potential your product offers for their needs, which they cannot find anywhere else.

TTBV can be as short as starting a free trial or booking a demo call after reading an article on your product. 

Another way to look at this metric is that if you have a shorter TTBV, you will have a higher early engagement rate because users will be more likely to continue their journey if they quickly see positive results.

This is important because once the user dips their toes into your services, it will give you a list of key features or functionalities that show value early on. You should use this data to optimize your onboarding process. 

If you realize that you have a high TTBV rate, start by simplifying your setup steps, adding personalizing onboarding elements like tooltips or hotspots, and providing clear guidelines for a quick initial success.

Let’s put all this information into context with a real-life example. Check out how Shopify’s CEO Thomas Lütfe announced their newest feature—AI-powered Sidekick:

Lütfe describes the entrepreneurs (or merchants on Shopify) as “heroes”, highlighting that “every hero needs a sidekick” who is “deeply competent, totally committed to you” and “available around the clock … knowing everything there is about Shopify.”

In other words, Sidekick lowers the barriers for new merchants by providing real-time, AI-driven support to generate content, suggest improvements, and automate time-consuming tasks. 

Sidekick cuts down the time it takes to get their store up and running, allowing them to focus on growing their business instead of getting bogged down by content creation.

Now wonder why they have more than 2 million merchants on their platform as of 2024 in 175 countries.

Time to Exceed Value (TTEV)

Think of Time to Exceed Value (TTEV) as a step beyond Time to Basic Value (TTBV). It is the time it takes for a customer to exceed their expectations and realize the full value of a product or service.

TTEV is a good indicator of customer loyalty as users begin to see benefits that go beyond their basic needs or initial expectations. If you have a shorter TTEV, customers will see the advanced benefits of your product more quickly.

You can use Time to Exceed Value to gauge how effectively your product delivers enhanced value over time. This can include product updates or freemium user upgrading to a paid plan.

Need an example? I got you!

Think of a fitness app. It starts by helping users track basic workout routines. After a few weeks, the app unlocks personalized workout plans and advanced analytics based on their activity history.

Aka, showing value that goes beyond initial tracking.

The impact?

Users see added benefits they didn’t initially expect, such as tailored advice and in-depth insights, which will increase their commitment and trust in the app. 

A perfect win-win situation! 🚀

Immediate Time to Value (ITTV)

Some services have a short or immediate time to value. 

Think of using a SaaS product like subscribing to a streaming service, using a cloud-based tool, or implementing an automation platform. 

In these cases, you quickly experience the value the service offers, whether it’s immediate time savings, improved productivity, or enhanced efficiency. 

The value is often clear from the get-go, and it doesn’t take long to realize the benefit.

However, the challenge for SaaS companies is that competitors may be able to deliver a quicker time to value, or offer similar solutions at a lower cost. 

In a market where customers can easily compare alternatives, it’s crucial to ensure that your product not only delivers value fast but also differentiates itself in terms of quality, user experience, or unique features to remain competitive.

By tracking Immediate Time to Value (ITTV), you can reassure users about their choice. A high ITTV rate can drive initial activation, reduce drop-offs, and set the stage for further engagement by showing immediate benefits.

The impact?

Users experience immediate gratification by seeing how effortlessly they can use your product, which encourages them to make a purchase decision more quickly.

Short Time to Value (STTV)

Short Time to Value (STTV) is the span within which users achieve meaningful results or benefits shortly after first engaging with a product.

The goal of this metric is to ensure users feel rewarded early in their journey. (See how it all ties back to instant gratification? Immediate results, immediate validation.)

Why does this matter? Because STTV leads to quicker user adoption and satisfaction.

The downside is that since users are expecting fast results, it is easier for them to churn to competitors if they have a poor experience.

But you can avoid this pitfall by breaking down onboarding into easy steps and guiding users to a first small success within minutes or hours of use.

Check out this example from Zendesk👇🏻

One of the initial onboarding steps is adding your team members to the platform.

Then you get the screen above to “practice” with a sample ticket within the first 30 minutes of use. This ticket dashboard provides actionable insights with hotspots so you can get a first-hand experience quickly.

The impact?

Users can understand Zendesk’s benefit to their customer support process early on, which will motivate them to further explore and use additional features. 

Long Time to Value (LTTV)

Long Time to Value (LTTV) is usually for products or services that require users to spend a lot of time with the product to achieve long-term value. Users often reach advanced stages in weeks or months.

LTTV focuses on establishing deep-rooted, comprehensive value that grows with consistent use and engagement. 

If your product naturally has a longer LTTV, support is essential. You need in-depth resources, continued onboarding, and milestones to maintain engagement during the journey.

It’s real-life-example-o’clock! 

Uxcel is an online platform designed to help individuals improve their UX design skills through courses and certification programs. 

Uxel’s approach to skill development means that users don’t necessarily see immediate “tangible” value like in products with operational tasks such as sending emails.

And this is not a bad thing. It just means that the real value—mastery of UX design skills and career advancement—takes time to unfold.

Let’s see how Uxcel supports Long Time to Value👇🏻

The onboarding process doesn’t overwhelm new users with everything all at once. New users typically begin with foundational lessons like UX design principles and an introduction to color theory before diving deeper into more complex subjects.

Then, as users progress through the courses, they are encouraged to complete interactive exercises like building simple prototypes as you can see above.

These exercises are intended to simulate real-world challenges. They allow users to apply their learning in a hands-on manner.

The impact?

As Uxcel “unlocks” more challenges and courses, the user recognizes the platform’s deeper value. But only after extended use.

Signs You Need to Optimize TTV

There is no way to sugarcoat this truth: Losing customers is easy in SaaS, and you are not as immune to churn as you think. This is especially very common in the early stages of onboarding. 

As soon as you convince someone to buy your product or sign up for a free trial, the clock starts ticking and you need to quickly demonstrate value. 

If you’re losing customers at a higher rate than you’ve ever seen before or customers don’t stick around to find out what you can do for them, it is time to shorten your time to value.

Here are some of the most common signals that show a poor customer experience—and high TTV👇🏻

High Churn or Drop-Off Rates

You may spend weeks or even months closing a deal, tailoring your service to a client’s needs, or meticulously designing your product rollout only to be frustrated with a lack of user engagement, or worse… crickets.

This is often due to a lack of perceived value or unclear product benefits. 

If you wake up every morning to see another churn mail in your inbox or high drop-off rate notifications on your Slack channel, it means that your product is not compelling enough.

What has gone wrong exactly?

Well… you probably didn’t pay enough attention to measuring time to value (TTV). If you did, you would be able to identify the exact point at which customers first perceive value. 

Alternatively, this would show you where users drop off before experiencing your product’s proposed value.

If you noticed that your TTV is getting longer and longer, you could have made adjustments to retain more users in those crucial initial stages before they churned.

The good news is that you can still turn this ship around.

First, look at your churn rate. According to Recurly Research, the average annual churn rate for SaaS companies is between 5-7% and a 4% monthly churn rate is a good benchmark.

🚨Anything higher than that should ring alarm bells.

It also indicates that it’s time to look at your onboarding experience, talk to current customers, and the product team to see what key features are not used enough.

Pressure to Show ROI Quickly

Tick, tick, tick, boom! 

Sometimes there’s pressure to prove the product’s value early in the user journey, especially if it impacts revenue or customer acquisition.

This is when TTV becomes a vital metric to track. Why? 

Because it quantifies the time it takes for customers to see results. So they can peacefully sleep at night and say, “Yes, I made the right investment.”

Regularly monitoring time to value helps you benchmark the average time a new customer needs to achieve early wins, which ultimately makes your product’s impact more visible in a shorter time frame.

So when it’s time for customers to renew their subscriptions or upgrade to premium plans, they will remember that they made a good investment and stay with you. 

Long or Complex Onboarding Process

It seems like everyone is talking about how important customer onboarding is, but rarely do I see people talking about how poorly it can be designed.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

How many steps does your initial onboarding journey have? Do you deliver onboarding materials in-app, through email or through videos? Have you set through a demo to see how long it takes for a new user to complete the setup and start discovering key features?

If you answered honestly, then you probably know what I’m going to say next.

Spoiler alert: You’re not going to like it. 🫣

You have a lengthy and confusing onboarding process. And it’s delaying your customers’ time to value. 

Even worse, it frustrates them because they don’t get instant gratification and a sense of achievement. If you don’t simplify your onboarding, those users will eventually stop engaging with the product altogether.

Check out this example:

A quick glance at this example might trick you into thinking that this is a great onboarding example. 

Although they use the welcome survey to segment their users, there is one crucial mistake: The onboarding checklist is hidden behind a tab on the right hand bar.

Onboarding checklists are very helpful to show the fundamentals of your product and to get the user set up their account correctly. If it’s not visible, however, it’s just a recipe for chaos.

I can hear you asking, “How can I even track this?”

Enter the scene: time to value.

TTV can reveal if certain steps in onboarding slow down the process and whether streamlining or simplifying those steps could help users reach value faster.

But there’s another way…

💡 What if I told you that you can segment your users, build interactive onboarding experiences, and show onboarding checklists to the right users at the right time?

And the cherry on top… You can do all of this without writing a single line of code. I’ll save you some time (I give you the value immediately, in true TTV fashion, you see)👇🏻

With UserGuiding, you can create onboarding checklists that customers won’t miss. 

The progress bar also gives them instant gratification because they experience value as they progress through your product.

With hotspots, you can guide customers to see key features in an empowering way because they interact with each feature you highlight.

Ready to simplify your onboarding process so customers can enjoy your product?

🚀Create your UserGuiding account now.

Customer Expectations and Satisfaction

Customers who see tangible benefits from your product are more likely to trust you. They will also seek out and adopt advanced features because your product exceeds their expectations. 

Better reviews, higher engagement, loyal fans of your product… This is all possible through a short Time to Value. 

So make sure you’re regularly monitoring this metric.

Narrow your focus. Just do one thing but do it really, really well. 

Tackle an important but widespread problem, become the bottleneck remover for your users, and those users will follow you wherever you go.

How to Calculate TTV

It is easy to define Time to Value as a metric, but calculating it is a different case.

You first have to define your “value.” 

Is it the duration it takes for a user to complete a specific task successfully? 

Is it when users start seeing the benefits on their metrics (higher revenue, less churn, etc.)?

Whatever your “value” is, you’ll use it to determine a start and end point. In other words, you will choose when you’ll start tracking this “value” and where the customer realizes your product’s value.

This could be reaching a key milestone or achieving a certain outcome. Then, you’ll calculate the time between start and end points. This will be your TTV.

If you work better with formulas, check this out:

TTV = Time at which value is realized - Start time

Measuring Time to Value

Measuring Time to Value will be your new best friend if you want to help customers get the most out of your product as quickly as possible.

Value for customers is not a one-size-fits-all thing. It can come in many shapes and forms like increased revenue, reduced costs, or an enhanced customer experience.  

There are several stages to measure TTV, including customer feedback, surveys, and check-in calls.

In this section, we’re going to dive deeper into the essential metrics to track TTV effectively and how frequently you should measure it.

Let’s go! 

Essential Metrics to Track Time to Value Effectively

While TTV itself is a straightforward metric, there are several other metrics you can use to track it better, such as: 

• Time-to-first-key-action
• Time-to-first-value
• customer satisfaction scores
• feature adoption rates

These metrics help quantify TTV and identify areas for improvement.

We’re going to divide these into two categories: metrics for onboarding efficiency and long-term engagement.

If you’re confused about these terms, don’t worry! I will give you real-world scenarios to show how each metric can be used.

Metrics for Onboarding Efficiency

These metrics help you evaluate how quickly and smoothly users get through the onboarding process and begin seeing initial value👇🏻

Time-to-First-Key-Action

Time-to-First-Key-Action measures the time it takes for users to complete a critical first action. These actions are usually simple like sending a message. 

If you have a project management tool, for example, this first key action might be a user completing their first task.

This metric shows you how quickly users engage with core features.

Time-to-First-Value 

Time-to-First Value captures the time from sign-up to the moment users experience initial value. 

A short time-to-first-value often means higher engagement.

For example, when Dropbox was first starting out, the initial challenge was getting users to experience the value of their service quickly.

What did they do? You guessed it!

They streamlined the onboarding process to ensure users could start using the product and experience its core value right away. See the example below👇🏻

Users can sign up with just an email address and start using the service immediately, with no complex registration or setup steps. 

The design is simple, allowing even non-technical users to understand and use the app without steep learning curves.

Focusing on reducing Time-to-First Value helped Dropbox ensure that users understood the product’s core value proposition—seamless file storage and sharing—within minutes of signing up.

Onboarding Completion Rate 

Onboarding Completion Rate refers to the percentage of users who complete the full onboarding process. 

If you have a higher completion rate, then congrats! It means that the onboarding process is doing what it’s supposed to be doing: guiding users toward initial value.

HubSpot’s Flywheel is the perfect example of that.

CEO Brian Halligan wanted to retire the funnel—yes, the funnel that follows a customer from awareness to purchase stage—and adapt James Watt’s Flywheel strategy instead. Jon Dick, the VP of marketing, was not happy with the decision initially.

However, he changed his mind once he realized funnels “produce customers but don’t consider how those customers can help you grow.”

Flywheel, on the other hand, focuses on providing better and frictionless customer experiences. This includes achieving a higher onboarding completion rate.

Here’s what Jon Dick has to say👇🏻

“Here at HubSpot, our flywheels represent a circular process where customers feed growth. We’ve invested more in customer marketing, more in customer advocacy, and more in creating delightful onboarding for new customers. We’ve also invested in an integration ecosystem that helps customers do more with HubSpot and creates real value for people who adopt our suite of software.”

While other models think of customers as an outcome, the Flywheel model uses customers to “drive referrals and repeat sales” in a circular, spinning motion. The momentum of your happy customers, then, defines your success.

The Flywheel model takes into account how people make decisions today: They ask their network for advice, read reviews, search for mentions of your company online. 

And according to Wyzowl, 63% of customers consider the company’s onboarding before making a purchase. 

That is why HubSpot was able to grow its customer base by 23% in 2023. They changed their mindset, invested in onboarding, and grew faster.  

Friction Points in Onboarding 

All too often SaaS products are rich in features, but have poor onboarding and suffer from poor integration or user-friendliness.

Friction Points in Onboarding basically tracks these poor points, aka frictions, where users drop off during onboarding. 

The solution? Creating a more seamless onboarding experience to reduce friction. 

The outcome? Decreasing TTV, happy customers, happy you.

I’m going to talk about Flywheel here again because when HubSpot decided to adopt this model, they were also thinking about eliminating frictions for their customers.

Friction kills flywheels. We’ve made investments that systematically target our biggest points of friction: Great free software as an entry point, channels that help people connect now instead of later, a sales process that solves for prospects, and a broad range of customer education. —Jon Dick, VP of Marketing at HubSpot 

Friction makes you lose momentum and affect your customers’ experience negatively. Customer education through onboarding, then, becomes very important to increase speed and delight those customers.

It is also important to note here that you can’t only focus on the friction between your product and the customer. You must also consider any possible friction points that already exist or may arise between your employees and your customers.

Customers turn to your teams when there’s a problem with onboarding after all, so focusing on reducing friction between them will help you better serve in the long-term.

Self-Serve Resource Usage (e.g., Knowledge Base or Tutorials) 

In SaaS, self-service means that customers can access information and find solutions on their own.

So self-serve resource usage measures how often new users access onboarding guides, FAQs, or tutorials. 

Don’t confuse this metric with engagement, where a higher rate means that the customer is discovering and engaging with your product. 

High usage, in this case, usually indicates areas where the onboarding process might need more clarity. 

This is because the customer doesn’t find the solution or answer they’re looking for the first time they access the resource.

💡Pro Tip:

UserGuiding’s new AI assistant can help you point out relevant articles and materials on your resource center or knowledge base. Dylan (That’s the assistant’s name!) helps you offer personalized, multi-language assistance to your customers.

You can also customize your AI assistant to provide an uninterrupted customer experience. For questions outside your database, you can set fallback options to guide users to take a custom action like triggering relevant user guides or connecting them to live chat.

💬See the new AI assistant in action.

Metrics for Long-Term Engagement

The other group of metrics we’re going to look at is for long-term engagement. These tracks how well users continue to experience value over time, indicating a deeper commitment and satisfaction with the product👇🏻

Feature Adoption Rate 

Feature Adoption Rate tracks the percentage of users who actively use a new or existing feature regularly. 

A higher feature adoption rate suggests that users are exploring and finding value in the broader capabilities of your product.

Let’s say that you are going to announce a new feature. You first identify the segment of users in your base who would most likely benefit from the feature. 

Then, you work with customer success and product managers to create new feature announcements, onboarding flows, and in-app messages, like this example from Notion👇🏻

After the announcement, you encourage further feature use with tooltips, video recaps, or emails that remind users to pick up where they left off. 

Finally, you assess the feature adoption and stickiness to create a funnel like this one:

Usage Frequency 

Usage Frequency measures how often users engage with your product (daily, weekly, etc.). 

Frequent usage usually indicates that users are consistently finding value, which is essential for long-term retention.

For example, if you have a messaging platform, you can track how often users log in to the platform, how frequently they send messages or share files to decide if customers are as engaging as you want them to be.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) 

Collected through feedback surveys, the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) shows how satisfied users are with their experience. 

It is typically measured with a short survey feedback system. High satisfaction scores indicate a well-delivered, valuable experience that encourages ongoing engagement.

CSAT score is calculated by dividing the number of satisfied responders by the total number of responders, then multiplying by 100.

For instance, if your product is a customer support software, you can trigger post-interaction surveys to prompt customers to rate their satisfaction after each customer support interaction.

Including emoticons like thumbs up or down, or asking users to rate their satisfaction from 1 to 5 usually requires less effort and commitment, so try to simplify the process for them. 

Net Promoter Score (NPS) 

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely users are to recommend your product to others. 

Similar to CSAT, you also get this score through a single-question survey. You ask, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is it for you to recommend our product/service/company to a friend or a colleague?” 

Of course, you can add follow-up questions to get further feedback from your customers. 

But remember that these surveys should be short and to the point because providing feedback to you is not your customers’ priority, nor does it provide additional value to them. 

They are basically doing a favor for you, so don’t make this survey a pain point.

Check out this example from Groove👇🏻

After gathering data, you will categorize the users according to their 0-10 score.

The group who rated between 0-6 are called “detractors” because they are not unsatisfied with your product or service. Those between 7-8 are called “passives” who did not necessarily struggle with your product but did not have an engaging or positive experience either.

Those who rated between 9-10 are called “promoters”. This group is ready to promote your product through word-of-mouth marketing, giving you a shoutout on social media or newsletter, etc.

After categorization, you will calculate your NPS score by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. 

If you have a high NPS score, it means that customers see the ongoing value of your product and are ready to share it with others.

Churn Rate 

Do you monitor how many customers you lose every year?

This is what the churn rate is for. It is the percentage of users who cancel or don’t renew their subscriptions over a definite period of time.

It is perhaps one of the most unpleasant metrics to keep track of but you need to keep an eye on it to see its impact on your revenue and growth.

You calculate the churn rate by dividing the number of lost customers by the total number of customers at the start of the time period, then multiplying by 100.  

Imagine this: You run an e-commerce platform. You will have to track how many merchants cancel or downgrade their subscriptions over a month or year. 

This churn is a direct reflection of whether merchants find the platform valuable enough to continue paying for the service.

You can also segment churn by different merchant categories (e.g., small businesses vs. larger enterprises) and by subscription plans (basic or advanced). This will help you understand which groups are at higher risk of churn and why.

Expansion Rate (e.g., Upsells or Feature Upgrades)

To end on a positive note, let’s look at the expansion rate! 

Expansion Rate is the rate at which users upgrade or expand their product or feature usage. 

It is important to note that this metric refers to the growth in revenue or usage from existing customers, rather than from new customer acquisition.

To have a high expansion rate, you need to demonstrate enough long-term value to customers so they invest more in the product. 

See this example from Slack below👇🏻

Existing Slack customers may begin utilizing Slack AI for tasks they previously did manually like taking notes during huddle meetings or conversation summaries, which encourages deeper usage by offering more value to users. 

How frequently should businesses measure TTV?

How often you need to measure Time to Value (TTV) will depend on several factors, including the type of business, the complexity of the product or service, and the stage of the customer relationship.

However, a good rule of thumb is to measure TTV regularly and at key milestones throughout the customer journey.

The first milestone will probably happen during the initial stages, especially during the onboarding phase. Track how long it takes for a customer to use the core features after signing up or completing their first action, such as uploading data or integrating with another system.

This will help you identify potential friction points and improve the onboarding process.

After the customer has fully implemented the solution or product, it's important to measure how long it took for them to realize their tangible business outcomes. 

For example, if you are a B2B software provider, this could mean measuring how long it takes for customers to achieve their first meaningful metric (e.g., increased productivity, ROI, or cost savings).

Also, TTV can evolve over time as customers grow more familiar with the product and unlock additional features. Periodic reviews (quarterly or annually) ensure that you continue to understand the customer’s evolving needs and can provide ongoing value.

5 Key Strategies to Reduce Time to Value

It’s been a long time coming but here we are finally talking about actionable strategies to shorten time to value without sacrificing quality.

Open your notes app or grab a pen and notebook, you’ll want to remember this section! 👇🏻

1- Deliver Value in Phases

I know it’s tempting to show everything at once to your customers. After all, if they don’t see it all the first time they start using your product, you may not get a second chance.

Well, that’s a terrible way to look at delivering value. 

You’ll end up overwhelming your customers and exhausting your teams who put everything together.

You should break down the customer journey into smaller bits so you can actually introduce value incrementally to keep users engaged. Let them ask, “What’s next?” or “I wonder what more I can do with this.”

Curiosity, in this case, will save the cat.

Set clear expectations for yourself and your customers. What do you want to achieve in a specific stage? What do you want them to achieve? Outline every step and provide enough context, so customers can understand what’s coming next.

You should show users just enough to keep them “hooked”, which means that they should see the immediate, fundamental value from the get-go. This way, they’ll build confidence to navigate the product on their own. 

Meanwhile, you’ll prepare them for advanced features over time. One way to do this is progress bars.

Progress bars are a visual cue that show how much progress a user has made in accomplishing a specific task or goal. 

Check out this example from UserGuiding👇🏻

Using progress bars, especially during onboarding, rewards the user immediately—Yes, instant gratification is back—and eliminates uncertainty by showing that they need to complete A before B comes.

Impact on Time to Value

By breaking the delivery into phases, you can prioritize delivering a core set of features or capabilities that provide immediate value.

This allows users to start using the product and derive value sooner, shortening the time to the first tangible outcome.

2- Educate Customers with Onboarding Guides

Downloading an app or subscribing to a SaaS product for the first time can be daunting for many. There is a lot to navigate, new jargon to keep track of, and very limited time to reach your business goals.

No one wants to do that alone. Certainly, not your customers either. So it is your responsibility to provide a guided experience for them. 

As we discussed, break down the customer journey to create step-by-step resources, so people can familiarize themselves with key features at their own pace. 

Using interactive elements at this stage like tooltips and hotspots will give them a personalized experience and encourage them to discover features on their own. Like this👇🏻

It is also important to reduce initial learning curves to boost early engagement. Otherwise, customers will get frustrated easily and stop interacting with the product.

Ramli John from Delight Path describes this as having a “leaky onboarding” process. And he’s right.

In fact, 86% of people say they’d be more likely to stay loyal to a business that invests in onboarding content that welcomes and educates them after they’ve bought. A complex onboarding process will only increase TTV and lead to potential customer loss.

So, you should have an extensive self-service resource selection at this stage. 

Customers don’t want to spend their time talking to a customer service agent if the problem is easy to fix on their own by reading an article or watching a short video.

So allow users to access these materials when they need it. Knowledge bases are great for this. 

A knowledge base is basically a catalog of articles, video tutorials, and other educational and self-service materials. They are “the common ground in terms of learning content,” as my friend Serra explains in her article.

Impact on Time to Value

When users can quickly grasp the product's functionality and value proposition, they can begin using it productively right away, which reduces the time they need to realize the benefit.

3- Showcase Success with Case Studies

Neither your product nor your customers exist in a vacuum. But it is your job to make them realize that.

You need to show how others have achieved value with your product. This is usually referred to as “social proof.” A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a LinkedIn post that gave me a new perspective on this. 

The person who wrote the post used “user proof” instead of social proof. Why?

Because it is a better credibility builder. Instead of putting company logo carousels on your website, you can instead share reviews or social media posts from people who use and find value in your product.

This adds a level of personalization and shows prospective users that they’re in good company.

This interaction between our CEO Osman Koc and Ben Dlugiewicz is a great example of user proof👇🏻

It highlights one of the core use cases of UserGuiding, in-app announcements, from the perspective of a real user. Not a static brand logo.

Impact on Time to Value

Case studies and user proof highlight how other customers have successfully implemented and benefited from a product. When prospective or new customers see these real-world examples, they can more clearly understand how to leverage the product for their specific needs.

And with a clearer understanding of the value they can expect and how to achieve it, customers are more likely to accelerate their adoption process, which reduces time to value.

4- Leverage Customer Onboarding Software

We’ve talked in greater detail about how important the onboarding process is. 

I only have this to add to our conversation: Onboarding should automate repetitive tasks to save time and resources.

This means that you need to customize the user journey because each user will have specific tasks to automate and goals to achieve.

Based on user segments you create, you can monitor user progress to identify and remove roadblocks to value.

This is where analytics become your best friend. 

For example, you can do A/B testing of different onboarding flows, messaging, and feature placements. Then, you can determine which onboarding process leads to the fastest adoption and value realization. 

Once you identify the most effective flow, you can roll it out to more users and improve overall TTV.

Impact on Time to Value

I’ll just add a simple example here: 

A new customer who receives an onboarding flow specifically designed for their industry or use case will understand how to use your product efficiently. 

Thanks to this, they will avoid unnecessary steps and reduce the time needed to achieve their goals.

5- Use Customer Feedback to Optimize Time to Value

If there’s one thing as important as user proof to optimize TTV, that’s customer feedback.

That’s why you should start collecting feedback as soon as possible. Start the process during the onboarding phase and at key stages to understand where customers may experience friction or miss the product’s value.

Early feedback is usually less biased because they may not yet be strongly loyal to your brand, nor may they have pre-existing biases about it. Without the weight of prior experiences influencing their feedback, their views can be more reflective of their needs and expectations.

Collecting feedback also means analyzing the said feedback. 

To understand how customers perceive the core features of your product can reveal whether they’re intuitive and beneficial or if adjustments are needed to enhance their impact on TTV.

If, for example, you notice that customers consistently struggle with a specific setup step, you can simplify it to eliminate that pain point and reduce TTV 

As users interact with your product, periodically revisit TTV goals to ensure that any new features or updates align with faster value delivery.

Also, don’t forget to show customers that their input is valued by actively sharing changes or updates based on their suggestions.

Impact on Time to Value

Feedback helps identify misalignments between customer expectations and the product’s actual capabilities. 

When expectations are not met, it can slow down the adoption process as users may need more time to understand how the product works or to adjust their expectations.

For example, if users report that they expected a certain feature to work differently, you can clarify its capabilities in the onboarding flow and prevent confusion.

Benchmarking Time To Value: What’s Ideal for Your Product Type?

You know what types of Time to Value are out there, what metrics to keep track of to optimize TTV, and how actionable strategies can decrease your TTV rate, so… What is missing?

The ideal Time to Value benchmark for your business. 

Before we talk about that, I need to remind you that ideal TTV varies significantly by product type and industry. This is because each product offers different values and has different complexities.

Also, setting a realistic TTV target will help you focus on creating user-first onboarding and customer success strategies.

Keep that in mind as you read along.

Let’s roll! 🚀

Examples of TTV Benchmarks Across Different Product Types

SaaS Tools with Free Trials 

SaaS products are all too familiar with expired free trials, onboarding checklists left incomplete, activation emails unopened…

In the past, customers were willing to stick with their purchase—especially because it was a sunk cost—and they would wait through purchase, deployment, and use until they could reap the benefits of the solution.

SaaS has made customers much less tolerant of such delays, and minor frustrations can lead to churn much more quickly.

So aim for a TTV of under 5 days. 

This means having users experience the value within a few days is essential for retention. This might include helping users complete a key action or setting up a basic feature.

Analytics Platforms 

If the word “analytics” alone makes you shudder in terror, you are not alone.

One part of this horror story comes from the fact that analytics tools are complex: They generally require more setup and data collection. You need to measure multiple key metrics simultaneously, create reports, do competitive analysis, and more.

So it’s only realistic for users to need a bit more time to see your product’s insights and benefits.

Initially, you can target TTV within the first 2-4 weeks.

Mobile Apps 

For consumer-oriented apps like fitness or productivity, TTV should ideally be achieved on the first day. 

Similar to SaaS customers, users of mobile apps often make snap judgments about whether they’ll continue using an app within the first few minutes. 

This is because these apps often promise to help people achieve goals (whether it's better health or more effective time management) quickly.

So, if users don’t experience any immediate value, they’re likely to abandon it. 

To prevent that, you can add interactive tutorials or highlight immediate-use features as we discussed in the earlier sections.

B2B Platforms 

Complex B2B tools, like CRM or ERP systems, may have a longer TTV of about 1-2 months. 

Similar to analytics tools, they involve comprehensive setup, data integration, and training. For these products, your TTV benchmark should focus on achieving initial value milestones (like data upload and initial reporting) before optimization.

E-commerce 

E-commerce sites might measure TTV as the time it takes for a user to make their first purchase or complete a signup. This should ideally be within minutes or hours, as users are more likely to return if they quickly find value.

That’s an-almost-wrap for this section! 🥳 

Before I lead you to the next one, I want to mention a couple of important things:

You don’t have to take these periods as the “ultimate TTV benchmarks”. These are average estimates. In fact, I encourage you to set your own benchmarks by gathering customer feedback, analyzing user data, or referencing industry standards.

Also, beware of the “I set up everything to monitor TTV and now everything will be amazing!” monster. Time to Value is not static.

You should continually assess and adjust it as you introduce new features or products. Your TTV will evolve with you, don’t leave it behind the old setups.

One way to do this—no matter how cliché it sounds—is through listening to your customers and cross-analyzing the feedback with data. This will ensure that TTV stays aligned with your users’ expectations.

Off you go to the next section!

The Role of Customer Success in Reducing TTV

It wouldn’t be a complete deep-dive on Time to Value without mentioning customer success management.

But especially, customer success managers. They are the heart and soul of your entire business. They work directly with customers to get them on board and convince them to purchase what you have to offer.

They also play a crucial role in reducing Time to Value and improving customer satisfaction.

In fact, 70% of consumers make a purchase decision based on the quality of customer service they receive. 

The main task of customer success managers is to provide excellent customer support and establish trust with customers, which helps them realize the value of your product.

Having one in your arsenal means that you can take the right steps to improve your customer retention rates by personalizing onboarding, analyzing user behavior, and proactively addressing roadblocks to reduce TTV.

Key Takeaways

Pinpointing when your users experience value can help you identify bottlenecks, improve onboarding, and reduce your time to value significantly.

Helping your customers succeed with your product is the first step in succeeding as a company, and always design things from the perspective of the customer to minimize times to value and improve ease of use so that you become as indispensable to the user as you hope to be.

My final note to you is that reach out to your teams, look at data, and assess your current TTV. Once you’re done with that, consider implementing one of the strategies I’ve shared with you.