There’s nothing like doing it yourself
The eVestment team has been using Pendo since 2018, primarily for in-app customer communication. However, it was owned solely by the product team—often resulting in overly wordy, technical content that didn’t always clearly communicate. A few years in, Lucy Long (Manager, Education and Experiences at eVestment) and her team made the push to have all in-app content run through the education team. “While we’re a small team, we manage Pendo for all in-app communications from across our business,” said Long. “Pendo helps us do a lot more and reach more clients in a very scalable and efficient way, without adding extra overhead.”
Around this same time, Long also took on upgrading eVestment from Pendo’s legacy Guide Center to the new and improved Resource Center in 2022. “Given our user base, this small tweak was a big deal for them. Our users—who sometimes have complex in-app workflows—don’t really like change. So to completely overhaul the in-app learning experience was out of the question. The Resource Center felt familiar and added even more value to their experience. We haven’t looked back.”
Now, Long and her team use the Resource Center to deliver on-demand, contextual guidance and enablement to clients, directly inside the eVestment app. “Ultimately, we want our clients to stay in our platform. And if they can find the help they need within the app, that just drives engagement,” she said.
Even without in-depth technical skills, Long was able to stand up the Resource Center and other in-app guides quickly and results were immediate—a process that used to require submitting a Jira ticket, then waiting two or more weeks until a dev team had capacity for her requests. With the help of the Pendo tagging aid, Long can now do it all herself—reducing her team’s reliance on engineering resources and cutting down the amount of time it takes to launch in-app guides from four weeks to less than one week.
Bye bye, back-and-forth
In addition to making it easier for clients to access frequently requested documentation and help content, Long found a unique way to use the Resource Center to streamline eVestment’s overview training request process. “Historically, when someone requested training, they would send a ticket via email to our support team. Our services team would then send the client a Word document to fill out, which would then get sent back to support, and then support would schedule a call [with the client]. There was a lot of back and forth,” Long explained.
To solve this challenge, Long created a custom module within the Resource Center and added an in-app guide that now appears whenever a client clicks on “Request a Training.” After hitting “Submit,” that data is sent directly to eVestment’s Salesforce instance, where eVestment logs all support cases. Now, the support team is able to more efficiently triage and route each incoming request from Salesforce. And depending on what the client submitted via the in-app guide, the support team can even deflect a significant number of basic or routine requests by offering clients the option to watch an overview training in-app, rather than wait for a live demo.
“We worked with our BI team to streamline the process,” Long explained. “This is a huge time saver and efficiency driver for our service team, because it allows them to focus on questions and requests that are more complex and less routine. Importantly, it also allows us to learn more about how our users are using the platform and what questions they’re trying to answer.”
Since implementing this workflow in February 2023, eVestment’s training and support teams have seen a two thirds reduction in the number of incoming platform overview requests. Additionally, Long noted that the usage data she’s able to capture from clients’ engagement with the Resource Center is critical for ongoing platform optimization. It allows her to understand exactly which resources clients are accessing so she can help the product team ideate new features and identify areas of the platform that might be prime for a change.
No risk, all re(ward)tention
Long now reports this kind of Pendo data (and its influence on business outcomes) up through multiple leadership levels. Notably, she said that Pendo is supporting a core business objective: client retention. For example, she reports on quantitative and qualitative NPS data—paired with usage trending, paths, and funnels—on both the user and account level, to help Client Success leaders proactively identify which clients may need more attention or support, before they ever become at risk of churn.
Long also uses this data to shape the strategy for her team’s “Learning Labs,” which are in-person, hour-long training sessions hosted in major U.S. cities. “We take a look at the client base in each city and create a segment in Pendo to see what they’re actually doing in our platform,” she explained. “Coupled with what our Client Success Managers are saying, we’re then able to shape and focus each session to best help our clients realize value.”
Looking to the future, Long is eager to keep experimenting and get other teams throughout the organization excited about the power of Pendo data and in-app guides. “I want to drive more adoption of Pendo with the rest of the client experience organization. I feel like I’ve only just touched the surface of what I can do with it.”
