CASE STUDY: Turning a Digital Experience Platform Into a Customer-Led Growth System - MJ Digital

The SaaS customer portal was built to reduce service costs, improve self-service, and give customers new operational insight. But the investment could only pay off if customers adopted it in their daily roles.

Client: Enterprise industrial equipment (oil, gas, construction) and services organization
Platform: Digital experience SaaS customer portal enabled on Azure and MarTech’s (Adobe, Oracle, SalesForce)
Project type: Digital product adoption, Voice of Customer, CX strategy, digital adoption, MarTech, analytics, product roadmap enablement
My role: Growth architect, CX strategist and enabler, MarTech + data lead, customer-led product and development team advisor.

Executive Snapshot

A 7-figure investment had been made in a the development of a new digital customer experience platform, later evolving into a SaaS customer portal.

The business case was clear: reduce cost to serve, give customers a better self-serve experience, lower dependency on inbound support teams, and create stronger customer relationships through new operational and business insights.

The CX portal was designed to help customers access critical information faster, including managing equipment assets and management, purchase orders, invoices, shipment tracking, service records, parts information, and other operational support needs.

But early performance showed a bigger issue.

Marketing was driving awareness and interest. Customers were being introduced to the platform. But many were not completing sign-up. And when they did register, many visited once and did not return.

The problem was not just traffic.

It was friction, activation, adoption, stickiness and value.

The registration journey revealed a major friction point, but it was not the only major problem.

Using Adobe Analytics, heatmapping, and customer behaviour data, MJ identified that one key area of the registration experience was blocking more than 80% of sign-ups. Fixing that issue improved the path to account creation, satisfying the conversion KPI. But the deeper problem was platform adoption and stickiness.

Customers could be hand-held onto the portal. They could be given a tour. They could complete the first sign-in. But many did not return.

That changed the strategic question.

The issue was no longer, “How do we get customers registered?”
It became, “Why isn’t the platform valuable enough for customers to use every day, make their jobs easier, and help them perform better to deliver cost savings and improve equipment up-time?”

MJ led a deeper review of the product platform strategy, including how capabilities and features were being identified, prioritized, and added to the roadmap.

The finding was clear: the roadmap was being driven almost entirely by Voice of Business (VOB).

Internal priorities and ‘the loudest voice’ were shaping the product, but Voice of Customer was not yet meaningfully influencing, let along directing, which features were built, how they were prioritized, how they should work, or how value was defined for different user roles.

That explained the adoption challenge.

The portal supported a strong business case and served one persona well, but it did not yet deliver enough clear, repeatable value across the broader range of target customer personas.

Customers needed more than access. They needed relevant use cases, role-based value, stronger onboarding, and product capabilities that solved the problems they actually cared about.

MJ designed the customer-led strategy and the Voice of Customer operating model to close that gap.

The work connected Voice of Customer, Voice of Data, and Voice of Business into a repeatable feedback, analytics, and product insight system.

The original project ask was to create a CX plan and structured customer feedback process so the portal could evolve as a customer-led product and service experience.

The solution connected a seamless digital experience from website to SaaS portal, connected website behavior (Adobe Analytics) to authenticated customer identity through to platform behaviour, CSAT feedback tools, heatmapping, first-party customer data, marketing automation (Eloqua), personalization (Adobe Target), personalization (Target and AEM) , ProductBoard roadmap management, PowerBI dashboards, and cross-functional governance.

The result was a stronger customer intelligence system: one that helped the business measure adoption, understand why customers were not returning, identify value gaps by persona, improve onboarding, track performance by region and segment, inform roadmap priorities, and align development pod OKRs to real customer evidence.

This was not a survey project.

It was a customer-led digital growth architecture initiative built to turn a digital experience investment into adoption, repeat usage or stickiness, and measurable customer value.

Proof Snapshot

What changed

MJ helped move the SaaS customer experience portal from a business-led digital platform with weak adoption and repeat-usage signals to a customer-led growth system powered by behavioural analytics, customer feedback, satisfaction data, roadmap input, marketing automation, and governance.

Why it mattered

The portal could only create financial and customer value if customers adopted it.

The business needed customers to do more than sign up. It needed them to return and create stickiness, use key features, reduce support dependency, and experience clear operational value through digital self-service. A few proof points to demonstrate impact:

Platform adoption: Stickiness metrics improved over 30/60/90 days
Registration friction: Problem identified (60% who started registration abandonned) and conversion improved signifcantly
CSAT: Measurement lift across all three regions after customer-informed model was implemented.
Customer-led roadmap influence: Product management and developmen team pivoted to a customer-led model to inform the roadmap, development OKRs and shipped features mapped to voice of customer and voice of data.
Cost-to-serve impact: Reduced inbound calls aligned to regional area customer adoption, digital self-service usage, support hours saved, and financial savings.
Incremental Revenue: Cross-pollination of aftermarket inside the platform drove X% lift in incremental revenue.

The Situation

The organization had invested into building a customer digital experience SaaS platform to modernize how customers engaged the the business, accessed services, account, order, gained new insight on equipment assets and its management, and operational information.

The goal was not only to create a better digital experience. It was to evolve the service model that drove a operational impacts that lowered cost to serve customers.

Instead of relying on headcount with phone calls, callbacks, manual support, and fragmented service interactions, customers would be able to self-serve routine needs through the portal, among other value-add capabiliteis relevant their job role.

Common support needs included:

Managing equiment / assets from real-time location, fuel consumption, grade elevation, maintenance, and more.
Looking up parts pricing, availability and placing an order online (versus phone call or travel to the closest retail location).
Accessing invoices.
Accessing purchase orders.
Tracking shipments and order status.
Checking service appointment or work order status.
Reviewing equipment maintenance history.
Accessing warranty, repair, or service information.
Finding operational information tied to their equipment and account.

For the business, the opportunity was huge and meaningful.

Every routine support request handled manually created cost, delay, and dependency on internal teams. If customers adopted the portal, the organization could lower OPEX and the cost to serve, improve response times thus improving how they compete on customer experience, reduce customer effort, strengthen the business relationship and serve smaller customers that often were not large enough for a dedicated account manager.

But the platform needed customers to actually use it — consistently.

The Problem

1. The customer experience SaaS portal had a strong business case, but adoption was not sticking

The business had made a significant investment in a new customer portal. The expected return depended on customer usage.

The portal needed to:

Reduce inbound support pressure.
Improve customer self-service and response time.
Create faster access to account and service information.
Build stronger customer relationships.
Provide customers with operational insight.
Help the business scale service more efficiently.
Grow incremental aftermarket revenue

But early behaviour showed that the SaaS portal was not yet creating the adoption or stickiness needed to deliver the full business case.

Customers could be introduced to the portal. They could be walked through it. They could complete an initial visit.

But many did not return.

The deeper question became:

“Why isn’t the platform valuable enough for customers to use regularly, make their jobs easier, and help them perform more effectively?”

2. Registration friction was an early warning signal

Using Adobe Analytics, heatmapping, and customer behaviour data, MJ identified a major registration friction point: one key account registration field was blocking more than 60% of sign-ups.

Fixing that issue improved the path to account creation.

But the bigger issue was not registration alone.

The registration blocker was an activation problem. The deeper issue was adoption. Even when customers were hand-held onto the portal and given a tour, many still did not come back.

3. Product priorities were driven by Voice of Business, not enough Voice of Customer and Voice of Data

MJ led a deeper review of the product platform strategy, including the technical development lifecycle, how capabilities and features were identified, prioritized, and added to the roadmap.

The finding was clear: the roadmap was being driven almost entirely by Voice of Business.

Internal priorities were shaping the product, but Voice of Customer was not yet meaningfully influencing:

Which features were built.
How features were prioritized.
Which personas were served.
What value meant to different user roles.
Which customer problems deserved roadmap attention.
Which capabilities would drive repeat usage.

That explained the adoption challenge.

The portal supported a strong business case and served one persona well, but it did not yet deliver enough clear, repeatable value across the broader range of target customer personas.

Customers needed more than access. They needed relevant use cases, role-based value, stronger onboarding, and product capabilities that solved the problems they actually cared about.

4. The business needed a customer-led product growth system

The organization needed a better way to understand:

What customers were trying to accomplish.
Where customers were getting stuck.
Which features created repeat value.
Which personas were underserved.
Which regions were adopting.
Which customer segments needed more support.
Which product capabilities should be prioritized.
Which support requests could shift to self-service.
Which customer insights should inform roadmap decisions.

The business needed a connected system for customer intelligence.

Not scattered feedback.

Not one-off surveys.

Not assumptions.

A repeatable operating model.

The Opportunity

The opportunity was to turn the digital experience SaaS customer portal into a customer-led product growth system.

That meant connecting three signals:

Voice of Customer
What customers said, felt, needed, requested, or struggled with and overall what features will solve not just customer problems, but make their roles more efficient and effective for their operations.

Voice of Data
What customers actually did inside the platform. Did they engage with a key feature, for how long, how often, and was it delivering on its intended value.

Voice of Business
What the organization needed to improve acquisition, adoption, reduce cost, support customers, and scale service.

When connected, those signals could help the business make better decisions across product, marketing, customer experience, development, and governance.

The opportunity was to move from:

“We built the portal. Now how do we get customers to use it?”

To:

“We know where customers struggle, what they value, and what we need to improve to drive adoption.”

The Solution

MJ designed and helped enable a customer-led growth system across five connected layers.

1. Customer Journey and Persona Strategy

MJ led customer journey creation through workshops across three regions with a customer cross-section of enterprise, mid-market, and SMB customer segments.

The work helped the organization understand:

Customer goals by segment.
Role-based needs.
Persona-specific friction points.
Gaps between business assumptions and customer needs.
Where onboarding needed to change.
Which product features had clear value.
Which features were underused or unclear.
Which customers needed automation-led adoption.
Which customers required account-led support.

This created the foundation for a more informed and customer-led understanding of the product and adoption strategy.

Mid-market and SMB customers were supported through segmented marketing automation programs. Enterprise customers were routed through a more account-led adoption motion with account executives.

2. Analytics and Customer Intelligence Architecture

MJ designed an innovative measurement model that connected authenticated customer identity to platform behaviour and satisfaction feedback.

The solution drove rich customer insight on their adoption-level vs. behavior vs. sentiment.

The solution stitched together:

Cross-domain website behavior tracking using Adobe Analytics
Authenticated user identity when customers signed-up or logged into the portal.
Adobe Analytics platform behaviour and custom event tracking.
Digital CSAT survey feedback linked to real customers.
Heatmapping.
First-party customer account data.
Customer cohort tracking.
Region-level adoption tracking.
Platform usage and friction signals.

This allowed the business to understand not just what users were doing, but who they were, what account they belonged to, what region they were in, what role they played, where they experienced friction, and how satisfied they were.

That created a more complete view of adoption.

3. MarTech, Personalization, and Onboarding Enablement

MJ helped connect the broader digital ecosystem around the digital experience customer portal.

The MarTech and personalization layer included:

Website SSO from the website to the SaaS customer portal.
Eloqua marketing automation SDK and integration.
Adobe Target personalization.
Adobe AEM custom content snippets.
Adobe Tags to manage scripts and tracking.
Data layer design to connect 1st party data (authenticated users) to 3rd party behavior data ( Adobe Analytics).
Personalized acquisition and onboarding experiences.
Segment-based adoption programs for mid-market and SMB customers.
Enterprise handoff motion to account executives.

This helped move the portal from a passive destination to a guided adoption experience.

Customers could be educated, activated, reminded, and supported based on their segment, journey stage, and platform behaviour.

4. Product Roadmap and Development Alignment

Customer insight was not collected for reporting alone.

It was designed to inform product decisions and an operating process that become an infinity loop of voice of customer collection -> insight -> feature prioritization -> feaure development -> testing and analysis -> optimization.

Insights from Adobe Analytics, Hotjar CSAT, customer feedback, heatmapping, journey workshops, and adoption data became the bedrock of the product and customer advisory committees that drove the ProductBoard roadmap, its prioritization and feature and capability alignment to not just over-arching business goals, but the platform objectivrs and development pod OKRs.

This helped the organization prioritize product improvements based on customer and data-backed evidence.

The goal was to help development teams focus on the features and capabilities that would improve value, UX and usability, adoption, and stickiness.

5. Governance and Performance Rhythm

MJ helped shape the CX governance model that made Voice of Customer a repeatable input into product decisions, roadmap priorities, and ongoing digital product improvements.

The operating rhythm included:

In-situ feedback (micro-moment feedback) to feature tracking feedback to in-platform polls or surveys including CAST to quartelry customer advisory board panels
Product roadmap features mapped to adoption and stickiness feedback, usability and friction feedback.
Customer satisfaction and effort feedback,
Operational and service feedback
Quarterly digital governance board committee.
Daily development standups.
Weekly standup debriefs and measurement.
Monthly KPI reviews with cross-functional stakeholders that formed a Digital Management Committee.
Regional adoption performance reviews.
Semi real-time KPI dashboards (PowerBI + Tableau)

This gave leadership, product, development, marketing, CX, and operational excellence teams a shared view of customer adoption and platform performance.

It also gave teams a more disciplined way to turn feedback into action.

Technology Stack

The solution connected strategy, enterprise architecture, MarTech, data, product management and development operations, and governance through an enterprise technology stack.

The ecosystem included:

Microsoft Azure architecture.
API service layer.
Custom platform development.
ProductBoard for roadmap management.
Adobe Analytics for platform behaviour.
Hotjar for heatmapping and CSAT.
Eloqua for marketing automation.
Adobe Target for personalization.
Adobe AEM for content snippets to support personalization driven by Adobe Target.
Adobe Tags for script and tag management.
First-party data layer connecting authenticated users to analytics.
PowerBI for dashboards and KPI pacing.

This stack allowed the organization to connect customer identity, digital behaviour, customer satisfaction, marketing engagement, product planning, and executive reporting.

Governance, Privacy, and Compliance

Because the solution connected customer identity, behavioural analytics, CSAT feedback, and first-party customer data, governance was critical.

The program was designed to meet CASL, GDPR and data governance requirements.

Legal reviewed the terms of service, customer agreements, and data governance requirements. A marketing-led digital workflow supported customer signatures and approvals before platform adoption.

This helped ensure the adoption program had the right consent, governance, and data handling foundations.

Results & Impact

The project helped the organization move from platform launch mode to customer-led adoption management.

MJ’s work did not only focus on analytics, registration friction, or customer feedback capture. A major part of the impact was helping the broader organization understand what the new digital experience customer portal was, why it mattered to customers, why adoption mattered to the business case, and how Voice of Customer should become an integral and repeatable input into product development and the platforms success.

The work created the foundation for a stronger digital product operating model: one that connected customer journeys, personas, user stories, platform behaviour, customer feedback, roadmap priorities, development OKRs, onboarding, and governance.

1. Customer Journey, Persona, and Change Enablement

MJ led the definition of the customer journey and persona strategy across regions and customer segments. This helped the organization move from an internal view of the portal to a clearer customer-led view of how different users would discover, access, use, and return to the platform.

The work included collecting user stories across customer and business use cases to clarify what customers needed the portal to help them do, what internal teams expected the portal to solve, and where those needs were aligned or misaligned.

This created a shared understanding across the organization of:

What the SaaS customer portal was meant to become.
Why it mattered to customers.
Why adoption mattered to the financial business case.
Which customer roles and personas needed to be served.
Which use cases would create real customer value.
Where customers were likely to experience friction.
How the portal could reduce service dependency.
How internal teams needed to support the shift to digital self-service.
Why Voice of Customer needed to influence product priorities.
How customer insight should be adopted into the product development lifecycle.

This was also a change management effort. The organization needed to understand that the portal was not just a technology launch. It was a new way to serve customers, reduce operating drag, and build stronger digital customer relationships.

Number of global customer journey workshops completed = 4.
Number of global customer interviews = 45+
Number of regions included = 3
Number of business units or stakeholder groups engaged = +12
Number of customer segments represented = 3
Number of personas defined = 4
Number of user stories collected = 140
Number of customer and business use cases mapped = +20

2. Digital Experience Strategy and Voice of Customer Operating Model

MJ created the digital experience strategy for how the organization would collect Voice of Customer, connect it with behavioural data, and adopt it into both the broad business management committee discussions and technical product development lifecycle to influence product and feature decisions.

The initial workstream MJ delivered framed the need for a structured CX plan and repeatable customer feedback process to help the portal evolve as a customer-led product and service experience.

This informed the strategy to define how customer insight would be captured, analyzed, shared, prioritized, and introduced into the product development lifecycle.

The model connected:

In-situ platform feedback.
Targeted in-app polls and surveys.
CSAT measurement.
Customer behavioural analytics.
Heatmapping.
Usability insights.
Frontline feedback.
Customer advisory input.
Voice of Business priorities.
ProductBoard roadmap management.
Development pod OKRs.
Executive KPI reporting.

This helped turn Voice of Customer from scattered feedback into a repeatable product input.

3. Digital Experience Platform Adoption and Stickiness

Once we could get customers through the front-door of account registration and data policy sign off, the major business issue was platform adoption.

Customers needed a reason to return – consistently – and use the platform regularly to make it part of how they worked.

The project helped the business move beyond the question of whether customers could register. The more important question became whether customers found enough value to return and use the platform in their daily roles.

4. Registration & Conversion

MJ identified a major registration blocker that prevented more than 60% of customer sign-ups from being completed.

This insight helped the business improve activation friction, while also making the larger adoption issue clearer. Getting customers registered was necessary, but it was not enough. The portal needed to become valuable enough for customers to return.

5. Customer Satisfaction

CSAT was measured across three regions and connected to authenticated platform customer behaviour.

This helped the business understand satisfaction not only at a broad level, but by user, account, cohort, region, and platform experience, which enabled a soft-touch excuse for account reps to make an outreach to the customer.

6. Product Roadmap Influence

Customer insight helped inform ProductBoard roadmap, prioritization, decisions and development pod OKRs.

This helped product and development teams prioritize based on customer-backed evidence, not only internal business assumptions.

The value was not just more feedback. It was a better decision system for what should be built, why it mattered, which customer problem it solved, and how it supported adoption.

7. Cost-to-Serve Reduction

A core business goal was reducing direct inbound support dependency on front-line staff by helping customers self-serve routine tasks online.

The portal created a path to reduce support pressure for requests such as invoices, purchase orders, shipment tracking, parts information, service status, and equipment records.

But the portal went well beyond making routine tasks easier, it enabled rich deep insights for asset (equipment) management that offered customers new insights to improve how they operate their equipment to improve efficiencies, payloads and overall squeeze more revenue per machine.

8. Marketing Automation and Onboarding Performance

Marketing automation supported the adoption motion for mid-market and SMB segments, while enterprise customers were handled through an account-led motion.

This helped the organization move from broad awareness to more guided adoption, education, and onboarding.

9. Executive Visibility and Governance

PowerBI dashboards gave stakeholders a real-time pulse on adoption, performance, and KPI pacing against targets.

This helped teams manage digital adoption as an ongoing business discipline, not a one-time launch campaign.

MJ helped shape the CX governance model that made Voice of Customer (VOC) and Voice of Dat (VOD) a repeatable input into product decisions, roadmap priorities, ongoing digital product improvement and improve overally customer intimacy on a global scale.

Business Impact

The project helped the organization move from a MVP (minimum viable product) in its digital launch to customer fit platform that achieved its customer adoption.

It gave the business a better way to define the customer journey, understand personas, collect user stories, educate internal teams, measure adoption, prioritize product improvements, and embed Voice of Customer into the product development lifecycle.

The business impact can be summarized across six areas.

1. Organizational Alignment

MJ supported the organization understand what the portal was, why it mattered, how it supported customers, and why teams needed to embrace and support the shift to digital self-service.

2. Customer Journey Clarity

The business gained a clearer view of the customer journey, key personas, customer use cases, and the moments where the portal needed to create value.

3. Product Adoption

The major business risk shifted into focus: customers needed to return repeatadly, reuse, and make the portal part of their daily working rhythm and unlock its value for themselves.

4. Conversion

A major sign-up blocker was identified and addressed, improving the path from awareness to account creation.

5. Product

Customer feedback, user stories, and behavioural data were used to inform roadmap priorities and development OKRs.

6. Efficiency

The platform had a clearer path to reduce inbound support dependency by helping customers complete routine tasks through self-service.

Strategic Value

The most important shift was not technical.

It was strategic and organizational.

Before the project, the organization had a digital experience SaaS customer portal built largely from a vision and those loud voices in the room to drive business requirements.

After the project, it had the foundation for a customer-led growth system.

The business could now answer better questions to serve the customer, and a compelling differentiator in the market vs. competitors:

Who are we building the portal for?

What jobs are customers trying to complete?

Which personas are served well?

Which personas are underserved?

Where are customers getting stuck?

Which customers are adopting?

Which customers are not returning?

Which features create repeat value?

Which support requests can move to self-service?

Which regions are pacing ahead or behind target?

Which insights should shape the roadmap?

Which product improvements should development pods prioritize?

How should Voice of Customer be captured, reviewed, and acted on?

This is the value of customer-led growth architecture.

MJ helped connect customer journey strategy, persona development, customer insights, user stories, behavioural data, MarTech, product operations, purpose-driven technical development, CX governance, and executive performance measurement into one cross-functional operating model.

Digital adoption does not happen because a platform exists and the ‘build it and they will come’ hail mary.

It happens when customers understand the value, can access it without friction, and have a reason to return.

MJ helps teams define the customer journey, uncover where digital experiences break down, connect the customer and data signals that explain why, and build the growth architecture needed to improve adoption, reduce support friction, and turn customer platforms into measurable business value across revenue growth, cost savings and enhanced customer experience.