SSO (single-sign-on) access and self-service support were expanded after research identified key barriers to adoption.
A global educational company's new SSO account was seeing low adoption, putting future revenue streams at risk
A global education technology company had plans for new cloud products as additional revenue streams. Customers would need a cloud SSO account to access them. Despite being available for some time, adoption remained low and the reasons were unknown.
Approach
Because client hardware, software, and usage varied so widely, our researcher sampled a diverse range of end user products and regions. Knowing buyers would be difficult to reach but essential to understand, we worked with internal teams to identify and recruit them alongside end users.
Ran 1:1 interviews with two key user types, buyers and end users, to understand adoption barriers firsthand
Analysed usage data and ran statistical comparisons across regions to diagnose patterns at scale
Created case studies of client’s hardware and software setups to identify real-world usage patterns
What the data showed
2
distinct barriers identified, each requiring a separate fix
50%
more USA adoption than European adoption
Global
customer support gap — unknown to the company before this research
Outcome
Recommendation: make SSO available to all. Most customers had mixed fleets of hardware and software, but SSO had only been offered as a premium feature for the latest hardware, leaving the majority unable to adopt it. The company implemented our recommendation to enable SSO across all hardware and software.
Investment into a new app to address support gap: Research revealed almost no customer support for non-U.S. customers, new information for many within the company. Research also revealed a large support gap with U.S. customers. These findings directly led to budget approval for the creation of a new self-service app for all customers.