Most SaaS companies attack low adoption rates the same way. They build more features, send more emails, and schedule more check-ins. Adoption stays flat, churn creeps up, and customer success teams burn out trying to force usage that never works.
Keyonna LaGrone Taylor, founder and CEO of KeyFocus Group, has spent over 20 years leading enterprise customer success across global portfolios and has learned that the fastest way to drive adoption isn’t more product, it’s better engagement.
Taylor’s teams have achieved a 20% increase in adoption, not by adding functionality but by fundamentally changing how they engage customers.
Adoption Dies in the Middle, Start at the Top
The first breakdown happens when customer success focuses exclusively on end users and mid-level managers. These are the people using the product daily, so it feels logical to engage them directly. But mid-level adoption without executive sponsorship is fragile. When budgets get tight or priorities shift, unsupported initiatives get deprioritized. Usage drops, renewals become uncertain, and customer success scrambles to salvage the relationship.
Taylor’s approach reverses that dynamic by engaging executives early and consistently. While leading customer success at Atlassian, she introduced executive roundtables with top accounts that aligned product value directly to business priorities. These weren’t generic QBRs or product demos, they were strategic conversations connecting platform capabilities to outcomes executives cared about, operational efficiency, revenue impact, and competitive positioning.
“Adoption often dies in the middle of an organization,” Taylor explains. “At Atlassian, I led executive roundtables with our top accounts, aligning product value directly to business priorities. That shifted customer success from reactive to strategic and created champions who drove adoption from the top down.”
Build Journey-Based Playbooks, Not Generic Check-Ins
The second mistake is treating customer engagement as a calendar event rather than a strategic process. Most customer success teams schedule quarterly business reviews, send monthly check-ins, and react when usage metrics decline. The outreach is consistent but generic. It doesn’t connect to where the customer is in their journey or what they’re trying to achieve in that moment.
Taylor’s teams at Teleperformance built engagement playbooks tied to specific customer milestones, onboarding completion, usage trends, expansion opportunities, renewal timelines. The outreach wasn’t just scheduled; it was contextual. When usage data showed a customer adopting core features successfully, the engagement shifted to introducing adjacent capabilities. When activity declined, outreach focused on uncovering blockers before they became churn risks.
“Customer engagement is more than QBRs,” Taylor notes after implementing journey-based touchpoints across her portfolio. “At Teleperformance, we introduced journey-based touchpoints tied to usage trends, expansion moments, and renewal milestones. The outreach was timely, relevant, and personal. And that relevance is what moved adoption forward.”
Listen, Adapt, Repeat
The third lever is speed. Companies collect feedback constantly, NPS surveys, support tickets, usage analytics, customer interviews. But most of that feedback sits in dashboards or gets reviewed quarterly. By the time insights turn into action, the customer has already worked around the problem, stopped using the feature, or quietly decided not to renew.
Taylor’s teams built feedback loops designed for agility. Voice of the customer programs and real-time usage monitoring identified friction early. When customers struggled with specific features or workflows, adjustments happened fast, whether that meant updating onboarding content, refining in-app guidance, or escalating product feedback.
“Customers tell you exactly how to help them if you listen,” Taylor says. “Through voice of the customer programs and real-time feedback, we identified friction early and adjusted fast. That agility increased feature usage and strengthened long-term stickiness.”
Don’t Chase Usage, Create Value
Driving adoption isn’t about pushing customers to log in more often or use more features. It’s about creating value in ways customers recognize and prioritize. That requires executive engagement that aligns the product to business outcomes, journey-based playbooks that provide guidance at the right moments, and feedback loops that allow you to adapt faster than problems compound.
“Don’t chase usage, create value. Don’t just track customers, connect with them. Because when customers feel heard, supported, and guided, they don’t just adopt your product. They advocate for it,” advises Taylor.
Adoption starts with engagement. Engagement starts with treating customers like partners, not metrics.
Connect with Keyonna LaGrone Taylor on LinkedIn for more insights.
