How Chekhub takes users from confusion to clarity with Pendo for Startups

For a company in its earliest stages, teams and resources are stretched thin, and the impact of every decision is amplified. 

Operational management platform Chekhub, has been focused on solving these challenges while working to offer a seamless experience for their users. That’s why they’re using Pendo to take the pressure off their onboarding team, refine their platform, clear up points of friction, and enhance the product experience as their user base grows.

Chekhub’s mission is to empower frontline teams because they define operational success. The end goal is to improve their customers’ customer experience by centralizing and streamlining the often disjointed systems of larger organizations. Chekhub CEO, Jon Trout, experienced the complications of managing install teams for infrastructure deployments at his prior companies. Trout knew the key to solving these operational challenges was to empower an organization’s frontline teams. This was the inspiration behind Chekhub. 

“If everybody in the organization has clarity and is able to operate with precision, you become more efficient. You’re going to deliver a better experience for your customers,” Trout says. “You’re going to reduce confusion. You’re going to allow your business to scale. You’re going to improve profitability.” 

Since Chekhub’s vision is to provide a clear, efficient process for managing operations, they wanted to make sure their user’s experience reflected these values from the moment a user logs in.

Trout knew the best way to do that was to offer top-notch user onboarding. Giving each individual customer hands-on, in-person training could be difficult to scale at the rate the company is growing, especially as a startup. That’s what drew Chekhub’s team to Pendo, with it’s in-app messaging and usage analytics capabilities. “We take our customers’ operations from confusion to clarity in 15 minutes,” Trout says. “We’re able to accomplish this because of Pendo.”

Signing on with Pendo for Startups, Pendo’s exclusive pricing program for early-stage startups, the Chekhub team uses Pendo’s in-app guides to build out a 9-step, automated welcome experience for new users. Chekhub has also created a series of more advanced onboarding modules that take users through more detailed product features. 

Pendo’s platform guides users through the basics of Chekhub and gets them up and running in minutes. This frees up the onboarding team to work on more complex and strategic use cases with customers and help them find greater success, rather than having to spend that time walking them through menial tasks.

“Since implementing Pendo into our platform we have seen the pace of our onboarding increase. Customers can get answers to their questions on how to use our platform as if we were sitting right next to them,” says Ashley Thomas, Chekhub’s Director of Sales and Marketing. “Most of the customers we work with are already using multiple platforms—they need a platform that connects everything. And one with an onboarding process that is truly seamless, and won’t cause any disruption to their operations.“

Pendo’s usage analytics have also helped the Chekhub team identify friction points where users can become frustrated and drop out of workflows. Pendo’s in-app guides help users get past them and complete their tasks.

“We never want anyone to be confused with our product,” Trout says, “With Pendo’s analytics we can see how people are using our product and opportunities for improvement to make it even easier to use”

The team also deployed a Pendo Resource Center, where they house their user guides and make product announcements.

One of Pendo’s most valuable aspects is that all of this can be done without utilizing  development or engineering resources. “We can have someone that’s not developer-level managing Pendo. Developers are hard to find.”

All in all, Trout estimates Pendo has saved Chekhub up to $150,000 in development and support resources in 2021. 

“The ROI with Pendo was realized within a matter of weeks, not months or years,” Trout says. “As a SaaS start-up we need to be thoughtful of how we utilize our resources. Pendo provides key product enhancements without the need for developers.”