I run a chatbot mental help service, something I’m noticing is theres alooooot of interest, but then very few people who stick around, and i’ve heard others parrot this sentiment, so I’m wondering what everyones experience has been? How is your user retainment going? Is it just that the tech is so new people are too afraid to fully buy into the idea? What do you think?
Hi!
With these new, automated mental help services it’s tricky to get the KPI goals right because the conversion process doesn’t really end with sending the first message to the Chatbot. As you and others are observing the churn rate following this event is so high it would usually be indicative of a product with, well, lots of potential to the upside.
If we take a look at the whole picture and expect conversion rates around 1-3% then it’s likely a better approach to define a conversion as the event where the user actually starts paying, or in case of a growth strategy returns several times before treating this customer as converted.
From there numbers like the churn rate and the customer lifetime value can be applied to match up with the expectations around the classical KPI frameworks.
The idea then is to properly define conversion metrics around engagement or monetary gains. Up until that point all users should be treated as if they were still onboarding or more likely “interested in general”.
I used to be a game developer. In mobile apps such as games, its common to have 3 metrics. 1 day retention, 7 day retention, and 28 day retention. The numbers are actually pretty dismal for 28 day retention, even if you are the best game in the world.
1 day retention usually is only 25%. It falls off pretty quickly to 11%, then to 6% at 28 days. I’ve made mobile, desktop, blockchain, and roblox games. All of them follow this trend. What I realized is that the medium, genre, format, and style do not matter. It always trends this way.
I wouldnt get hooked up on the category of plugin, the fact it is an AI product, or whatever makes it unique. It kind of sucks, but your plugin is going to face similar numbers. The silver lining is there is plenty of content on user retention and you have a good baseline for what is average and what it looks like to be knocking it out of the park.
I would just dive into user retention strategies for non entertainmemt based apps. I’ve only done games and mental health is out of my league. But, in games, the strategy is to keep on adding content like quests, daily rewards, etc. You’ll have to be creative in how to keep people engaged. If you can get your user to build a habit, like check every day at lunch or something, then you’ll have better chances retaining them.
Try to open up other lines of communication, like email, messenger, or push/desktop notifications. Otherwise it will be hard to build that habit forming usage.
probably best to dig into those people who stick around, why are they staying, how are you helping them and why are they using you over another product and focus on that.
all of this is new and even i myself have downloaded/tried/signed up for 1000 different ai apps or services and stop using them almost immediately mostly because im really just curious what people are doing, a lot of the time im not even signing up because i have X problem i need solved i just want to see whats out there
i think i saw recently webflow had 40,000 beta users and only <40 converted to paying users and id imagine even less stayed on after 3 months so don’t get discouraged software is tricky because there’s so much competition and its so easy to just cancel, maybe see what you can offer/do immediately that might make canceling or switching more difficult. i use an ‘ai’ exercise app and because during the free trial it learned about my fitness levels and adjusted to that, im unlikely to switch or cancel because starting from scratch with another app feels like a pain.
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