How Pipefy's switch to Chameleon's user onboarding solutions more than doubled user retention

Founded in 2015, Pipefy is a workflow management software that provides a no-code platform for designing and automatic business processes, whether it’s for Finance, HR, Customer Service, or IT. Pipefy’s no-code solution has proven to be extremely effective for companies looking to increase productivity by standardizing processes. As a testament to this, the company raised a $75 Million Series C in 2021. 

The Challenge of one-size-fits-all onboarding

For its user onboarding needs, Pipefy had been using a large well-known vendor for a couple of years, and it allowed the team to deliver a single horizontal onboarding experience. However, they soon felt constrained by the solution as they increased their efforts to drive more PLG, in particular with verticalization of onboarding. 

Pipefy’s offering has various verticals, and depending on each one, how they onboard users had to be differentiated. For instance, HR business processes are very distinguished from those of finance or IT.

But with their existing solution, they were only able to offer a one-size-fits-all onboarding to all of their customers. With an aim to drive retention, activation, and revenue via excellent onboarding, Pipefy decided that they had to find a solution that would allow them to better personalize in-app guidance for their new users. 

Cue Chameleon

Pipefy wanted a solution that would be able to deliver dynamic and verticalized onboarding experiences, personalized to specific use cases instead of having one that is shown to all users. They needed something that would help users understand exactly how to leverage their work with Pipefy, thereby decreasing time to value, and increasing retention and adoption. 

For this, Pipefy searched far and wide. 

They found the various alternatives similar to one another, but with Chameleon they were able to clearly feel the difference. 

Here are the elements that made Chameleon stand out from the rest of the competition.

Superior user experience configuration  

When Pipefy compared Chameleon to other solutions, they saw how Chameleon Tours excelled at delivering sophisticated user experiences that are targeted and contextualized. 

As shown above, Pipefy was able to make customized Tours with Chameleon that could also be styled accordingly to Pipefy's brand colors.

In particular, three things stood out for Pipefy: 

✅ Events and user properties to create custom audiences

✅ Styling and UI/UX mechanics

✅ Launchers to deliver checklists 

When it came to checklist widgets, Pipefy was dissatisfied with alternative checklist solutions due to constraints around customization and segmentation rules. However, with Chameleon Launchers, Pipefy found the perfect solution to deliver onboarding checklists, enabling them to highlight quick and actionable items that will help users in their journey.  

Below is an example of an onboarding checklist that Pipefy was able to create with Chameleon.

Deep integrations with best-in-class tools  

Another big factor that influenced Pipefy to pick Chameleon was how the platform integrated with other best-in-class tools. 

In particular, it was critical for Pipefy to have excellent product analytics. Built-in solutions found in other tools were far inadequate for their needs. Instead, Chameleon’s integration with best-in-class analytics platforms was what won them over. 

Deploying verticalized onboarding with Chameleon 

With Chameleon’s deep configurations, Pipefy was able to deploy dedicated walkthroughs based on users’ profiles, such as industry and desired use case. Leaving behind their horizontal approach to onboarding, Pipefy customized user flows, tailoring them to the vertical of each user type.

The Chameleon Effect on retention 

The effect on retention from personalizing experiences with Chameleon was almost immediately visible. 

Below is a Chameleon Tooltip in action as part of a Pipefy Tour

In order to truly prove that customized onboarding per vertical outperforms onboarding that is uniform across the entire product, the Pipefy team ran multiple experiments and found that personalized onboarding experiences had the best results. 

The numbers speak for themselves. Pipefy saw a significant increase in retention.

📈 Result: On days 8 to 14, Pipefy achieved between 20% and 30% in retention with Chameleon-built onboarding, more than doubling from their baseline of 7% to 12%. 

With a simple A/B test, they were able to prove that verticalized onboarding that was more personalized to each user type drove more retention than horizontal ones. 

An evolving partnership 

Having successfully leveraged personalized onboarding to increase retention, Pipefy is continuing to fine-tune their onboarding experiences, such as delivering onboarding Tours based on user personas. 

Not only that, Pipefy is also starting to take advantage of even more tools from Chameleon’s product adoption platform, including our latest feature, the HelpBar, which makes help resources more easily accessible to users in-app.