In the ever-evolving landscape of B2B SaaS, staying ahead requires more than just a competitive product – it demands a deep understanding of your customer's needs and behaviors. Descope, a trailblazing authentication platform, recognized this challenge and sought to revolutionize the way they approach customer engagement. With the introduction of FunnelStory, Descope's journey took an exciting turn, leading to enhanced visibility, streamlined decision-making, and an empowered approach to driving revenue through customer success.
A New Kind of Authentication Platform
Established in 2022, Descope was created to help developers build secure and frictionless authentication for any application. They offer a low-code/no-code workflow builder, SDKs, and APIs that empower developers to easily create and customize passwordless authentication flows for every user interaction without the need to overhaul an application. Designed by security experts, Descope also prevents fraudulent activity, stops bot attacks on login pages, protects against account takeover, and enables apps to easily add MFA and step-up flows. In short, they’re a bad*** company.
Embracing a Developer-Centric Approach
From the outset, Descope recognized that catering to developers was key to their success. To reach this audience they embraced a bottoms-up approach – aka product-led growth (PLG) – understanding that developers are the driving force behind the adoption of authentication solutions. To fuel their self-serve experience, Descope's strategy focused on creating a wealth of educational resources – from blogs and code samples to plugins and integrations – ensuring that developers had access to the tools they needed for success. This developer-centric approach not only built trust and authority in their category but also led to thousands of sign-ups. Not a bad problem to have.
Challenges on the Road to PLG Success
As customers poured into their platform Descope started to face significant challenges, particularly in understanding their user behavior post-signup. They grappled with visibility issues since it's incredibly difficult to track the flow and activity of end-users in their customer's applications, due to the increased security and privacy controls they enforce. What they needed was real-time insights into their customer’s user activity, usage progress, and flagging when customers get stuck.
They first attempted to solve this visibility problem using traditional customer success tools but quickly realized that their complex funnel required a more customized solution. So next was trying to build this on their own. But that too felt like more of a bandaid than a long-term solution.
“The problem with most of today’s Customer Success tools is that they are limited by manual human intervention.”
Empowering Visibility and Decision-Making
Descope's journey took a transformative turn when they found FunnelStory. To solve their visibility challenge, they worked closely with the FunnelStory team to design and implement a CDP/data warehouse that FunnelStory could leverage. Once FunnelStory was configured, Descope gained access to the data they needed, breaking down user activity into an easy-to-digest funnel view. This intuitive interface empowered Descope to better see and understand user behavior, making it a game-changer for their decision-making process.
From Data to Decisions
In a week Descope moved from zero visibility to an enhanced understanding of its complex customer journey. They finally had access to conversion rates, activation time, and inactive account insights, unleashing their ability to begin making strategic decisions that directly influenced revenue generation.
“It was like someone threw a massive spotlight on our product data for the first time.”
Armed with actionable insights, Descope quickly justified two strategic hires to further bolster its growth efforts. This new team was empowered to prioritize and focus on deals that were opportunities - completely eliminating the time teams usually waste chasing the wrong opportunities.
This Is Only The Beginning
Looking ahead, Descope remains focused on leveraging FunnelStory’s platform to further optimize its customer journeys. Their ultimate goal of making a significant dent in revenue growth through predictive engagement and customer guidance is now within reach.
"FunnelStory has armed our leadership team with the potent formula: visibility, insights, and engagement. This formula will not only unlock revenue but make it more predictable.”
