Skip to main content
Example: Customer Success & Research

Did the new onboarding actually work?

Golden draws retention by signup cohort, splits it by plan, and checks the effect holds across regions, so you can prove it before asking for more budget.

The problem

Phase two needs proof

Dana runs Customer Success at a SaaS company. In April 2024 her team rebuilt onboarding: guided setup, a first-week check-in call, and in-product tips.

Now leadership wants to know if it worked before funding phase two. Dana needs three answers: do newer customers stay longer, which plan benefits most, and is the lift real or just a different mix of customers?

The solution

Cohorts that tell the story

Golden's retention chart needs two fields: the activity month and the customer. It groups customers by the first month it sees them and draws one row per cohort, month 0 onward.

From there it's a few clicks to split by plan, quantify month 6 before and after, and slice by region to rule out a mix shift.

Step by step

How Golden answers it

1

Draw the cohorts

Pick the retention chart, drop the activity month on Date and the customer ID on Entity. Golden detects monthly granularity and colors every cell by retention rate.

2

Read the step

Scan down the month 6 column. Rows from April 2024 onward are visibly darker. Click any cell to see the customers behind it.

3

Split by plan

Trellis the chart by plan. Enterprise stays dark far to the right; Starter fades within a few months.

4

Quantify before and after

Use the cohort builder to group signups into Before revamp and After revamp, or describe the split in plain language and let the AI propose it. A bar chart then puts month 6 retention side by side.

5

Rule out the mix

Slice by region. Every curve stays where it was, so the lift holds no matter who signed up where.

What you'll find

What Dana takes to leadership

  1. 01
    Month 6 retention rose from 46.9% to 63.1% for cohorts after the revamp; month 3 went from 67.8% to 79.9%
  2. 02
    The step is sharp: the March 2024 cohort keeps 41.4% at month 6, the April cohort keeps 64.5%
  3. 03
    Starter gains the most, from 36.0% to 58.2%. Enterprise was already near 71% and barely moves
  4. 04
    709 customers active in June 2025, worth about $1.61M in monthly revenue
Go further

Make the case for phase two

Forecast the active-customer line six months out to show what the base looks like if post-revamp retention holds. Or run Explain Change on the before and after bars and let Golden attribute the lift across plan and region.

Generate a data story for the funding review (it picks up the before and after step on its own), and share the dashboard with the CS team so each rep can filter to their region.

Next step

Prove it worked

Sign up for early access and see what your cohorts are telling you.