Posthog Onboarding

PostHog CS Improvement Skill

Help existing PostHog customers get more value from their instance. This skill is for Customer Success, not sales — the customer already has PostHog installed, something isn't working well, and your job is to diagnose the gaps and give them a clear path forward.

Core assumption: Their current implementation is probably underinstrumented, inconsistently named, or not being used by the right people. Start from that baseline.

Workflow

1. Research – Understand what the company builds

2. Current State – Ask the customer to describe their setup and pain points

3. Customer Profile – Synthesize into a structured profile

4. Ideal Schema – Design best-in-class events and properties for their business type

5. Insights Plan – Prescribe insights by problem + maturity (see references/insights-plan.md)

6. Improvement Plan – Prioritized, actionable recommendations

7. Output – Customer-facing improvement plan

Writing Style: Follow references/writing-style.md for all outputs. Conversational and direct — not corporate, not salesy.

Step 1: Research

When triggered with a company name or domain, research:

• What they build (product/service)

• Their customers (B2B/B2C, market)

• Business model (pricing, signup flow)

• Tech signals (job postings, docs, stack)

Determine business type: B2B SaaS, B2C SaaS, E-commerce, Marketplace, Developer Tools, Fintech, Healthcare, Content/Media

See references/business-types.md for events and metrics by type.

Step 2: Current State

The goal here is to understand what's broken, missing, or ignored — not to validate what's working. Ask questions that surface problems.

Ask 2–3 questions max per message. Skip anything already known from research or context.

Must-Have

Should-Have

• How long they've had PostHog

• Whether engineers are engaged or if CS/PM are blocked waiting for instrumentation

• Any previous attempts to fix the problem that didn't stick

• Compliance constraints

Step 3: Customer Profile

## Customer Profile: [Company]

### Overview
- **Business Type:** [type]
- **What They Build:** [1–2 sentences]
- **Their Customers:** [B2B/B2C, who]
- **Revenue Model:** [subscription/usage/etc]
- **Stage:** [Seed/A/B, employee count]

### PostHog Setup
- **Time Using PostHog:** [months/years]
- **Products Active:** [Analytics, Replay, Flags, Experiments, Surveys, etc]
- **Analytics Maturity:** [Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced]
- **Who Uses PostHog:** [roles]
- **Who Doesn't (But Should):** [roles being left out]

### Current State
- **What They Think Is Working:** [their perception]
- **Primary Pain Point:** [the #1 problem, in their words]
- **Likely Gaps:** [based on what they told you — missing events, underused products, no dashboards, wrong people]

### Technical Context
- **Stack:** [web/mobile/backend, frameworks]
- **User Volume:** [DAU/MAU or events/month if known]
- **Compliance:** [requirements if any]

### Their Product
- **Key Journeys:** [1] [2] [3]
- **Activation Metric:** [what success looks like for their users]

Step 4: Ideal Schema

Don't try to audit what they have — you don't have visibility into their data. Instead, design the best-in-class schema for their business type and key journeys, then use it as a benchmark. The customer can map their current tracking against it.

See references/data-schema.md for full property lists, group schemas, and AARRR event templates. See references/business-types.md for events and metrics specific to their business type.

What to design

Person properties — what you'd want to know about every user (role, plan, signup source, activation status, etc.)

Group properties — for B2B: org name, plan, seat count, MRR, health score

Core events — cover the full AARRR journey for their product type:

• Acquisition: how users arrive and sign up

• Activation: the moment they first get value

• Retention: the actions that predict they'll come back

• Referral: sharing, inviting, expanding

• Revenue: upgrade, purchase, renewal

Key properties on each event — include context that makes the event useful: source, method, plan, is_first_time, duration_seconds, etc.

Naming conventions

• snake_case for everything

• is_ prefix for booleans

• _count suffix for numbers

• _at suffix for timestamps

• Be specific: subscription_upgraded not upgrade

Present this as: "Here's what great looks like for a company like yours — let's figure out how close you are."

Step 5: Insights Plan

Prescribe insights based on their pain point and maturity. See references/insights-plan.md for full detail.

Maturity Levels

Beginner: No analytics or just GA, no custom events, no dashboards Intermediate: Some events, knows funnels/cohorts, has used Mixpanel or Amplitude Advanced: Mature tracking, warehouse integration, running experiments

By Problem

Always suggest 2–3 capabilities they're probably not using:

• Session Replay with filters (most underused)

• Correlation analysis

• Feature flags for safe rollouts

• In-product surveys

• User paths

• Group analytics for B2B accounts

Step 6: Improvement Plan

Prioritize by what unblocks the most value fastest. Frame as three phases:

Fix first (Days 1–7): Broken or missing events that are blocking any meaningful analysis. Naming fixes. Enabling products they already have access to.

Strengthen (Week 2–3): Add tracking for key journeys identified in Step 2. Build 2–3 core dashboards tied directly to their pain point. Get the right people in PostHog.

Expand (Week 3+): Add PostHog products they're not using (Flags, Experiments, Surveys). Deepen with group analytics or warehouse if relevant.

SDK reference (for instrumentation fixes)

Watch-outs

• No engineering bandwidth to implement fixes — flag this early, don't build a plan that requires it

• Pain point is vague — keep asking until it's specific and measurable

• Tracking exists but no one looks at it — this is an insights gap, not a data gap; solve differently

• The champion isn't actually using PostHog — whoever you're talking to needs to be a real user

Step 7: Output — Customer Improvement Plan

One document, shared with the customer. Conversational and direct — written like a PostHog doc, not a sales deck.

# PostHog improvement plan – [Company]

## What we're trying to fix
[One or two sentences. Name the problem specifically — not "improve analytics" but "understand why users churn in week 2" or "know which features drive retention."]

## Where you are now
[Honest, kind assessment. What's working, what isn't, and what's missing. Don't sugarcoat but don't be harsh. 3–5 sentences.]

## The ideal setup for a company like yours
[Brief description of what best-in-class looks like for their business type — reference the ideal schema from Step 4. Frame as "here's where you want to get to."]

## What we recommend

### Fix first
[2–3 specific, immediately actionable fixes. Name the event or property. Explain what it unlocks in one sentence.]

### Events to add
[Key missing events from the ideal schema. For each: event name, why it matters, one key property to include.]

### Insights to build
[3–5 specific insights tied to their pain point. Name the insight type, what question it answers.]

### Products to start using
[Any PostHog products they have access to but aren't using. One sentence on why each is relevant to their problem.]

## Your action plan

### Week 1
**Your team:**
- [ ] [Specific action + who owns it]

**We'll handle:**
- [ ] [What PostHog CS will do]

**End of week 1 goal:** [What "done" looks like]

### Week 2–3
[Next phase actions, same format]

## How we'll know it's working
| What | Target | How to check |
|------|--------|--------------|
| [Metric] | [Specific number or outcome] | [Where to look in PostHog] |

Reference Files

• references/data-schema.md – Person/group/event properties with stakeholder value

• references/insights-plan.md – Insights by problem and maturity

• references/business-types.md – Events and metrics by business type

• references/writing-style.md – PostHog writing guidelines