Customer Value Chain

A customer value chain, in Potio’s pricing method, is the sequence of steps a customer goes through from signing up to getting the result they bought the product for. Mapping it is the first step in finding a value metric, because every step suggests things you could bill on. It is a different idea from Porter’s value chain, which maps a company’s own internal activities.

Potio’s standard teaching example is Calendly:

1. Set up an account, define meeting types, connect calendars
2. Share booking links or embed them on a website
3. Meetings get booked and confirmed
4. Time is saved and the meetings actually happen

Candidate metrics sit under each step. Users, connected calendars and meeting types under step one. Link views under step two. Meetings booked under step three. Meetings held, or hours saved, under step four.

Potio’s take: Start at the customer’s end, not your database. A list of things your product already counts has nothing to do with what the customer is trying to get done. Where the price attaches on the chain decides how it feels: early reads as an investment the customer works to control, late reads as a partner sharing in the result.

How this plays out

Two questions build the chain. What is the customer trying to achieve? That gives the last step. What has to happen before that, and before that? Keep going backwards until you reach signup.

Then score every candidate metric on two questions, in order. First, how easy is it to measure and attribute: easy, possible or hard. Hard gets discarded on the spot, however close it sits to the real value. Second, how well does it track perceived value: customers happily pay more as it grows, customers understand it but do not love it, or neither.

In the Calendly case, both step-four candidates die on the first question. Calendly cannot see whether a meeting happened or know what an hour of someone’s time is worth. Users, calendars and meetings booked come out strongest, and Calendly prices per user, at step one. That works because the seat holder is the person whose time gets saved.

The same pattern shows up in almost every chain. Metrics that survive measurement and attribution cluster in the middle. A parking enforcement company, discussed in a public pricing forum, billed per violation processed, so its own success shrank its revenue. It asked whether it could charge for pedestrian lives saved instead. No, because a city runs around a hundred and fifty road safety initiatives at once and nobody can claim a share of the fatality rate. The workable metrics sat between the two.

In Potio’s workshops this screen removes roughly 80% of candidates in about twenty minutes. The survivors go through the value metric filters.

How do you map a customer value chain for pricing?

Write the customer’s end goal as the last step, then ask what has to happen before it until you reach signup. Put every possible metric under each step, including bad ones, then score them for measurability and link to perceived value.

Where on the value chain should you price?

As far toward the outcome as a strong metric survives. Never trade metric quality for proximity to the outcome.

Why not just price on the outcome?

Outcomes usually fail measurement or attribution. The software cannot see them, or too many other factors influence them, so every invoice becomes an argument. See outcome-based pricing.

More on this: SaaS Value Metric: How to Find the Right One

Related terms

• Value Metric
• Value Metric Filters
• Inputs to Impact Chain
• Outcome-Based Pricing

Also called: value chain mapping, value chain for pricing.

Updated 29 September 2026