{"slug": "our-customer-success-team-built-these-apps-in-one-day-with-aha-builder", "title": "Our Customer Success team built these apps in one day with Aha! Builder", "summary": "Aha! Labs' Customer Success team built three AI applications in one day using Aha! Builder, including a product adoption dashboard called Ship Happens, to enhance their ability to support customers in AI app-building. The team, led by Perry Hurtt, Sr. Product Concierge Manager, created the apps during a hands-on training exercise and shared them in a live showcase, demonstrating how product managers can quickly turn ideas into enterprise-ready tools.", "body_md": "# Our Customer Success team built these apps in one day with Aha! Builder\n\nWe have done this for 13 years. We use our own software to run the business. Each new product we launch is good for customers, but it is also good for us. It expands what we can do internally. But when we [launched Aha! Builder](/blog/introducing-aha-builder-the-fastest-way-to-create-trusted-business-applications) earlier this year, it was not just a new tool to adopt. It represented a fundamental shift in our product development workflow.\n\nAI app-building is transforming how product managers can turn ideas into useful software. We needed to live this out ourselves so we could help our customers make the most of this change.\n\nWhen we refer to ourselves as product experts, we mean it — especially in [Customer Success (CS)](/product/customer-success). Everyone on the CS team has prior product management experience and participates in ongoing learning. That knowledge lets us uniquely support our customers, who are mostly product teams, in doing their best work.\n\nBut AI is rapidly changing what \"best\" looks like. Expectations are higher. A few years ago, great product managers set strategy, understood customer needs, built the roadmap, and guided teams to deliver on it. Now, they also need to use AI to accelerate all of that work — and (above all) build fluency in [AI prototyping and app-building](/blog/how-ai-prototyping-is-changing-the-way-product-managers-work).\n\nThat shift means our customer support needs to evolve as well. The CS team had been experimenting with Aha! Builder since launch. But as customer interest grew, we wanted a way to turn that individual exploration into teamwide learning.\n\nThe CS team spent a day building AI applications in Aha! Builder. The result? Sharp examples and shared knowledge to better support our customers.\n\n[Got an idea for your own AI app? Join our first AI Builder Day ](/academy/events/ai-builder-day-create-a-working-app-with-AI-free)\n\nA hands-on exercise was the main focus of the training. To get into our customers' mindset, everyone worked from the same scenario: *You are a product manager on an internal tools team building a solution for an organization with more than 500 employees. *\n\nEveryone created their own AI app in [Aha! Builder](/builder/overview) and noted observations along the way. Three team members then shared their applications in a live showcase. Their examples show how product managers can spot a recurring internal problem, define the solution, and quickly build tools that meet user needs and enterprise demands.\n\nHere is what they built — and what we learned. (By the way, if you want to try a similar exercise yourself, [check out our upcoming public hackathon-style event](/academy/events/ai-builder-day-create-a-working-app-with-AI-free).)\n\n## 1. Ship Happens: A product adoption dashboard\n\n*This application was created as part of a training exercise using sample data. It does not reflect live Aha! functionality or actual company or customer data.*\n\n**AI application:** Ship Happens | A product analytics and feature adoption dashboard that helps product managers and company leaders understand whether newly delivered functionality is creating value for customers\n\n**Built by: **Perry Hurtt, Sr. Product Concierge Manager\n\n**Target users: **Product managers, product operations managers, and executive leadership\n\n**What it solves:** Teams need data to inform their decisions, but it can be difficult to connect different metrics into a cohesive story. An internal AI app can help create a layer between raw information and the decisions teams need to make.\n\nFor example, many product teams do not have enough visibility into feature performance after launch. An app like Ship Happens could help teams look beyond delivery metrics to see which features customers adopt, where engagement falls short, and where to take action. Product managers can use those insights to make informed decisions and show leadership the impact of each launch.\n\n**How it works: **\n\nAn executive dashboard combines shipped-feature data with adoption scores, customer reach, overall health, and more — with trends by customer segment and industry.\n\nAn AI-powered opportunity center turns adoption insights into actionable follow-up tasks.\n\nInteractive drill-downs, risk alerts, and an AI-generated user guide help teams investigate issues and decide what to do next.\n\nPerry created the first version of this AI application in about 15 minutes with Aha! Builder. Using short follow-up prompts, he refined it into a polished tool — complete with [user documentation](/builder/documentation) — in roughly 90 minutes.\n\n## 2. Side Quest: An imaginative employee growth platform\n\n*This application was created as part of a training exercise using sample data. It does not reflect live Aha! functionality or actual company or customer data.*\n\n**AI application: **Side Quest | An internal employee growth platform that turns team goals, feedback, recognition, and achievements into an RPG-inspired adventure\n\n**Built by: **Terri Salie, Sr. Product Evaluation Manager\n\n**Target users: **Employees, team leads, people operations teams, and company leadership\n\n**What it solves:** It is a common problem: A team has the information it needs, but those details are scattered across systems and difficult for people to turn into a consistent, motivating workflow.\n\nTake employee growth as an example. Progress often lives in separate systems for goals, training, recognition, and feedback. An internal AI app like Side Quest can bring those efforts together in one place, so employees can track their progress throughout the year — not only during performance reviews. The video game style of the application can help to encourage engagement and progress within the tool.\n\n**How it works: **\n\nUsers choose a companion and build a personalized career growth journey around goals, learning, challenges, feedback, and recognition.\n\nAn AI-powered coach offers relevant recommendations and tracks milestones, streaks, badges, and an adventure log.\n\nTeam leads, people operations, and company leaders can view growth insights and assign training or challenges.\n\nTerri relied on Aha! Builder to handle the [technical foundation](/builder/application-configuration) — including single sign-on, navigation, sample data, and light and dark modes. That allowed her to focus on shaping the vintage RPG-inspired experience that makes Side Quest feel distinct and engaging.\n\n## 3. Field Guide: A practical internal tool for CS\n\n*This application was created as part of a training exercise using sample data. It does not reflect live Aha! functionality or actual company or customer data.*\n\n**AI application: **Field Guide | An internal tool for customer-facing teams to help guide customer conversations, drawing from internal and external product documentation\n\n**Built by: **Jessica Morgan, Sr. Product Concierge Manager\n\n**Target users: **Aha! Customer Success Team\n\n**What it solves:** Too often, valuable knowledge exists across documentation, past conversations, and specialists' experience — but employees cannot reliably find the right answer at the moment they need it. An AI app can change that.\n\nOn a CS team like ours, teammates need reliable information when preparing for demos, responding to complex questions, and troubleshooting customer issues. An AI app like Field Guide is an example of how you can bring that guidance into one place, so team members can quickly find what they need to support customers well.\n\n**How it works: **\n\nThe app creates tailored demo scripts based on each customer's goals, needs, and familiarity with the software.\n\nIt surfaces answers from internal and external documentation to support customer conversations, with citations for fact-checking.\n\nIt generates post-call summaries and captures suggested knowledge base updates or new ideas.\n\nBefore building, Jess used Aha! Builder as a strategic thinking partner to examine the problem and shape her approach. The guided setup helped her reach a stronger output sooner than when she had tried other AI app-building tools.\n\n### What we learned from this AI app-building exercise\n\nA few common themes emerged from the team's observations about the experience. We learned:\n\n**Strategy comes first.** The strongest AI applications began with a clear, deliberate purpose. When the team gave Aha! Builder context about the problem they wanted to solve and who it would serve, it helped them turn that direction into a more useful first version of a tool.**Stay specific.** The best examples were focused tools with one clear job — not broad systems trying to do too much at once. That focus also improved the build process: Precise prompts gave the AI clearer direction, reducing rework and making better use of AI credits.**AI is fast, but good decisions are not.** The team was impressed by how quickly rough concepts could become working software, making ideas easier to explore. But creating something genuinely useful still required careful thought and iteration — taking[considerably more time](/blog/time-saved-is-the-wrong-way-to-talk-about-ai)than building the app itself.**Bigger teams need bigger capabilities.** The team's AI apps relied on[advanced features](https://support.aha.io/aha-builder/support-articles/technical-capabilities/overview-of-elle-s-capabilities~7657593042039240408)such as access controls, integrations, shared design systems, and embedded AI to meet their needs. For product managers building solutions for hundreds or thousands of users, these capabilities are not optional extras — they are essential functionality to support enterprise standards.\n\nAs AI continues to accelerate our daily work, this exercise was worth the pause. It offered the team more clarity and confidence that we can pass on to you.\n\nCurious to get hands-on with AI app-building yourself? We are pairing up with Pragmatic Institute to host our first [hackathon-style event](/academy/events/ai-builder-day-create-a-working-app-with-AI-free) for Aha! Builder. Bring an idea that you want to turn into an application — you will leave with expert guidance and a working version of your app (maybe even a prize). Hope to see you there.\n\n**Create your own working AI app for free. ****Join the kickoff for AI Builder Day on Sept. 3****. **", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/our-customer-success-team-built-these-apps-in-one-day-with-aha-builder", "canonical_source": "https://www.aha.io/blog/our-customer-success-team-built-these-apps-in-one-day-with-aha-builder", "published_at": "2026-08-25 13:30:43+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-25 18:14:07.988899+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-products", "ai-tools", "generative-ai"], "entities": ["Aha! Labs", "Aha! 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