A good first impression can work wonders.
J.K. Rowling did just that with her first book. It hit the shelves and it exploded. For every book that she’s written since, upon its release, there are lines out the door and around the corner. This is the type of impression that every business should aim to make with its customers–one that explodes and creates a long line to purchase the organization’s products or services. The way to do this is by developing an excellent customer onboarding process, and then continuously improving that process.
The first step in developing an outstanding process is understanding the benefits that your business can reap. The second is acknowledging that maintaining an excellent onboarding process means always striving for continuous improvement.
The Benefits of Customer Onboarding
Customer onboarding should never be seen as a burden or an annoying process that doesn’t really have a point. It has a big point and it has the potential to provide you with advantages over your competitors–if done correctly.
The first benefit is the referrals that you will get. Consumers are used to buying a product from a vendor and never hearing from them again unless they request help or the organization is trying to sell them something else. When you go above and beyond by welcoming the new customer in, getting them set up with your product, helping them get to know you and your company better, and ensuring their happiness, they will be both surprised and delighted. They’ll tell everyone they know about you and strongly encourage others to work with you. And just in case you don’t realize the value of referrals, up to half of all purchases are influenced by recommendations.
The second advantage that can be seen in improving customer onboarding is customer loyalty. It’s important to keep in mind that just 20% of existing customers can create 80% of a company’s future revenue. If you want to ensure that this happens, welcoming a customer to your brand is essential. Consumers, now more than ever, want to have relationships with the companies they buy from. They want to know that they are valued. The only way to grow this relationship and illustrate value is to take them by the hand, show them your company culture and engage with them. When you do this, they’ll stay with you, regardless of whether your competition has better prices.
The third benefit gained through getting onboarding right is increasing your revenue. Bringing consumers through the sales pipeline is time and money intensive. You had to market your company, identify the lead, pursue them, nurture the prospect, draft a proposal, possibly meet or speak over the phone, and then convert them into a buyer. All of this will have been a waste if they return the product or decide to discontinue your service. Companies need to understand that converting a lead into a customer is not the end of the journey. It is only the beginning. When onboarding happens is really when your time to shine begins. This is where you help the customer understand and love the product or service. This is where true revenue is maintained.
Steps Towards Continuous Improvement in Your Customer Onboarding
The benefits of a customer onboarding process are inevitable–if it is created thoughtfully and continuously improved upon. The market changes and so do consumers’ desires. Organizations need to be able to adjust. This means shaping a process that encourages change and asking the right questions, internally, at regular intervals.
The first key ingredient to getting onboarding right and finding ways to improve it is by following up–quickly and often. This is especially important with brand new customers. Some businesses are hesitant to follow-up too often because they don’t want to annoy customers. This is a misconception. The success of both cross-selling and customer satisfaction increase the more communication there is–just make sure it’s valuable communication that benefits the customer. And you need to do this quickly to ensure that customers understand how much you appreciate their business. Extra tip: The same representative who brought them through the sales funnel should be the one to follow-up with them–it feels much more personal.
The second way to improve the onboarding process is through conducting a needs assessment with each and every new customer. When you ask customers questions you benefit in three ways. The first is that the customer feels valued. They see that you have a desire to understand them and to better serve them. The second benefit is that you can use this information to identify other products or services that might fit the customer’s needs. The third is that you can gain insight into what they thought of the sales funnel, how you can serve them during the onboarding process and ways you can improve both the sales funnel and the onboarding.
A third way to make sure that your customer onboarding process is always up to par is through encouraging customer feedback. When your customers are happy you want to know and when they are unhappy you want to know. This is the only way you can figure out what works, and stick with it, as well as what doesn’t work, so you can change it. And this isn’t just feedback in regards to your service. It is feedback about the product or service. They are the ones who use it every day. They likely have ideas to make it better. Even if those ideas aren’t possible to implement, explain why that’s the case to them. There are just two important aspects of making customer feedback work. First, make it easy to give feedback. Send out emails requesting it. Give them a call. Leave options on your website and social media platforms. Second, respond to the feedback. This will encourage them to give you more and it will make them feel like you care.
A fourth method of improving the onboarding system in your organization is talking to the customers who left. This is rarely comfortable, but it is always necessary. You need to know why individuals decide not to stick with you. Ask earnestly and kindly–not in a way that signifies you are asking for them to come back, but rather that you are trying to improve. A lot of the time, the reason will be one you would never have thought of. It will be an undercover issue that has been eating away at customers. In addition, find out why they didn’t come to you before. Maybe you aren’t responsive enough. Maybe the feedback options are too hidden. This information is invaluable.
To solidify the continual growth with the help of customer onboarding, there are a few questions you need to ask internally:
- Identify the methods you’re using to build user relationships.
- Figure out how you are helping customers to see success with the product or service.
- Find the main causes of churn.
- Determine how you communicate value to customers.
- Pinpoint how you can better explain the product and how to use it.
- Know what worries customers.
- Ask for the metrics for success that your consumers are using.
- Verify customer’s objectives and desired outcomes.
The point of customer onboarding is to solve your customer’s problems and help them reach success quickly. If you understand their needs and worries, it’s not difficult to do this. It simply takes time and continually finding new and interesting ways of getting the information you need. When you do this, you’ll see customer retention rise and churn fall.
Related Questions
How can the customer onboarding process be improved?
Begin by mapping your current onboarding journey, and identify pain points where customers get stuck or become bewildered. Leverage customer feedback and data to identify these problematic areas. Make your welcome emails friendlier and easy to understand, break complicated steps into digestible chunks, and add progress bars so customers keep track of how far they’ve come. And do not forget to celebrate small wins with your customers – such as when they set up the profile, or when they make their first purchase.
How to speed up customer onboarding process?
To get onboarding done more quickly you need to cut out the unnecessary steps, and automate the repetitive tasks. Rather than making customers complete long forms, draw information from their social media profiles or other existing accounts. Leverage intelligent forms that store customer details and auto-populate fields when applicable. Send out automatic welcome messages and useful suggestions according to the travel that your customers are at. Think of it as a friendly GPS that helps people arrive at their destination in a hurry.
What changes would you recommend in improving the onboarding experience?
Try to make the experience more personal and less scary. “Set different onboarding inroads for different types of customers – a small business owner just starting up needs a different onboarding path than an enterprise.” Include short videos that demonstrate rather than explain. Have a balance of self-service help and help from a human, so people can learn in the way they prefer. Ease of going back and looking at steps, like having a safety net when learning to ride a bike.
How do you create a good customer onboarding experience?
Structure your onboarding like a friendly chat, not a dull lecture. Begin with a warm welcome, so customers know they made the right decision. The first few minutes they need to essentially be rewarded with quick wins in order to have some success. Cover the story with clear, simple language and lots of visuals. Include checkpoints to ensure that customers have gotten the message before you proceed, as any good teacher should. More importantly, enjoy yourself – no-one likes dull, dry, mechanical drudgery.
What are the key metrics to track during customer onboarding?
See how long customers take to complete each step — and where they abandon the funnel. Keep track of how many customers actually use your key features post-onboarding. Track customer satisfaction scores and time to first success moment. Analyze support ticket trends to identify common points of confusion. Those numbers tell you where you onboard needs fine-tuning, like a physician taking vital signs.
How can technology improve the customer onboarding process?
A bit of digital magic can make onboarding feel seamless. Learn to predict the help customers might want next using artificial intelligence. Include chatbots for immediate responses to frequently asked questions. Build interactive guides that change as your customers use your product. Use digital signature solution for paper-work. Consider technology your friendly assistant, smoothing and speeding everything for your buyers.
What role does customer feedback play in onboarding improvement?
Nothing is as valuable as customer feedback for improving onboarding. Scheduling regular check-ins throughout to get thoughts and ideas. Employ surveys, interviews and behavior tracking to determine what is working and what is not. Particularly focus on customers who are fighting during, or defecting post, onboarding – their feedback is usually the canary in the coalmine. Consider customer feedback your compass to better onboarding.
How can you personalize the onboarding experience?
[Sketch] Design onboarding flows that align varying customer needs and objectives. Leverage the information they gave you during the signing up for profile creation. Send targeted tips by feed of industry or role. Match the speed and depth of information to their experience. Approach it the way a good host would who makes each guest feel special and understood.What common mistakes should be avoided during customer onboarding?
It’s information overload when you drop too much on customers at once. Don’t use technical terms or presume that the customers know more than they do! Never ignore customers for hours waiting for replies or assistance. Don’t pull customers through steps they don’t want. Avoid rigid one-size-fits-all formulas. I want you to think of these errors like potholes in the road — they add unnecessary frustration to the journey for your customers.
How do you balance automation with human touch in onboarding?
Automate what can be automated and reserve human touch for more complicated problems or emotional connections. When it comes to data collection and basic guidance, let technology do the talking — but when it comes to strategy, real people can do much more. Make it clear how customers can access human help when they need it. Consider it an efficiency-empathy dance — you need both to have a good experience.
