Customer Onboarding Issues & How to Conquer the Top Issues
Eight common issues hinder customer onboarding, from cookie-cutter approaches and outdated policies to insufficient training and poor follow-up. Filiberto Amati of Amati and Associates stresses that user appreciation is critical to retention. Following up within three days at least five to six times helps prevent early customer abandonment.
Summary
- Eight common problems derail customer onboarding - Cookie-cutter approaches with generic welcomes, outdated policies unchanged for decades, unrealistic expectations from over-promising, and post-sale abandonment where communication abruptly stops after the sale completes
- Training and accessibility gaps create frustration - Training glossed over without confirming customer understanding, difficulty reaching live support 24/7, limited contact channels that force customers into one mode of communication, and lengthy delays in problem resolution
- Content and follow-up mistakes damage engagement - Sending irrelevant or too-frequent information, failing to personalize messages, waiting too long between initial contact and follow-up, months of silence between contacts, or new representatives unfamiliar with the customer
- Solutions demand intentional personalization and consistency - Customize communications across multiple channels, review policies annually per changing regulations, promise only what you can deliver, use onboarding emails to engage customers, and follow up within three days at least 5-6 times. See how Tallyfy creates consistent onboarding experiences
Appreciate your clients/customers. Thank you notes, thank you gifts for onboarding new clients and/or discounts to your most loyal customers can speak volumes. Even something so simple as recognition on social media for your most loyal customers can be valuable
Filiberto Amati, founder of Amati & Associates
So what happens when onboarding goes sideways? Turns out, companies must be aware of the potential issues that can hinder onboarding success. Below are the top eight customer onboarding problems and issues that can derail your efforts.
Cookie-cutter approach
Treating all customers the same is a common mistake that can offset your onboarding initiatives. Ideally, customers should feel valued from the first exchange of communication and from the moment they’re welcomed aboard. Examples of a cookie-cutter approach to customer onboarding include the following:
- Failing to offer a customized welcome message to customers
- Forcing customers to adapt to one or two modes of communication
- Sending emails that lack a personalized subject line
Solution: Avoid a cookie-cutter approach by personally welcoming customers. Customize customer communications whenever possible. Make it easy for them to remain engaged by offering them a variety of channels to remain engaged (by phone, in person, electronically, etc.).
If you’re dealing with these kinds of onboarding friction points, having a structured workflow in place can help ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
Client Onboarding Made Easy
Outdated policies
Stale business policies and standards can thwart innovation and stymie customer enthusiasm. Outdated policies can also make customers feel confined and can hold a company back from its full potential. Four illustrations of this pitfall are:
- Failure to review and update policies and procedures that have been in place for decades
- Continually using the same antiquated approach to business
- Refusal to consider novel processes and problem-solving methods
- Overuse of the phrase, “This is how we have always done things.”
Solution: Outdated policies should be examined and revised if they refer to outdated ways of conducting business. All policies should be formally reviewed at least once annually to ensure that they address rapidly changing industry regulations.
Creating unrealistic expectations
The tendency to over-promise is a surefire way to derail the customer onboarding process and lead to dissatisfaction. Actually, that makes it sound too simple. Over-promising is often the byproduct of a customer’s unrealistic expectations and should be avoided. Some factors that contribute to unrealistic expectations include these issues:
- Failure to talk to customers about their goals and objectives
- Inaccurately assessing what your organization can deliver
- Over-promising in an effort to secure a customer’s business
Solution: Ask customers to outline their goals and needs. Don’t promise to deliver results without analyzing your agency’s resources to confirm that you can meet or exceed the customer’s needs. If you discover that you may not be able to follow through on a promise to a customer, notify the client immediately.
Post-sale abandonment issues
Few things are more painful to a buyer than being dropped like a hot potato once the sale is finalized. In our conversations with CEOs at fitness software companies and operations managers at e-commerce startups, we see this pattern repeatedly - post-sale abandonment happens far too often. A successful onboarding experience requires nurturing before, during, and long after a sale’s completed. Post-sale abandonment usually unfolds in the following stages and issues:
- First, there’s a constant flurry of proactive communication with the client
- Communication then continues until the sale is completed
- After the sale, communication abruptly stops and doesn’t resume until the customer reaches out for help
Solution: Promise customers from the start that you’ll continue to deliver great service after the sale. Then hold yourself to that promise! Send a thank you note right after the sale and schedule regular customer follow up calls to prevent any abandonment.
Insufficient training
Inadequate product training can honestly erase any positive benefits of a customer onboarding experience. Your customers invest in your product with the expectation that you’ll provide them with the tools required to put it to good use, and product training is at the top of this list.
Below are some common training-related issues:
- Training is glossed over or provided without an organized approach that engages the customer
- Steps aren’t taken to ensure that customers understand key training points
- Training ceases without confirming that a customer can use a product with confidence
- There’s no follow up with the customer after training to confirm product satisfaction
Solution: Make product training a top priority. Consider using onboarding emails to engage customers. Create a training agenda that includes a way to measure retention of learned material. Proactively follow up with customers after completion of product training to see if they have hit any roadblocks.
Lack of accessibility
Accessibility plays a critical role in the onboarding process. That part should be a no-brainer. Customers want to feel confident about the product they purchase. They want to be assured that any problems or questions about their purchase will be resolved quickly and thoroughly. Unfortunately, poor accessibility during the onboarding process can derail progress, especially when customers experience the following issues:
- Difficulty reaching live support to discuss product questions or needs
- Limited channels through which help can be sought
- Lengthy delays in resolution of problems
Solution: Make sure customers can access technical support 24 hours a day 7 days a week if feasible. If that’s not possible, make sure customers have multiple ways of contacting you to leave a message. Customers should be able to reach you through their preferred mode of communication (voice, email, chat, etc.).
Sending irrelevant information
Information sent to customers during the onboarding process should be clear, concise and relevant. When used properly, content’s an effective onboarding tool. Does more content mean better onboarding? No. However, you can disrupt the onboarding process by misusing content in these ways:
- Sending content that’s too lengthy or boring to read
- Providing content that’s completely unrelated to a customer’s industry
- Sending too much information or sending information too frequently
- Failing to personalize content
Solution: Keep content useful and targeted to your customers’ needs. Personalize your messages whenever possible. Avoid lengthy paragraphs and don’t blast your customer with too many automated messages.
Poor follow-up problems
Failure to follow up with customers during onboarding is an issue that can result in high levels of customer dissatisfaction and early abandonment. At Tallyfy, we’ve seen that poor follow-up exists in many forms, but most follow-up problems relate to a lack of timeliness or the frequency of follow-up.
Below are some examples of inadequate follow-up as issues:
- Lengthy delays between initial exchange of communication and follow-up
- Follow-up never occurs or months pass by between follow-up attempts
- Customer follow-up is undertaken by a new representative who’s unfamiliar with the customer
Solution: Strive to follow up with customers within three days of completing a sale or transaction. If possible, ensure that follow-up is conducted by the same person who completed the sale or a person familiar with the client. Finally, make a point to follow up at least five or six times with customers.
Ready-to-use templates for customer onboarding
Seeking the guidance of a customer onboarding expert for your issues
The best way to identify and address customer onboarding issues is to enlist the support of an industry expert. Because there’s a vast difference in the quality of process improvement companies, you need to use care and caution in your choice of provider.
Ideally, you should seek a company that offers the following:
- Experience with companies of all sizes
- A proven record of success resolving onboarding issues in your industry
- International experience
- Strong references and testimonials
- A complimentary 30-day trial
The onboarding experts at Tallyfy are dedicated to helping companies across the globe increase their loyalty and satisfaction through improved workflows. Based on hundreds of implementations, we’ve observed this clearly: consistent workflows separate companies with high retention from those with high churn. One nonprofit membership organization improved their member success rate by 50% simply by converting a manual flowchart into an automated workflow - the scalability and tracking capabilities made all the difference.
Regardless of your company’s size, the Tallyfy team has the resources to resolve your onboarding issues. With a free 30-day trial, you can get a glimpse of the many ways Tallyfy’s customer onboarding solutions will benefit your company. The key isn’t just picking the right tool - it’s committing to a structured approach that treats onboarding as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. When every step is tracked and every handoff is clear, the friction that drives customers away simply disappears. That’s the difference between hoping your team remembers and knowing the workflow handles it.
Related questions
What are the problems with onboarding
Onboarding problems can be a proper pain. Typical difficulties include information inundation, mixed messages and non-personalization.
Imagine trying to learn a new dance but the instructor shouts out all the steps at once, rather than each step in its own time - that’s how many customers feel during a poorly designed onboarding process.
Businesses often overlook the fact that not all customers are tech experts. This causes frustration and premature drop-out.
What is the biggest challenge on onboarding
The primary challenge in customer onboarding is to keep users interested. It’s as if you were trying to sustain someone’s attention as a long movie played - if the movie is boring, they don’t stick around.
Many businesses have a hard time walking this line between the facts that readers require and the total tedium that can be avoided. The trick is to make it educational and engaging, so customers stick around long enough to understand the value of the product or service.
How can customer onboarding process be improved
Improving customer onboarding is similar to tweaking a recipe. To begin, you’re going to work on making this process easier - you’ll develop it in bite-sized steps.
As we’ve written before, try to make the information more digestible with visuals, such as videos or infographics. It’s all about personalization - modify the experience for what each individual customer wants.
You could speak to your guys about setting up a “buddy” system, so ardent new users would be matched up with an existing user or mentor. Regular check-ins and mini-celebrations can help to keep customers incentivized and engaged along the way.
What are the two critical milestones during customer onboarding
There are two defining moments in customer onboarding that when reached, change the game: the “aha” moment and the first value milestone.
For customers, the “aha” moment is when they fully comprehend how the product or service will resolve their issues - like that moment when a joke’s punchline finally clicks. The first value moment is when the customer realizes a benefit of using the product - kind of like that first bite after you’ve been hungry for hours.
And these are important steps, because they take skeptical people and convert them to enthusiastic people.
What is customer onboarding
Customer onboarding is a red carpet for newbies. It’s the process of introducing, orienting and supporting new customers as they use a product or service.
Think of it as acting like a local tour guide - you’re there to show people around, give them new ideas, show them how things work in the community, and most importantly, make sure that they have a fun time.
Great onboarding encourages customers to learn how to use the product, realize its value, and become your fans.
How do you optimize customer onboarding
Your customer onboarding process is like tuning a musical instrument - it’s a delicate back and forth between fine adjustments and close attention to feedback.
Map the customer journey and pinpoint the problems. Iterate the process constantly with data and customer feedback.
Automate what you can, and streamline automation for the routine processes. Mix it up with a combination of self-service materials and a more personal touch for various types of learners.
Don’t forget to party with them on small wins - it’s like a high-five in progress that keeps people motivated.
What are the different types of customer onboarding
Onboarding of customers comes in many flavors, akin to the ice cream at a parlor. There’s self-service onboarding, in which customers find their own way through things with tutorials and FAQs.
Then there’s the high-touch onboarding (individualized guidance and support from a dedicated team) - similar to having a personal trainer at the gym. Some businesses take a hybrid approach and intersperse self-service tools with periodic check-ins.
And there’s group onboarding, a great option for B2B customers, where multiple team members are trained at the same time. The key is selecting the right kind that suits your product, and meets your customer requirements.
What is the objective of customer onboarding
The customer onboarding end goal is to transform newbies into pros and skeptics into believers. It’s kind of like teaching someone to ride a bike - you want them to go from wobbly and apprehensive to confident and excited.
The important thing is to explain to clients what the product’s value is, how to use it well, and to achieve the target. Good onboarding means more satisfied customers, more loyal customers, and lower churn. This matters a lot.
In the end, it’s all about making it easy for the eager prospect to be the ecstatic user who can’t imagine life without your product.
About the Author
Amit is the CEO of Tallyfy. He is a workflow expert and specializes in process automation and the next generation of business process management in the post-flowchart age. He has decades of consulting experience in task and workflow automation, continuous improvement (all the flavors) and AI-driven workflows for small and large companies. Amit did a Computer Science degree at the University of Bath and moved from the UK to St. Louis, MO in 2014. He loves watching American robins and their nesting behaviors!
Follow Amit on his website, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, X (Twitter) or YouTube.
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