When you get a customer, you want to keep them. A purchase is great, but a lifetime of purchases is so much better. Due to the amount of competition that exists within every industry, relying on the quality of your product or service just isn’t enough anymore.
Consumers value a positive experience just as much, and in the next few years, it is expected that experience will outrank product or service quality. This means that your goal with each and every customer is to create an unparalleled experience. This doesn’t just entail during the customer journey, as you are working to convert them from a lead into a purchaser, it also means after you have made the sale. Also known as the customer onboarding process.
One key component of developing a successful customer onboarding process is making it transparent and open – by sharing it with your customers. There are multiple benefits that can come from this customer exposure.
A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity. Dalai Lama
Customer Success through Transparency
When you open up the customer onboarding process to customers and allow them to get a thorough look at what lies ahead for them, you walk them through the process of how they will achieve success. In other words, when customers see the plan you have for working alongside them, it becomes obvious that your main goal is to help them succeed. If customers know this, they know they can expect success.
They also know that you have a strategic plan in place and that it won’t just be a disorganized mess or impossible to get in touch with you after they’ve purchased the product or service. This, in turn, encourages them to work with you every step of the way through onboarding. It is this collaboration that will then lead to customer success.
Customer Happiness through Conflict-Free Onboarding
As you show your customer what they should be expecting during the onboarding process, they’ll grow more comfortable. The unknown is scary. They just purchased a product or service. They made an investment. And in many cases, it can be a leap of faith. If you take the unknown out of the scenario, they will be at ease and happy about their decision to work with you. This happiness will then make them much easier to work with during the onboarding and in the future. If something goes wrong, they won’t go on the defensive and immediately start looking at your competitors’ offerings. Instead, they’ll be patient with you because you were able to create an enjoyable and comfortable environment for them in the first place.
Customer Clarity by Sharing The Customer Onboarding Process
As previously mentioned, customer clarity will often lead to customer satisfaction. But it’s not just about pleasing the customer, it’s also about preparing them. Some products or services are complex. They have the potential to provide incredible business benefits, but they aren’t always easy to master and implement. In these cases, it’s essential to help the customer understand this. They need to know that reaping the rewards will take time and will be a process, but you are there to walk them through that process.
It can also frustrate customers when you sell them a product and only reveal to them the next step in the onboarding process when you reach it. When onboarding takes longer than they assumed, they’ll feel that you are just stringing them along to keep them in business with you. However, if you provide customers with total clarity on the onboarding process and what will be required from both you and them, they’ll be prepared and have greater faith in the process.
Understanding The Customer
The best way to keep a customer is to serve them. But the only way to serve a customer is by understanding them. If you don’t know anything about the customer, you’re going to have a difficult time knowing how to make them happy and how to help them achieve their goals–you won’t know what makes them happy or unhappy, and you certainly won’t know what their goals are.
By having an open and honest uncovering of the onboarding process with customers, you can help tailor the process to them. Maybe there are certain ways they prefer to communicate. Maybe they need more assistance than a typical customer. Maybe they have unique needs that additional steps in the onboarding process could solve. The only way you’ll figure this out is by outlining the entire process for them and having a conversation with them about every single step. You can listen to their concerns and your explanation will likely alleviate many of the concerns right off the bat.
Improving your Internal Customer Onboarding Process
A sure-fire way grow your business is through improvement. And this means improvement in every aspect of your business, from the service or product to the back-end business processes to the experience you create for customers. Sometimes creating improvement can be challenging. It’s difficult to guess what will work and what won’t. An excellent method for gauging what customers might embrace is just by talking with them.
Through conversations, you’ll get to know your customers. You’ll understand their personalities, their business needs, their personal needs, and so much more. They’ll likely also enjoy giving you suggestions–especially if you ask for them. These suggestions are invaluable because it tells you exactly what your customers need and want. You may not be able to implement every single suggestion, but a few could be incredibly innovative. The onboarding process is an excellent time to get this information. As you are sharing what the experience will be like with customers, you can get their feedback. Maybe there’s a step in the process that is out-of-date or could benefit from being tweaked. Making these adjustments will only help you.
How To Expose It
When you’ve converted a customer from a lead into a purchaser, it is time to get started with onboarding. You need to do this right away. And it is the very first onboarding conversation when you need to expose the entire process to the customer. You should warn them in advance in regards to how long the conversation will last and provide them with any material that could prove useful.
Start with the first step. They made the purchase, now what? Be very articulate and clear about how each step in onboarding is unique. Explain why that step is necessary and what it will help them achieve in regards to gaining success. And remember, ask questions. Make sure they understand everything. Keep things simple, but not vague. The best way to create this balance is through asking the right questions at the right time to ensure that they fully grasp the process. After the conversation, send them a document that lays out the onboarding process. A hard copy will help them stay on track and keep you on track.
The customer onboarding process is different for every business, but it is absolutely necessary too. Depending on the complexity of the product or service, the process will vary in length. However, a great way to make sure that you stay on track and accomplish every step of onboarding is to create a dynamic checklist. Tallyfy helps you do just that with their workflow application. This software will keep you focused and it will help you identify potential weaknesses in your current process. Managing onboarding tasks can be difficult, or it can be made very easy through Tallyfy’s checklist app.
