Article 3: Onboarding and Adoption | Topic 2: Best practices for designing an effective onboarding process |

Customer Onboarding

Customer onboarding is what happens right after someone buys something from you. It's super important because it sets the tone for how they'll feel about your brand in the future. If they have a good experience, they're more likely to stick around and keep buying from you. But if things go wrong, they might go to your competitors instead.

The process usually goes through some expected steps. By making these steps better, you can make your customers happier and more likely to stick with you. You can do this by learning from companies that do onboarding really well and keeping an eye on how well your own onboarding is working using certain measurements.

Why You Need to Manage Your Customer Onboarding Process

The way your customers feel after they buy something from you depends a lot on their first experience using your product and getting help if they need it. If they struggle with your product or can't reach you for help, they might want to return it or stop buying from you. They might also not tell others about your product. But if they have a good experience, they'll probably keep buying from you and tell their friends about it.

Some companies don't have a clear plan for how to help their customers get started with their product. This can lead to problems like customers having trouble using the product or not understanding its value. These problems can make customers less likely to buy from you again. But if you have a clear plan for how to help your customers, you can make them happier and help them see the value in your product. This can turn new customers into loyal fans who tell others about your brand.

The Stages of Customer Onboarding

The specifics of your onboarding process will vary with the nature of your product, but in general, the process divides into five stages:

1. Kick off the process with welcome email: When you begin with a new customer, thank them for picking your product and explain what they should do next to get started. Introduce them to the support team and let them know what to expect as they start using the product. Plan a call to gather all the necessary information for the next steps. This usually happens within the first week after they buy the product.
2. Implementation and Configuration: Helping the customer to install, configure, and customize the product to fit their specific needs and requirements. In addition to basic configuration, the product may need to be customized to meet the unique needs of the customer's business or industry. This could involve creating custom fields, workflows, or reports tailored to the customer's specific use case. For example, a customer relationship management (CRM) system may need to be customized to track industry-specific data points or sales processes.
3. Training and UAT: As part of the setup process, training may be provided to ensure that the customer's team is proficient in using the product. This could involve conducting training sessions, creating training materials such as user guides or instructional videos, and providing ongoing support and guidance as needed. The product to be handed over to the customer to test and provide feedback. Work upon the feedback to make it ready for production.
4. Production ready: In this stage, the product is fully prepared and ready to be used by the customer. However, if the customer needs more time before they're ready to use it, we can mark their account as ready for production, but we'll wait for their confirmation before going live.
5. Live: This is the last step before transitioning from onboarding to adoption, where the customer begins using the product in their live environment.

Best Practices for Customer Onboarding

Following these best practices will enhance your customer’s onboarding experience and promote a positive long-term relationship with them.

1. Implement a Structured Onboarding Framework: Leaving the customer onboarding process to improvisation risks inconsistent customer experiences. Establishing a set routine not only empowers you to systematically enhance the newcomers' journey but also enables a unified approach to introducing clients to your service or product. Employ a detailed onboarding checklist to guarantee comprehensive coverage of all essential steps for every new client engagement. Documenting these procedures serves as a vital resource for both guiding the current team's efforts and onboarding new staff members.
2. Tailored Experience for Every Customer: While maintaining a uniform onboarding flow is crucial, recognizing the individuality of each customer is equally important. The key lies in assigning a dedicated customer success manager to each new client, ensuring they receive the personalized attention they deserve. Furthermore, judicious use of automated systems, like customizable customer portals and personalized email communication based on client activities, helps deliver a bespoke onboarding journey.
3. Clarify Your Team's Structure for Onboarding: Allocating a customer success manager to every new customer does more than personalize the experience; it also clarifies who within your organization is responsible for various aspects of the customer's onboarding journey. Additionally, it's essential to identify and introduce other critical contacts within your company and the customer’s organization, streamlining communication and workflow during the onboarding phase.
4. Establish Open Lines of Communication: Ensuring a smooth onboarding process requires clear, predetermined channels of communication. Make certain both your team and your client's team understand who to contact for specific issues, from technical glitches to billing inquiries. Furthermore, outlining preferred modes of communication can prevent misunderstandings and bolster workflow efficiency.
5. Engage in Goal-setting Discussions with Customers: For customers to perceive the full value of your offering, it’s pivotal to align your product's capabilities with their business objectives. Initiating goal-setting dialogues as part of the onboarding experience allows you to direct your product towards fulfilling those goals, offering a clear path to success.
6. Leverage Data for Informed Decision Making: To accurately assess whether your product fulfills customer expectations, implementing a systematic data collection process is essential. Determine the critical performance indicators worth monitoring, set up mechanisms for data gathering, and ensure the collected data is accessible and neatly organized in dashboards for review by relevant staff.
7. Quantify Progress: Transforming customer goals into quantifiable milestones through key performance indicators provides a tangible means to track progress. By doing so, both you and your customers can objectively assess how well they are advancing towards their objectives.
8. Monitor Customer Progress Diligently: Establish protocols for regularly reviewing customer progress towards their goals. Utilizing dashboards and generating reports serve as instrumental tools for this ongoing evaluation. Further, scheduling periodic discussions with customers to delve into these reports fosters transparency and encourages continuous engagement.
9. Adaptive Strategy for Continuous Improvement: The ability to adapt and refine your approach in response to progress tracking is fundamental. Identifying areas where customers fall short of their goals or encounter obstacles enables you to implement targeted adjustments. Conversely, recognizing successful strategies presents an opportunity to amplify those wins, potentially scaling them to benefit a broader customer base.
10. Build Upon the Initial Onboarding Experience: Remember, the onboarding journey marks the beginning of your relationship with the customer. As this relationship matures, explore additional avenues through which your product can further benefit the customer, potentially leading to product upgrades and triggering the onboarding cycle anew with enhanced features.

By adopting this detailed approach to designing an effective onboarding process, businesses can ensure they not only meet but exceed client expectations, fostering a sense of satisfaction and loyalty while paving the way for long-term success and growth.

Customer Onboarding Metrics

Tracking onboarding metrics can help your customers measure their success in using your product, and it can also help you measure the effectiveness of your onboarding process in generating customer satisfaction. Some of the most important onboarding metrics to track are:

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) tells you how much revenue you can expect from each customer throughout your relationship with them. You can find it by multiplying the average value of each purchase by how many purchases each customer makes on average. The longer customers stick with you, the more they buy. So, if your onboarding process keeps customers coming back, it boosts their lifetime value. Calculating CLV helps you see how effective your onboarding process is.

Activation Rate

Activation rate shows how much customers are using your product after they buy it. For SaaS companies, this is a crucial measure to see how engaged and satisfied customers are after onboarding. You can measure activation rate by looking at actions that show customers are using your product, like signing up, installing it, or choosing settings. If you see that activation rates are low, you can improve them by encouraging customers to use your product more, maybe by sending them reminders through email.

Net Promoter Score

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) indicates how willing customers are to recommend your brand to others, which is a reflection of their satisfaction with your onboarding process. You can calculate the NPS by asking customers to rate their likelihood of recommending your brand on a scale from 0 to 10. Those who rate 9 or 10 are promoters, 0 to 6 are detractors, and the rest are passive. Subtract the percentage of detractors from promoters to find your NPS.

Track specific NPS metrics based on the stage of the customer journey:

% of Promoters - Track your overall % of Promoters

% of Detractors - Track your overall % of Detractors

% of Passives - Track your overall % of Passives

Churn Rate

The churn rate indicates how often customers discontinue their association with your brand, offering insights into customer satisfaction and the success of your onboarding process. To calculate the churn rate, divide the number of customers lost during a specific period by the total number of customers at the start of that period, including any new acquisitions within that timeframe.

Average Churn Time

When customers churn early, it could indicate issues during the onboarding process. Average churn time indicates the speed at which customers are leaving. To calculate it, add up the time each customer stays with you and divide by the total number of customers. You can also track how many customers churn before reaching a specific point in the onboarding process or completing certain actions.

Examples of excellent Customer Onboarding

Excellent customer onboarding can dramatically influence customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term success for SaaS companies. Here are some standout examples within the SaaS industry where companies have set the gold standard for onboarding experiences:

1. Slack

Approach: Slack excels in onboarding by making the complex world of team communication simple and inviting. Upon signing up, users are guided through a series of intuitive onboarding steps, including setting up a workspace, inviting team members, and creating channels. Slack integrates interactive “Slackbot” conversations to guide users through these initial steps, making the process feel personal and engaging.

Why It’s Excellent: Slack’s onboarding balances informative guidance with user freedom, allowing users to explore at their own pace while ensuring they grasp the platform's key functionalities.

2. Duolingo

Approach: Duolingo’s onboarding process begins the moment a new user signs up, immediately immersing them in language learning. Users set their learning goals and are then launched into short, gamified lessons. The app uses progress tracking and motivating reminders to keep users engaged.

Why It’s Excellent: Duolingo’s onboarding is engaging and straightforward, enabling users to experience the app's core value proposition—learning a new language—right from the start.

3. Canva

Approach: Canva introduces users to its design platform through a blend of tutorials, templates, and the immediate opportunity to start creating. New users are invited to select what they want to design, and then Canva provides template suggestions and a brief interactive guide on using the design editor.

Why It’s Excellent: By immediately funneling new users towards creating a project, Canva ensures users quickly see the value of the platform, reducing the initial learning curve.

4. Mailchimp

Approach: Mailchimp, an email marketing SaaS, starts its onboarding process by asking users about their marketing goals and previous experience with email campaigns. Based on the inputs, Mailchimp tailors the onboarding experience, highlighting features that align with the user’s goals, and offering relevant resources.

Why It’s Excellent: Mailchimp’s personalized onboarding ensures that users are not overwhelmed by irrelevant features and can quickly find value in the service.

5. Zapier

Approach: Zapier introduces new users to its automation capabilities by guiding them through creating their first “Zap” (automation) during the onboarding process. The platform curates a selection of popular Zaps based on the user's goals and offers extensive documentation and tutorials for deeper learning.

Why It’s Excellent: Zapier’s hands-on onboarding process helps users immediately grasp the platform's core functionality and how it can simplify their workflows.

6. TurboTax

Approach: TurboTax simplifies the complex process of filing taxes through a conversational onboarding that gathers necessary information through simple questions. This adaptive approach personalizes the tax-filing experience, ensuring users feel guided and supported throughout.

Why It’s Excellent: TurboTax transforms a traditionally daunting task into a manageable process, demonstrating the power of a well-thought-out onboarding experience to deliver immediate value.

Conclusion

Designing an effective onboarding process is both an art and a science—it requires understanding your customers deeply and crafting an experience that effortlessly guides them to realizing value. By personalizing the welcome, streamlining the process, educating through engagement, setting clear expectations, offering proactive support, constantly reinforcing value, and establishing feedback loops, businesses can transform new users into lifelong customers. The examples of Netflix, Dropbox, Duolingo, Asana, TurboTax, Slack, and Airbnb exemplify the potent impact of a well-designed onboarding journey. In a landscape where first impressions can make or break customer relationships, investing in a meticulous onboarding strategy is not just wise—it's indispensable.