Enterprise Customer Onboarding Strategies

Onboarding is one of the most critical parts of the customer life-cycle for B2B SaaS products. Successful onboarding enables customers to realize value for themselves and the company quickly, effectively, and sustainably. When starting B2B SaaS onboarding, the customer has already signed up and needs to start experiencing the value as soon as possible. However, the onboarding process may take from a few days to a few weeks and in some cases, even a few months. Before beginning the onboarding process, the customer must understand the complete process of enabling the expected value. The quality of the onboarding experience depends on the quality of the worst experience in the process. Thus, the basics must be correctly established. Onboarding readiness must be determined to ensure the bare minimum infrastructure is in place. Moreover, the customer success manager (CSM) should make the experience more delightful and rewarding. In some companies, a specialized onboarding team plays the role of a CSM.

ONBOARDING READINESS

Standardization of the process provides customers with the confidence that they are in good hands and must follow the process and timelines. This becomes vital during delays and can save time, money, and customer satisfaction issues later in the process. Most, if not all, processes should be automated. Customer responsibilities should be clearly defined and explained at the beginning of onboarding. Your responsibilities, including exclusions, should be explicitly defined. This becomes crucial when the customer is seeking more value-added services. Be prepared to be nimble during this time since no two customers are alike, and some issues may not have been anticipated. The process often fails because of customer-specific issues, such as data, personnel, technology, etc. The process must adapt to these situations and should be considered an opportunity to improve the process.

The rollout plan is often an ignored aspect of onboarding. It is always difficult for customers to get everyone onboard simultaneously and change the process overnight without negatively impacting business operations. Customers may have a clearly laid out change management plan. However, generally, they will be open to suggestions. A phased-roll-out plan can be suggested to minimize their risk. Core and key users are essential, and in the initial phase, the focus should be on making these users realize the value of the software/services. Once that is achieved, they will become advocates for your software.

Data integration is an essential part of onboarding for most companies. When a new customer comes on board, they are likely to provide data that needs to be integrated with the system. The cleanliness of this data is often a challenge, as the customer may not have the necessary IT infrastructure to integrate directly with the system. In such cases, the customer will have to transform or create the data, which can lead to errors and delays in the onboarding process.

To mitigate these challenges, it is important to evaluate the readiness of the data during the initial discussions with the customer. In some cases, it may be necessary to delay the start of the onboarding process until the customer has built the necessary pipes for data integration. The ideal solution is to have direct integration with APIs/Web Services, which allows the customer to make direct calls. However, this may not be feasible for smaller B2B corporations.

Knowledge enablement is a key aspect of customer success. It is essential to provide customers with self-help resources that allow them to learn about the system at their own pace. This is especially important for key/core users who will be responsible for training other users. Documentation, training videos, and FAQs are all effective ways to provide self-help resources.

Alerts and notifications are another critical aspect of customer success that is often overlooked in the B2B industry. Timely and accurate notifications about service start/stop, scheduled upgrades, dataloads, security changes, system unavailability, etc. can greatly improve communication with customers. It is essential for customer success managers to carefully define the frequency and content of these notifications.

CSM INFLUENCE

Be Part of the customer team. Customer success managers must also be part of the customer team and provide support during the adaptation to new software. This is a critical time when customers may have questions and skepticism about the system. By being available to address their concerns, customer success managers can establish long-term relationships that will benefit the company in the future.

Establishing relationships with key/core users is also essential for customer success. These users are the ones who will be using the system on a regular basis, and they will have their own perceptions of its value. Customer success managers must establish good relationships with them to understand their pain points and help them carry the extra burden of change. These key/core users are also the voice-of-vendor for the customer, and their feedback is essential for improving the system and ensuring its success.

Sow the seed for upselling: Finally, customer success managers must sow the seeds for upselling by learning about the customer's environment and identifying opportunities for additional services. By establishing credibility as an industry/domain expert, the customer is more likely to listen to recommendations for value-added services. This is especially true for complex customer environments where there is always room for improvement.

In summary, standardization, roll-out process, data integration, knowledge enablement, alerts/notifications, being part of the customer team, establishing relationships with key/core users, and sowing the seeds for upselling are all essential aspects of customer success in the B2B industry. By focusing on these areas, companies can improve their onboarding processes, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive growth and revenue.