On Onboarding

The Importance of Customer Onboarding

The ink dries after signing with a SaaS or professional services organization. The clock starts ticking. You needed this yesterday. The manner in which the contracted company handles the first month post-signing can decisively shape the trajectory of your partnership—either fostering a long-term relationship or precipitating regretful missteps that set you back.

Behind the scenes, within the contracted company, a flurry of activities unfolds, unbeknownst to you. So much so that your new partner might go silent, leaving you questioning the whereabouts of the kickoff meeting or your designated point of contact.

Let's pierce through this cone of silence and shed some light.

Sales-to-Delivery Transition

Initially, domain experts within the organization are briefed—perhaps for the first time—on your needs. These are individuals you didn’t encounter during the sales process, yet they are pivotal to the success of your engagement. These briefings, conducted in your absence, are critical, contingent upon the quality of information gathered during the sales process.

Sometimes, these domain experts haven't collaborated previously. That's acceptable. However, it underscores the importance of these briefings, as teams begin to coalesce.

Facilitating this process—what I term "Sales-to-Delivery"—is an art few excel at. It requires a holistic understanding of business to translate your needs into a contract, liaise between finance and operations, and subsequently navigate critical conversations with project teams post-contract signing. It's impossible to foresee everything beforehand. I advocate for intentional vagueness in contracts, empowering teams with the flexibility to deliver optimal solutions as they delve into their work. Unfortunately, many contract drafts assume omniscience, potentially locking teams into suboptimal solutions.

(more of my thoughts on contracts are available here)

Systems Setup

Numerous systems uphold the operations of SaaS and professional services businesses. These systems demand setup and configuration. It's seldom a solitary system, but rather an amalgamation—Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, ServiceNow, HubSpot, and a myriad of others. Occasionally, a finance-savvy Excel virtuoso bridges gaps, rendering a spreadsheet indispensable to operations.

Resourcing and Budget Management

At the zenith, your needs trigger a code, utilized for forecasting, resource management, invoicing, and budget oversight. The complexity of managing engagement operations corresponds directly with the degree of customization sought from the contracted organization.

What Makes Onboarding Challenging

Despite earnest endeavors, onboarding remains rife with challenges:

• Lack of Communication: With myriad moving parts and departments, communication often falters, resulting in delays and misunderstandings.
• Complexity of the Solution: Some solutions require diverse skillsets and necessitate extensive planning, rife with opportunity to set unrealistic expectations and ultimately prolonging the onboarding process.
• Resistance to Change: Implementing new software or processes can elicit resistance due to ingrained habits. Overcoming this resistance mandates effective change management.
• Technical Issues: Technical issues inevitably occur during technology transitions, potentially affecting trust and momentum. Organizations inheriting code or existing systems require a framework to address such issues during onboarding, reassuring customers with a clear process in place. This is especially crucial at the onset of the partnership.

How Onboarding Should Be Done

Given the significance and complexity of customer onboarding, here are recommended best practices:

• Dedicated Onboarding Team: A dedicated team (akin to the Director of Onboarding role I mentioned in the posting of this article), streamlines the process, acting as a central point of contact and ensuring a seamless transition.
• Clear Communication Channels: Establish transparent lines of communication, providing regular updates and addressing challenges promptly to foster trust.
• Tailored Approach: Recognize each customer's uniqueness and adapt the onboarding process accordingly, offering customized planning based on the unique traits of the solution, customer, and engagement.
• Continuous Improvement: Solicit feedback and iterate on the onboarding process to enhance customer experience continually.

Onboarding constitutes a pivotal phase in the customer journey, capable of either cementing or eroding long-term partnerships. It’s imperative for organizations to comprehend its importance, navigate its challenges, and implement best practices to forge enduring and mutually beneficial relationships with their customers. However, a notable lack of dedication from organizations to facilitate quality customer onboarding persists. Understanding the significance of onboarding and implementing best practices are paramount for organizational success, laying the groundwork for robust customer relationships.