Onboarding Tips - Week 26

Week 26 | Idea 26 | Show flexibility in your speed

Customers like their vendors to show some flexibility. Customers also like to see that the vendor they chose knows what they are doing, and that the onboarding manager or CSM they are working with is a seasoned expert.

This week's idea tries to tap into both of these elements to impress a new customer quickly, and get the right initial handshake with the customer - to hold each other accountable for an on-time onboarding. It's about saying "Here's our plan. But if you have a specific go-live date constraint, or want to do this faster, we've done that before. We can have a more aggressive timeline here - as long as you're going to work with us with the same intensity".

Here's our recommended approach:

1. At kick-off or even pre-sale, showcase your standard onboarding process. For example, this may be a 5-6 week journey that you have planned for them - so show off the methodology and the project plan with the key milestones and dates on it. It is a powerful signal to the customer about your maturity if you have this well defined and well laid out (as opposed to sharing a spreadsheet with a few tasks, or a checklist).
2. Now, let them know that this is your standard plan, but you can move things around a little or compress the journey if they have any tight deadlines or availability constraints (someone going on vacation, etc).
3. You could then move phases/milestones around to either pull back the go-live or a specific milestone, and you can of course also be more aggressive about some of your dates, and compress the timeline overall. Typically, this may be more about going live before a specific date, and that need not have all integrations, data migrations, etc completed before that - just the key ones. The rest can be pushed to later on the plan. Discuss and understand this as you craft the new plan.
4. Once you have their inputs, it is great if you already have some quick changes in your mind that you can implement right on the call. Show them an updated plan in the same meeting (or just after) to get their agreement on the process. Get all key stakeholders to agree, and call out any risks you see.
5. Once they confirm, freeze your plan and hold everyone to the timeline!

The more often you've done this, the more you know where you want to show flexibility, what you want to bring ahead, what you want to keep as a next iteration post go-live to compress the go-live timelines, etc.

Do you have a way you do this with customers today? Or want to learn more about how we do it? Feel free to reach out / DM!