Customer Onboarding – A Complete Guide

It is no secret that the current business environment is highly competitive, and businesses need to do more to earn a customer’s trust. Most of today’s customers expect businesses to hold their hands and assist them throughout their journey. If businesses fail to do so, they will risk losing the customer. Therefore, satisfying the needs of a new customer and ensuring that they have a smooth customer experience can be seen as a critical component that will drastically improve a business’ long-term growth. The process where businesses introduces their products/services to new customers and help them understand them better is defined as ‘Customer Onboarding’. It is a critical process that has a huge impact on a customer’s journey and his/her perspective of the company. It also has the power to boost a business’ revenue and customer retention.

We agree that closing a sale is a significant milestone, however it is not the end-goal. Most businesses fail to understand that the end-goal should not be customer acquisition but customer retention. This is because acquiring new customers is 20% more expensive than selling to existing customers. This effort can be boosted with the aid of a good customer onboarding process. When created efficiently, a customer onboarding process can turn customers into product/service promoters. In this highly competitive era, businesses should dedicate effort to build onboarding and not treat it like an afterthought, as it might lead to detrimental results.

A good customer onboarding process will use a multichannel approach and utilize all the necessary tools like training videos, FAQs, chat support, etc., to educate and assist the customers. The main goal here is to make the customer feel satisfied and comfortable. While customer onboarding generally happens after a business closes its sale, businesses can and must create onboarding processes after each major product launch or service update to get the complete benefit. This will help the customers feel appreciated and increase customer retention. The following steps can be used a guideline to create a good onboarding process after closing the sale.

Information

 Businesses should inform the customer about the onboarding process while closing the sale. This will help prepare the customers and gauge their opinions.

Questionnaire

 Create an onboarding questionnaire that could help create a personalized onboarding process.

Welcome Package

 Create a personalized welcome package with tutorial videos, guides, FAQs and other tools that will help educate the customers.

Multichannel

 It is important to note that customer onboarding is a multichannel process that needs to be handled by sales, customer support and other necessary teams.

Follow-Up

 Understand customers’ view on the onboarding process through a follow-up survey or feedback session. In addition to understanding the flaws, it will also make customers feel appreciated.

Improve

 Customer onboarding is a lifetime process and hence, it needs to be refined on a regular basis. Businesses should take time and effort to improve the process based on customer feedback.

Businesses can gain a lot of benefits by incorporating a good customer onboarding process. Some of them are listed below

Increased Retention

 One of the main benefits of the onboarding process is increased customer retention. Since the business spends time to educate the customers, they will feel valued. This will increase customer loyalty and retention.

Increased Revenue

 Since customer onboarding increases customer retention, it will result in more repeat sales and increased revenues.

Increased Customer Satisfaction

 A good onboarding process will make customers feel appreciated, which helps increase customer satisfaction.

Increase Engagement

 Businesses can increase customer engagements during major milestones like product launches and service updates through the onboarding process.

Reduces Cost

 As mentioned earlier, attracting new customers is costlier than retaining customers. Through customer onboarding, businesses can reduce churn rates and improve the business’ profit margins.

Increased Brand Reputation

 Customers who understand and adopt the products/services are highly likely to promote the same to their friends and family. This free word-of-mouth marketing support will have a positive impact on brand reputation.

In this digital age where customers have several alternate options at their fingertips, businesses need to take steps to retain them. We believe that customer onboarding is the answer. In addition to improving retention, a good onboarding process can also provide a major boost to businesses who are looking to improve their revenues and reputation. Therefore, it is important to dedicate time and effort into developing a good onboarding process. Businesses can also partner with an experienced partner, who can help them create a superior customer onboarding process.