Customer Onboarding Process That Maximizes Time-to-Value

You’ve landed the client, but the work isn’t over if you want to keep them. As soon you sign that contract, you’re in a race against time, talent, and technology to ensure that your customer sees the value you promised during the sales process. And if they don’t, there’s a strong risk of churn. That’s why you need a customer onboarding process.

By failing to implement an intentional onboarding strategy, customer experience (CX) can fall flat. New customers may struggle to determine how to actually set up their accounts, use advanced features, or customize their workflows in the software. As a result, they don’t get the full value of the product, and the risk of churn increases dramatically.

In this post, we’re going to discuss how you can use onboarding best practices to ensure that your customers have a minimal time-to-value (TTV), increasing their subscription renewal and customer retention rates significantly.

But first, what exactly is customer onboarding, and what activities comprise it?

Customer Onboarding 101

Customer onboarding involves guiding customers through the setup process and ensuring they know how to use your product or service effectively. You want them to hit the ground running so they can get as much value from the product as soon as possible.

SaaS brands, for example, may help customers set up their new accounts with customized workflows and teach clients how to use key features. B2C brands use onboarding, too, and they often do so with automation. They may use guided in-app walkthroughs or bots to answer basic questions.

Components of an Effective Customer Onboarding Process

A sticky onboarding experience should ensure customers have high confidence they’ll get meaningful value from your company as quickly as possible. It can be a critical component of CX marketing.

Each onboarding flow will look different for each business. Relatively simple products, for example, may only need a kickoff call and a basic guided walkthrough in the software itself, while others may require much more intensive assistance from a customer success team.

Let’s review the four key components of creating a strong client onboarding experience.

Understanding the client’s needs

A proactive onboarding strategy considers what assistance new users may need during initial setup and for ongoing usage.

Collect information to map customer pain points in a variety of ways, including the following:

• Track in-app usage: SaaS companies should use software that can track product usage to see which features are used and how often. This can help you determine if users are getting the full value out of your product if they are using ineffective workflows, or if they may be missing essential features.
• Collect customer feedback regularly: Use both automated surveys and ideally an account specialist to check in regarding customer insights. Ask if they have any questions about their account or need assistance, and ask questions to determine what potential challenges they may have.
• Map customer pain points to platform features: By identifying specific pain points that customers have, you can determine which features and potential onboarding support can best resolve those pain points. A business that needs help managing high-volume customer support, for example, may set a customer service goal to boost omnichannel capabilities.
• Identify key stakeholder needs: While you do need to understand how end users are getting value out of the platform, key stakeholders are ultimately the decision-makers. They’re also typically responsible for defining processes and training for how end users utilize the software. Key stakeholders for SaaS tools may include agents, supervisors, and IT admins.

By carefully tracking actual usage, collecting feedback, and identifying key needs and pain points, you can create a stronger customer onboarding experience that will address real challenges your customers have with your product or service.

Creating a guided experience

Many SaaS companies and B2B firms offer live or customized demos during the sales process so clients can see the tool in action. They often assume that new users will have enough information to understand how to set up their accounts or use key features.

Don’t make this mistake. Too many do.

Instead, create guided walkthroughs in the software that takes users step by step through the setup process. Many platforms can offer digital automated walkthroughs, though complex software requiring extensive personalization may require a live walkthrough with a customer success manager.

Quickbooks, for example, allows new subscribers to schedule a call with an expert to help with account setup. If you decline, they’ll walk you through the essential first steps, like connecting a bank or credit card to your account.

At Nextiva, our onboarding specialists offer guided product tours to show new customers how to set up their interactive voice response system, intelligent call routing, and agent performance monitoring tools.

You should customize these interactive tutorials based on user type when creating walkthroughs. You may have personalized, live walkthroughs for administrators, for example, and customized setup guides for agents or QA managers to enhance relevance and align with the features they’ll need to use.

Admins, for example, will need information on adjusting user access or setting user roles. End users will only need support on using the software to complete their tasks.

Live and asynchronous training options

Diverse training options can improve product adoption and onboarding, especially for large teams.

Start by providing live onboarding sessions with key product users, which may include IT managers, department directors, or supervisors of end users. You can address their questions in real time and offer suggestions that will help them see the full value of your product quickly.

Keep in mind that users may have questions later, and new team members will be hired who need to learn this software. Offering a self-service knowledge base that includes frequently asked questions, on-demand videos, and step-by-step articles is essential for successful customer product adoption long term. You can see a great example from Asana here:

Milestone-based progress tracking

If you’ve ever set up complicated new software, you understand the challenge of knowing whether or not you’re done and if you’ve taken all the necessary steps to get the full value out of the tool in question.

Your software should help new users know if there are still essential steps to take in terms of account setup, training completion, or product feature activation. You can do this with the following tactics:

• Have clear customer onboarding checklists that show users which tasks they still have to complete.
• Use progress bars to provide a visual representation of how far users are into the setup process, which uses gamification elements to encourage setup completion.
• Celebrate ongoing achievements, such as configuring key workflows or completing agent training.

By focusing on quick wins in the onboarding flow, you can leverage gamification elements that encourage full product adoption and minimize TTV. Users feel like they’re accomplishing something just by onboarding, which can speed up adoption and implementation.

These quick wins can set the stage for a strong first impression and better customer engagement.

Common Onboarding Mistakes (and Solutions)

When creating a customer onboarding strategy, there are a few common mistakes that are easy to make that can negatively impact new clients who are using your product for the first time — especially if they liked the previous tool and are reluctant at best to go through the hassle of converting to new platforms or workflows.

Let’s review the most common onboarding mistakes and the solutions that can help you avoid them.

Mistake 1: Lack of personalization

If you use a one-size-fits-all onboarding template, users of all account types, account sizes, and use cases are all presented with the same onboarding options.

Why it matters

Many SaaS companies accommodate multiple different types of user segments. An enterprise company with 1,000 end users will need dedicated onboarding for multiple types of accounts. They’ll have more complex workflows, and admins will need training on how to create workflows or customize user access roles. End users will need training on how to leverage advanced features.

A small company with only five employees, however, will likely need simpler solutions, less complicated processes, and may not be using your product’s most advanced features. Every team member can receive the same training because they’re all using the software the same way.

Solution

Segment customers based on their goals, product use cases, and complexity of operations. You can then provide tailored training plans that best align with their needs and product use.

Not only does this ensure that each customer is receiving the dedicated support they need, but it also allows you to allocate your own resources efficiently. Large enterprise clients will likely need personalized live demos and assistance with account setup.

Automatically offering that same support right off the bat to small account holders instead of seeing if they receive the help they need with guided walkthroughs, however, may cause you to expend customer success resources that could have been reserved.

Mistake 2: Poor handoff between sales and service teams

Too many sales teams consider their job done once the deal closes. They’ll leave onboarding teams to their own devices or wait until customers reach out for more assistance.

Why it matters

There should be a smooth transfer between sales and onboarding teams to create a stronger CX. During this transfer, sales teams should provide the customer success team with detailed information about features discussed, intended use cases, and any other essential details the onboarding team members need to know.

An intentional handoff also allows the success team to review the customer profile and reach out almost immediately to provide any needed support, which can significantly improve customer satisfaction rates.

Solution

Share customer profiles, contract details, and key objectives from the sales team to potential onboarding teams as soon as the contract closes. Your sales team can also introduce the customer to their new onboarding specialist so the customer doesn’t feel like they’ve been ditched.

Remember to consider full customer life cycle management here, ensuring a seamless transition.

Mistake 3: Unclear value demonstration

This occurs when you focus exclusively on how to use or implement new features without showing their impact. This mistake is compounded when the onboarding team fails to create customized value demonstrations based on a business’s pain points and intended use cases.

Why it matters

Saying that you have a product feature that completes a certain task can be appealing, but users need to understand how that feature can benefit them.

If an onboarding team member is showing a new customer how their social media marketing software provides hashtag analysis, for example, the customer might think, “That’s a fun feature.” The onboarding team also needs to explain that you can use this feature to identify high-performing hashtags, which can be used repeatedly to maximize reach on Instagram. This is what will help users really understand the value of using the feature.

Solution

Provide practical examples of how features like AI-powered routing improve operational efficiency. Be specific about how these features will have real benefits based on the customer’s expected product use. It can be helpful for service teams to review the salesperson’s notes, which may have information on customer pain points, needs, or desired use cases.

Measuring Success in Customer Onboarding

It’s essential to track the efficacy of your customer onboarding platform, which allows you to ensure that you’re facilitating a strong onboarding process that is improving the client experience and minimizing TTV.

Core metrics to monitor

There are several key metrics that you should monitor carefully to track your onboarding program’s success:

• Activation rate: This ishow many customers complete the initial platform setup. If they fail to complete the setup, there’s likely a significant issue in the onboarding process.
• Time-to-first-value (TTFV): Theduration between onboarding initiation and the client achieving a significant outcome, such as launching their first campaign, a low TTFV is directly tied to increased retention rates.
• Onboarding completion rate: Calculate thepercentage of customers who finish all onboarding steps.
• Customer effort score: Evaluate how easy it was for customers to complete onboarding tasks.

Make sure you’re comparing these metrics to customer feedback about the onboarding process. Follow up the onboarding process with feedback requests, but also keep an eye out for feedback at other points. Customers may cite a poor onboarding experience in their churn feedback, for example, which should be closely reviewed to prevent other users from churning down the line.

Ongoing monitoring

Track feature adoption through your platform’s analytics, identifying areas where customers struggle. You may notice that users complete their onboarding quickly but fail to use a key feature of your platform.

For example, customers who use a VoIP solution only to take calls and who don’t set up call routing or leverage smart features like voice assistants aren’t getting the full value out of the product. They may not see the point of using this system compared to a standard phone line, which can cause churn.

Use A/B testing for onboarding content to determine the most effective approaches. Are guided walkthroughs the most effective? Do certain types of clients require dedicated live onboarding training? And what knowledge base content is most useful?

Test your processes carefully to continually optimize the onboarding experience.

Which Tech Tools Can Streamline Onboarding?

Multiple tools can streamline onboarding processes, both for your customer success team and the customer. Let’s review each and how to use it.

Automation for efficiency

You can automate repetitive tasks to reduce potential strain on your customer success team and encourage users to complete their essential onboarding processes.

Strong contenders for automation include:

• Send training reminders to team members who haven’t completed onboarding.
• Follow up with account holders regarding incomplete configurations.
• Create autoresponder campaigns based on nonusage of key features.

You can also use AI-driven tools to guide customers through advanced setups, such as creating custom workflows or implementing chatbots. This ensures that each user receives advanced training without straining the resources of your customer success team.

Real-time assistance

All users should have access to real-time onboarding assistance if needed. An early investment into the customer relationship, after all, can dramatically decrease your TTV rates and bodes better for long-term retention.

Your assistance offerings should include:

• Providing in-app chat support for fast troubleshooting during onboarding
• Offering screen-sharing sessions to walk customers through complex configurations
• Allowing customers to book guided onboarding setup for advanced customizations

Personalized dashboards

Customers may log in to a new SaaS tool, customize a few things, and think they’ve completed all major tasks — while potentially missing out on multiple key features or customization options.

Personalized, role-specific dashboards can be essential to helping users understand what tasks are still left to complete. You can use these dashboards to demonstrate progress, showing which milestones have been completed and which tasks are still pending. These tasks can be used to encourage users to utilize the platform after onboarding is over.

Strong personalized dashboards increase user adoption, but they come with the added bonus of allowing for improved oversight. Managers can monitor their team’s onboarding performance, spotting any resistance or potential challenges that your customer success team can then assist with.

Use Nextiva to Systematize Successful Customer Onboarding

Nextiva’s CX platform is well-suited to support a strong customer onboarding process in multiple distinct ways:

• Streamlined start-up: Nextiva’s intuitive interface and guided setup make it easy for customers to configure core features. Preloaded templates for workflows, call routing, and reporting to reduce onboarding complexity
• Advanced tools for customer engagement: Onboarding assistants guide clients through complex tasks like CRM integration and custom report generation.
• Real-time analytics: Identify bottlenecks, allowing Nextiva’s support team to provide proactive assistance.
• Commitment to success: Dedicated onboarding specialists ensure that customers see value quickly, with 24/7 support and an extensive resource library to help customers stay on track.

Tired of complicated onboarding? Nextiva’s CX platform simplifies the process and delights your customers. See it in action with a demo.