Are you confused while deciding SaaS Customer Onboarding strategies? Do you want a definitive guide for SaaS customer onboarding? Then this is the right place.

When is customer onboarding necessary in SaaS? Do you have a product that is so self-explanatory & simple that your customer would adopt it at ease? When we say onboarding, in-context, we mean how frictionless your product is for new customers.

SaaS Customer Onboarding is the process of helping new customers get started and stay engaged. What is a good or bad or even worse onboarding experience for SaaS customers?

The straightforward answer to this is: Your onboarding practices must stay aligned with that – First Valuable Moment.

You skipped your assessed step – and you might lose the flow, customers might get clueless about what to do. Then bad or worse becomes a clueless consequence in onboarding experiences.

What are the perfect practices for a successful customer onboarding program? There are no perfect templates or steps that you can imply that will work – It is like a continuous improvement process. You follow a plan – stay in touch with your customers – take note of friction points – and improve!

Especially this guide is for SaaS companies to improve their customer experience, identify customer churn, and increase retention rate through the proven customer onboarding methods with tools to personalized SaaS Customer Onboarding.

If you get inspiration or this blog raised any questions regarding your onboarding, here is your free guide for your late whiteboard sessions.

Use the table of content to navigate the guide.

1. What Is Customer Onboarding?
2. Why Is Customer Onboarding Important for SaaS?
3. How To Implement Right Customer Onboarding? (Tools + Methods)
4. How To Create A Customer Onboarding Process For SaaS?
5. Conclusion

What is Customer Onboarding?

Customer Onboarding is like a seed, you nurture it with the right amount of water, air, and sunlight & it will flourish. Similarly, you nurture your customers by introducing them to your products & services, making them comfortable in their initial journey.

When any new customer sign-up to use your product, it means -Customers stimulated an idea in their head about how it would be with your product! It could be your technical setup, your product benefits, your features, or even your UX that might have attracted them to join.

But, if customers are clueless to find what they are looking for as a solution, no matter how easy-to-access or attractive dashboard you have, customers will churn off.

So, your entire efforts must stay aligned with manifesting ideas of the customer to become a living experience for them.

E.g.:- Twitter (content consumption app) makes it so smooth sailing for new users by mapping an image of what kind of journey they desire.

 

Twitter Onboarding Metrics:-

Twitter allows users to choose their path of interest even before the sign-up – this process creates a space for users choice as in how do they want their journey to start using the application:

1. Follow your interests.
2. Hear what people are talking about!
3. Join the Conversation.

 

Why is Customer Onboarding Important for SaaS Companies?

It is a Sunday morning & you excitedly planned to head out for a coffee. While sitting near the window of the coffee shop, your attention drew towards two men humping with a large acrylic-on-canvas pop art painting across the street for an art exhibition.

As your interest pursued you to visit the fine art- you stepped in & found yourself surrounded by everything related to art. You are clueless about whether to roam around or keep staring around – unless you are an art connoisseur!

 

Now, the question of the story asks:

How Do You Think Your Software Relates To Customer Perspectives?

 

Essentially, which stage of your software positions your customer best value? Remember, It is not about mapping each step in detail – It is about staying in close touch with your customers on the macro level.

To initiate any new customers about your products and services – you must use the power of storytelling.

The Power of Storytelling! (SaaS Onboarding Method)

Everyone loves stories! It is like, you visualized all those characters and storylines within yourself for that duration – And after a while, it becomes a personal journey for you at the end. Does it happen to everyone?

But what is so special about a story? The real magic lies in the hook & the promise!

What is a Hook?

It is that heroic character, that struggling situation, that winning story end that explores ideas & imaginations of the witnessing mind – it sets a clear picture of the journey since the start.

What is a Promise?

It is like connecting dots or a puzzle with each character & situation according to the delivered hook.

Similarly, when you think about how your software can relate to customers, you realize you need a story for your product.

 

How To Create Your Product Story Framework? (Using Hook & Promise Method)

Like stories involve characters and situations, you need a hook and a promise to start with new customers.

 

What is the Hook for SaaS Companies?

It is the what of your company – What does your software do?

Now, if you happen to notice the topmost publicly traded SaaS companies in Montclair250 & SaaS1000.com list, you will observe the most successful SaaS companies follow a pattern – It is the hook (what do you do?)

The World Most Successful SaaS Companies – Montclair SaaS 250

 

And the promise (how you do that?) method in each of their onboarding metrics.

For an e.g.

On the homepage of Salesforce, they use the hook & promise method to communicate with new customers & even engage with old ones to explore their features.

 

And they say it right underneath the hook step –  a promise of how to do it. (Features & Benefits)

Once you get into their footing with this approach – it becomes a communicative expectation for your customers – That is why being thoughtful and intentional with the language is a must-thing because customers will be looking for evidence of what you said on the homepage.

 

“Onboarding was and is the one truly universal problem every piece of software has.”

When customers find a hook in your story, it is time for you to onboard them smoothly so that they do not feel lost after signing up.

 

How To Create A Smooth Customer Onboarding Process For SaaS?

Customer Onboarding does not have to be the next big marketing project for your company – that you start considering after realizing the importance of customer participation. Onboarding is like a function of your company – the more you feel the friction that customers are getting, the more you improve & grow.

So, to create a personalized customer onboarding framework, you need to establish a customer-centric approach:

1. Identify Success (Customers).
2. Map Milestones.
3. Find the Friction.
4. Clear the Path.
5. Measure & Iterate.

1. Identify Success (Customers).

When your customer starts using your product, they expect a visual – their first win. So, delivering specific goals according to unique customer solutions creates an achievable environment.

Let us take an example,

You are a startup owner looking to explore your services through social media – Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest in its trial stage allows a handful of customized features that can take you forward

• Access to their SEO tool
• Daily rank tracking
• Seo training & support
• Personalized Seo suggestion

It does two things from the customer’s perspective: solves the daily ongoing SEO problems & shows them the bigger picture to achieve organic growth for their website.

2. Map Milestones.

You don’t need to map the tiny steps of the customer at the very beginning. Keep your focus on the macro-level output & stay in the loop with the customer’s journey while tackling their ongoing friction points.

3. Find the Friction.

Customers using your software for the first time and customers finding their first success, your efforts is to find that point where you are losing them on a macro level – it will give you enough space & time to improve their ongoing journey.

What was the issue?

The hypothesis tested and excluded:

• Is the Customer Unhappy? No, they love it! (High NPS)
• Is there a cost that causes churn? (No, there’s a free trial!)
• Is it too hard to set up? (Actually, it’s pretty easy.)

Real Explaination!

You might have missed out on a big chunk of customers’ churn while testing & evaluating by yourself. Try out some quantitative analysis. Use these available tools to find out the links between customers’ churn.

Effective analytics tools you can use:

• Google Analytics
• Heap
• Hubspot
• Hotjar

 

4. Clear the Path.

Once you found the friction, now it’s time to find ways to solve it. There are mainly two ways to solve any friction point in SaaS onboarding:

1. Technology:  Enhance the UX, add a new platform, assist 24/7 chatbots. (Basically, ease off the friction points)
2. Talk to your customers: Whether it’s a one-to-many or one-to-one conversation about what to do, it is a very unscalable process, so pick up the phone – Ask them! Then try to resolve them in a more scalable manner.

5. Measure & Iterate.

Maintain to keep yourself on the customer’s foot, remember – improving customer onboarding isn’t a project. So, when suddenly improving onboarding pops up again, then it’s probably not why you should do it.

It is a function of the company. It is a continuous process of improvement. So, never stop, find the next friction – improve – find the next friction – improve!

 

How to Implement Right Customer Onboarding?

 1.  Welcome email.

Your new customers need to feel reassured and confident about their decision to invest in your product – To make them experience instant gratification or a rewarding experience.

A welcome email can provide access to their instant gratifications (bonus, lucky prize, added features, or even free services)

 

Miro has enhanced its presence in the SaaS industry like a storm with its easy-to-use and interactive whiteboard sessions.

And Miro has a very creative yet simplistic sense of onboarding new customers with emails. It brings out a “Tips & Tricks” mode for customers during their focus whiteboards and also manages the workflow with a not-so-stressful user interface.

The key ingredients to every compelling Email Onboardings:

1. It is super easy to read.
2. It went straight into the customer’s inbox.
3. It includes a helpful video (What to do next? Or even starting bonus)
4. It came from the real person. (whom a customer can reach out to query!)
5. It provides a helpful CTA.

 

2. Product Walk-through.

A welcoming message at the initial stage is a great way to initiate new customers about – how to get along with the product overview. You can attach a small snippet video about ‘how-to’ start off using your product, or you can use different ways to present product tutorials:

• Using Video Tutorials
  • Demo/Explainer Video
  • Mini-Movie Walkthrough
  • Lively Instructions for Complex Products
  • Friendly Tips for First Use

• An in-app learning section or a small product tour.
• Tutorial buttons or pop-ups alongside different features.

 

Canva makes it fun! Your product tutorial can be simple, fun, and guiding. Take an example of Canva – their growth process is simple & proven in work.

You are free to choose your specific design templates:

 

And then Canva uses animation to guide you through the first design & will remain a guide throughout the process.

 

 

While you use or create design templates – Canva assists along the way with welcome pop-ups and infographics to assist you with features and specific areas of application.

 

The simple, fun, and personalized product tour resulted in a 10% boost inactivation for the company.

 

3. Messaging (In-App)

In-app messaging is there to introduce your product or services to customers, especially those who had been using your product for the first time. By delivering welcome pop-ups and brief product tours – you engage with your users right from the start.

 

Like, take this as an example built with Helppier on Salient Demo. In addition to just onboarding email & messages, they included a specific video & resource for first-time customers to go through before getting started.

 

Now there are chances that your customer is in a hurry and tries to skip every onboarding step – That’s why try to keep your onboarding In-app messaging as simple & beautiful as these top SaaS companies:

Trello – Keeps it Simple & On-point!

 

Hubspot – Simple, relatable, and actionable!

 

Slack –  Informative, Direct, and Solution-based.

Conclusion:

Customer Onboarding is a function of SaaS companies. Once your customers sign-up, they need you as a guiding buddy on each step of their journey. Because once the customers are lost or feel churn to move ahead with your product without any assistance – they won’t come back!

So, if you want to increase customer retention and LTV, improve your customer onboarding process and reduce customer churn. We hope that this definitive guide for SaaS customer onboarding helps you.

 

 

 

 

 

Top 7 Ultimate Strategies That You Must Know for Customer Onboarding For SaaS Companies.

In this blog, you will gain a strong understanding of the customer onboarding strategies you need – to retain more customer sign-ups. How to prepare your content according to specific customer demand, and don’t forget to take away the internal onboarding checklist for your later whiteboard sessions.

Before you even plan your customer onboarding – Think about how would your customers reach their first win?

Too far a step for the start of the blog right – Exactly!

Note:- Keep your customer onboarding step-wise in customer progress.

Rest, you will find the answer further in this blog. Keep going on.

Use the Table Of Content to Navigate the Guide.

1. What is Customer Onboarding?
2. How to create a Successful Customer Onboarding Strategy For SaaS Companies?
3. Top 7 Ultimate Strategies For Customer Onboarding (SaaS Companies).
4. Conclusion

 

What is Customer Onboarding?

Customer Onboarding is the nurturing process that makes new customers more familiar with your products and services. It is an effective tool to let customers feel comfortable finding their expected solution.

An exceptional customer onboarding involves step-to-step tutorials, easy-to-follow guidance, and constant support to lead the customers in the right direction & even celebrate achieving their stepping milestones.

According to Hubspot, the two common reasons why customers churn are:

• They don’t understand your product.
• They don’t obtain any value from it.

These are exact problems that onboarding seeks to prevent, so it is crucial to include the right onboarding strategies to retain customers and reduce churn rate.

 

Customer Onboarding Example #1: Wyzowl

 

 

Customer Onboarding Example #2: Slack

Customer Onboarding Example #3: Shopify

How To Create a Successful Customer Onboarding Strategy for Saas Companies?

 

You’ve created a masterpiece (your product) for your audience. Customers require a bit of hand-holding while getting started with your product.

It becomes your responsibility to create onboarding programs that focus on customers’ experience and starting with a question: “Are they able to understand your product?”

The good thing is that your customers already like you and believe in your product – that’s why they bought it. Your job is to maintain that experience.

You can accomplish that by ensuring your product experience is as good as your sales process and fulfills the promises, you have made in your marketing efforts.

So, to create a seamless customer experience, here are a few touchpoints to plan your customer onboarding program:

• Prepare an Internal Onboarding Checklist
  • Automated Personalized Email Templates.
  • Task Managers.
  • Gamification Sync.
  • Customer Support Chatbots.
  • Daily Check-in.
  • Training Customer Support Team.
  • Single Channel Communication b/w Teams.
• Content for Training Resource
• First Onboarding Agenda
• Welcome Resources
• Align Customer Success Team (Daily Check-ins)

These practices will ensure a solid ground for your customer onboarding & will take off the burden of friction points.

Once you designed your groundwork, it is time to dig deep into your initial efforts to create a seamless experience – needs to prepare with strategic resources & insights to prevents delays in tackling customers’ friction points.

Top 7 Ultimate Strategies For Customer Onboarding for Saas Companies

1. Understand Your Customers.

The moment you decide to think about your customers, you might end up categorizing them according to their ranks or positions, swot analysis, geography, or even age criteria. And at last, you will end up with more data that doesn’t conclude anything apart from what you already know.

Essentially, understanding here means – Seek their expectations, their winning aha-moment, their choices, how they feel while using your product (Is there any extra effort?)

Here are few quick questions you must if you’re unsure how to start:-

• What is your customer’s first win?
• Is there any friction in your sign-up process?
• Is your product or service complex for customers?
• What devices do your customers prefer?
• What is your customer’s final goal?
• Is there too much attention asking content on your customer’s screen?

 

Over 90 percent of customers think that companies “could do better” when onboarding new customers

 –Wyzowl

2.  Show Them What To Expect.

Your customer has an idea about how it is with your product – your sales process must lay out the specific qualifying pointers for each customer during the onboarding process. Preparing the customers for expected setbacks makes them aware that you are with them throughout.

The clear picture you will draw in front of your customers, the better prepared they will be & will not give up on your product.

 

3.  What Are Your Competitors Up to?

To remain competitive means – you know every possible option available for your customers in the market. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an “it worked for them – lets’ try it out”. Instead, it is about your awareness through the customer lens, understanding you need to cater to those demands as well.

Once you travel down the competitive journey, it will put you ahead of a sizeable number of SaaS companies.

 

Here is the framework template to get you started with your competitive analysis:

4.  Layout a roadmap for Customers. (Personalized Value)

In the recent sales analysis, Totango found that out of total web visitors, only 2% sign-up for the free trial, and within 2% – Only 15-50% becomes paid customers. This means, If you’re getting 1000 visitors, then you’re likely to have 30-100 prospects.

Here are few reasons pointed out by Crackitt for the low conversion rate (post free trial) :

• They lost interest in SaaS products.
• They couldn’t envision future value. (to continue after trial period)
• The customer is considering a competitor SaaS solution.

Essentially, your customers need to experience the personalized value they get from your product. They need a journey, their winning vision, their progressing steps, their road map!

 

 

 

To create your customer’s personalized road map – Disseminate your content into segments slowly & selectively. The more you tailor your solutions to their need in small steps, the easier they win.

Provide your customers with clear instructions before each task & ask them to accomplish one task at a time. Try to dedicate your customer with constant guiding support – your customer shouldn’t feel abandoned.

And, don’t forget to celebrate small wins – Acknowledging customer’s effort after each milestone encourages them to achieve more.

 

5.  Design Customer-Centric Content.

How would you seek your customer’s attention? What are the most attractive UX designs? What are the perfect templates to use? If these questions are in your content checklist – You must re-think your content goals.

Because your marketing efforts landed up customers to sign-up with your product – Now they need to see the clear picture. So, avoid getting into the trap of attractions & align your content goal with your customer’s unique solution.

Allow them to define success, help them with AI chatbots, create measurable milestones, and have benchmarks to boost their efforts.

6.  Stay in Touch With Your Customer.

Once your customer starts their journey with your product, stay in touch with them using emails throughout to acknowledge their daily progress, to assist if they need anything while they progress in their content-specific.

Heres how Hubspot stay in touch with their customer during the initial stage:

 

1st Step: Onboarding Survey.

Hubspot uses the initial customer survey to get basic information about customers like company size, the team they will use the tool for, industry type, etc. This information helps them to customize their platform according to the customer’s needs.  

2nd Step: Navigation to Set Clear Expectations.

A clear understanding for customers to see the road ahead. It reduces churn rate & maximizes customer retention.

3rd Step: Sample Data to Get Through The Blank-Slate.

Hubspot keeps it crystal clear for customers, entitling each sample data to how & where a customer can use it as a resource.

4th Step: A Subtle Push to Verify Email.

Hubspot uses the time-value frame to exercise the verification push. They provide value and wait for the customers to grasp the understanding before the given action.

7.  Don’t Forget to Ask. (Feedback)

Employing an email strategy in asking feedback, building surveys, and welcoming new users will always make you a one-step forward with your customers’ expected friction point.

Have a look at how Groove handles its email campaigning while onboarding new customers:

 

 

It includes an objective of welcoming – informing – about the follow-up emails and point of notice is – It is coming directly from the CEO.

You can use 2-3 content-specific emails each week for new customers & 1-2 emails for old customers to stay in the loop with the process.

Remember, it is about your customers finding value in their inbox – Not spotting your mail out of attention. So, plan out your feedback smartly to make your customer feel encouraged each time you reach out to them.

 

Conclusion:

Your customer onboarding doesn’t necessarily have to be inspired by an article or blog (including this one). It has to be planned according to how your product & customers are getting along.

This blog is just a thread to your understanding or even your confusion.

So, take your time to align your customer success team, marketing team, sales, and service teams to customer-centric efforts.

 

The Following Are the Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid in Customer Onboarding for Saas Companies.

As a SaaS company, there is nothing more exciting than putting the final touches on your upcoming product and seeing your vision come to life.

It is overwhelming, but sometimes, it can become a trap! Spending all your time wooing and polishing your product, you might be missing out to focus on the crucial part of your product’s success – the onboarding process.

You might have heard or experienced the same mistakes – that most SaaS companies committing while onboarding their customers and resulting in customer churn and even sign off.

So, keep these mistakes in mind before you onboard your new customers, or if you’re facing the issues – then this blog is specially made for you.

Let us onboard.

1. Trying to Convince.

Even the most skeptical customers know the worth of valuable experience. It is the over-promising benefits that churn them off. So, when you’re onboarding new customers, remember, it is not about introducing your features or the benefits they are getting. It is about how easily they are getting to use your product.

It is easy to get carried away when writing about your product with adjectives like “breathtaking”, “groundbreaking”, etc. But avoid falling into this trap – your customers might not see the value of your product, how you have imagined it throughout.

So, be straightforward & precise about what all customers are getting out from using your product. Make them have a vision about their future wins.

Avoid using too many marketing lines in the initial stage of Saas customer onboarding. Try to stick with real-time customer assistance, know-how are they experiencing the product use, and figure out if there are friction points.

For example, HelloBonsai makes it fun for freelancers managing it all! One of the many struggles that freelancers often face is management. Bonsai is very peculiar about how new customers are relating to their product and identifying the rights knots?

Customers always imagine how your proposed solution can transform the problem they are facing. It is more of a being in that future self for customers. Bonsai shows their new customers a bigger picture.

• Acknowledgment of Issue – Unstructured Work Ethics.
• An All-in-one Solution-based process. (From Proposal to Tax Season)

Your onboarding does not have to focus on the benefits the customers might get from using your product. Once you understand your customer – show them the map, the journey, their first win! It is always a better option than relying on your feature to become a convincing output.

2. Assuming Customer’s Win.

You have all the information it takes – the demographics of customer behavior – the analytics-based predictions, and even the graphs to prove first success. But what if your customer has no idea what he wants?

Your customer knows how to sign-up, use your product, or even if – it is a happy one, then spread the word about your company. But he had no idea what is his winning situation is going to be. He knows the solution he gets from your product by experiencing it but is he imagining it while using it?

It is the bridge that enables imagination & desires! Your information is as good as their clueless desire about how it would be with your product.

So, what is your customers’ win?

When any new customer gets an idea about your product – It essentially means that they know how to use it. But still, it is not enough for them to start thinking.

It’s in the environment – the thoughts that generate – the mindset, the emotional balance that sets off the imagination.

No stressful or even relieved mind ever thinks about any software or the attractive UX once they had done using it. It is the relaxed state of mind that reminds them of how their experience was with your product.

Then they start to imagine – how extra burdening would it be without your product – how things went in the flow – how they succeed in something else because your product saved that extra effort.

That is the stage of acknowledgment!

When you onboard your customers, it gets crucial to identify individual user success. Some might get fulfilled with basic, and some require a premium to achieve their goal.

Road Map to Your Customer’s First Win.

Your onboarding must focus on how to enable different customers according to their wins:

• Segment them!
• Create a Personalized Environment.
• Set Goals. (Daily, weekly, and monthly)
• Curate your specific content. (Show them what they want)
• Give away rewards. (Gamification – trophies, stars, even benefits)
• Assist them. (Train customer support & employ technology)
• Ask again & Improve. (Reach out via mails or calls)

3. Over-Automating Support.

When your customers face issues while using your product – they are probably looking out on google to assist with suitable solutions – Surrounded by tons of different opinions and methods to solve one problem – they are inevitably confused about whom to choose.

But why did they choose to google it rather than relying on the experts (you) to solve it?

In a recent analysis done by Microsoft, it came out that few reasons are causing this customer frustration to another level:

Source: Microsoft

Let us take an example. Your customer is a salesperson – an information digger, an analytical mind, and a soccer player. He employs CRM Software to reach his potential customers & engage across networks. While using CRM, he experienced issues regarding email services – Responsible for n number of emails per day – he hurries & reaches out to the IT guy. When things went too stretchy for him – he chose to tackle on his own.

It is not that few glitches must stop you from employing technology in customer support – it is about keeping your customers urgency in the loop to identify the suitable assistant.

Relying too much on automated customer support makes your customers think:

• You treat them all like the same.
• You aren’t following up with them to learn about their experience.
• Your team and channels work in silos, preventing you from creating a seamless experience for them.
• You’re using email as a predominant channel.
• You are unable to predict when they are likely to churn.
• You’re measuring and optimizing the omnichannel customer experience.

4. Ignoring the Slow Load Times.

According to the Radware case study – even just a 2-sec delay in the load time can lead to a page abandonment rate of up to 87% approx. The faster your load time is – the happier your customer gets as they can solve their problem without any unnecessary wait time.

In your perspective, when you optimize your web page’s load time, you can expect to see an improvement in your user’s experience (UX), conversion rate, and ultimately, sales revenue.

You can always use external 3rd party tools to monitor your application and webpage performance – here are a few frontend performances monitoring cloud-based technology that you can use:

1. Sematext Cloud
2. Appsignal
3. Speedcurve
4. Site24x7
5. Sentry

5. Unable to Follow Up.

You have onboarded your customers successfully – prepared the needed environment, enabled them initially in ‘how-to’ product tour, even managed to show them their first win. Still, after some time – they lose interest, that long-sighted vision that once compelled them to keep progressing with your product – vanished – why?

A study by Harvard Business Review found that 56% of customers complain about poor customer follow-up.

 

• Because of poor customer follow-up – your customers are feeling left behind in a clueless pit of information. That once they used to imagine it as a resource – has now become a task.

To keep your customers intact with their choice of experience, it is a must that you constantly stick with them while they are progressing each day. It gives them two things:

• You are working with your customers.
• Interactive customers experience.

To help you get along with your customers and create an effective follow-up process, here are few email templates that you can use for your customers:

1.  How Did We Do?

Each time your customers reach out to your support team regarding their queries, they expect a quick, reliable, and empathetic response. Once you have resolved their queries – you can use this template to assure your customer satisfaction.

Make sure you create an easy-to-reach backchannel (Customer care contact or 24/7 responsive mail) for customers to feel they have reliable support.

2.  Survey – Slack, Follow Up.

A follow email with a rating is a great way to be in touch with customers in volume. But, if you are looking for more detailed feedback or customers response, you need a survey within the follow-up email.

It will depend on the type of questions you ask your customer to understand your areas of improvement or valuable part of your product.

If you are unsure what to ask your customers, here are a few sets of generalized survey questions for you to start with:

1. Are you happy with the services that we are providing?
2. Were your queries resolved quickly?
3. What is that one thing that we can do better?
4. Was the service helpful?
5. Did we meet your expectations?

Remember to create questions regarding what you need to know from a customer perspective. The only reason why your customer will respond to your survey is that they find that you mean it intentionally.

6. Delayed Response to Queries

If you are in a client meeting, waiting for that one last industrial report to arrive that you forgot at your desk in the morning while hurrying up, each second seems like hours, right?

That’s how your customers feel when they raise any query or request- mailing all those points & just waiting! And then a response that might churn them away or soften them up.

If there is already a delay in responsiveness, then the customers are likely to frustrate. Expect a high no of tickets raised or even a loss of customers.

Communication is like a tool in SaaS onboarding – new customers or even old customers rely entirely on your quick & reliable support.

If you are having trouble calculating your average response time, here’s a quick calculative formula:

Remember, It is not only about quick but also on empathy grounds, so make sure you keep training your customer support in these areas (keep a checklist!):

• Listening to complaints sympathetically.
• Always using a polite and empathetic tone.
• Suggest a suitable solution & reassure immediate action.
• After rectifying through appropriate action, do a follow-up!
• Let them know that their contribution is valuable.

7. Abandoning Customers into Information Pit.

One of the most common mistakes  – that most SaaS companies commit – overwhelming their customer with silos of information. Imagine a welcome screen is full of do’s & don’ts – what do you think your customer will do?

He will minimize each pop-up and will try to find his way in on his own, but, meanwhile, when he struggles to captivate his attention to work out for a solution – he is not enjoying the process at all.

Within 8 Seconds, you can win or lose your customers:-

The same fundamentals apply to you as well. If your customer support team is not well-trained to tackle different sorts of customers issues – more tickets are raised, not an enjoyable process.

So, keeping your onboarding program aligned with different customer expectations & needs will help you curate your content specifically. It will also help customers to focus only on a handful of steps to progress & improve.

How To Ensure You Are Keeping It Light On Customers?

• You keep it simple! Don’t overpopulate their screen. Here’s an example – how you can go about like Dropbox, a modern workspace storage design tool – Allows customers to share and save their work, cloud-backed up.

Dropbox uses the white space on the screen like a wingman. It keeps the customer in the loop with the precision of what he might be searching for a solution.

Dropbox Onboarding

Maintain your customer’s attention with specific content that engages them to accomplish their expectations. Also, remember, to keep this below checklist to curate your content that must:

• Not be generic concerning every customer.
• Not be complex to understand for the customer.
• Focus on individual customer goals.
• Be engage enough to feed imaginations and desires.
• Be natural that customers feel they’re familiar with the tone.

So, when your customer success team or marketing team strategize your onboarding content deliverables, make sure to keep the checklist along to discuss the to & fro of customer experience.

8. Missing Out Feedback Since the Start.

Feedback is the only tool that will get your onboarding program on a scalable track to improve. It happens with most SaaS companies – They don’t collect customer feedback since the initial onboarding.

And there are two reasons that SaaS companies might shy away from asking for feedback:

1. Thinking they might churn off their customer with the extra effort initially.
2. Thinking they might deliver value first, then ask for results.

What do your customers say about feedbacks? (Online reviews – Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Tripadvisor)

• 94% of consumers say that a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business.
• 53% of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week. But 63% admit that some companies have never responded to their feedback review.
• 45% of consumers admit that they are likely to visit a business that responds to negative reviews.

Customer feedback is a process – when you initiate your customers with a habit of engaging in a result-driven environment in which you want to work hard – customers appreciate & put in their trust.

So, when you think about onboarding new customers, make sure to include an engaging way of asking for feedback from your customers.

9. Unable to Monitor the Onboarding Process.

If your customer success team fails to identify the customer’s churn during the ongoing onboarding – there are high chances to witness a rise in customer support tickets.

Your customers, since the initial stage, depending on your support, imagine their comfort while using your product. But, the moment customers face issues, they lose their comfort and begin to search for a better option.

So, to reduce customer churn rate and increase LTV, you can use onboarding metrics to track:

• Customer login frequency
• Used time per session
• Features they like or dislike

Establishing a tracking process for your onboarding will allow you to understand customers completion rate, usage time, daily active customers, churn rate, and time to value.

Once you know where the friction points are, you will be able to resolve & improve your onboarding.

10. Unable to Demonstrate a Long-term Vision.

The global software as a service (SaaS) market, expected to grow up to $272.49 billion by the end of 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.8%.

(Source: GlobalNewsWire, 2021)                                                                                                                     

Annually, the software is about rain-like options over customers. What is the one thing that will keep your customer loyal to your product?

Considering a customer sign-up for your overall win might give you the satisfaction of lead conversion. But, essentially, a successful conversion rate won’t be a revenue-generating asset in the upcoming future.

So, your customer loyalty and how long-sighted your customer is will decide your company’s revenue. So, every SaaS company must demonstrate a long-term vision in their onboarding – Not for just financial growth (Intention is the key!) – Not for just customer benefits (They need more than a solution) – All for customer experience.

Conclusion:

Customer onboarding is the oldest art form of business. In ancient days, Indian street artists and vendors initiated the ‘technique of customer knowledge’ – Introducing origin, characteristics, and the taste created a curiosity to try out the product. Back then, word of mouth marketing was a tool to measure customer experience – the more famous vendor – the more activated customer – loyalty.

So, now, when too many options are letting us consider researching customer success – You must employ this ‘how-to’ guide to avoid making mistakes while planning your SaaS customer onboarding.

In this blog, you will learn how to retain and delight customers by creating a successful customer onboarding program for your organization and also about a quick guide to successful customer onboarding.

Also, the factors about how crucial onboarding strategy is to your goals & customer overall experience.

Have a Look at Some Customer Training Best Practices in Brief

Use the table of content to navigate the guide.

• What Is Customer Onboarding?
• How To Create A Successful Customer Onboarding Strategy?
• Importance Of Customer Onboarding Process.
• Successful Customer Onboarding Examples.
• Effective Use Of Technology In Customer Onboarding.
• 7 Best Practices to Successful Customer Onboarding.
• Measure the Impact of your Customer Onboarding Training.

Tip 1: What is Customer Onboarding?

Customer Onboarding is creating an intuitive space to enhance your post-purchase customers’ experience & support their aligned goals for your product use.

Your customers are clueless about the extensive use of your product. They might be addressing minor issues via random YouTube product demonstration videos or raising queries to your customer support team.

And even after such aids are there, they still churn it out to tackling major issues.

In short, customer’s situation is like they are already trekking hill while using the basic features, and the marketing team is wondering why products’ advanced features are less in use.

Customer Onboarding Tactics

• Allow User-friendly Progress
• Employ Content Value
• Design Specific Goals (Customer-Centric)
• Acknowledge Desired Team

 

Customer boarding is the anchor to hold (retain) your ship (existing & new customers) to the port (product-use) until that ship propels in the direction of the wind (customer expectations), then bon voyage!

Tip 2: Importance of Customer Onboarding Process

There was a time when buying any product if people face complexities or trouble to grip the guidebook instructions, they’d figure it out by their little tricks & twists.

Because people had time and patience back then compared to our modern generation, time is a limited window & choices are available excessively! In such a condition, expecting customers to know your product’s value is demanding.

To understand why your organization needs a customer onboarding program, here are a few stats and reports that addressed this major buyer’s persona shift.

 

Why Your Organization needs Customer Onboarding?

• Getting new customers is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining the existing ones. (Invespcro)
• Customers with a high engagement rate buy 90% more frequently. (GrooveHQ)
• Your website is likely to have 74% more revisits if your platform is user-friendly. (Think with Google)
• 66% of adults think valuing their time is vital that a company can offer as a customer experience. (Forrester)
• Organizations with an initiative to improve their customer experience see employee engagement increase by 20% on average. (McKinsey & Company)

Tip 3: Create a Successful Customer Onboarding Strategy.

Positive Customer-Onboarding confirms that your customer is likely to be a loyal one. There are major two setbacks that increase churns of the customers:

• If they don’t find a higher scope of product use.
• If they don’t see any value.

In both cases, customers are likely to drive over to competitions. To minimize churn of customer experience and provide value according to their expectations.

You need onboarding training to improve customer onboarding that’s transparent & responsive. Moreover, a strategy that focuses – set, create, manage, employ, measure, and respond your training program according to customer needs.

How To Create an Onboarding Strategy that Retains & Delight More Customers?

 

1. Set Your Goals.

Firstly, setting smart goals for your customer onboarding will allow you some working space where you can easily monitor individual customers’ progress & provide specific value to their needs from content.

Secondly, the learning space evolves dramatically in terms of customer experience & employee ease.

2. Points To Remember While Setting Your Goals.

 

 

• Your platform must communicate & collaborate with customers.
• Include user-friendly training tools.
• Address to diverse but be content-specific.
• Your program is to simplify the customer experience.
• Employ technology for intuitiveness.

Keep these points in your sticky notes while your L&D team and the project manager are setting onboarding program goals.

3. Gather Your Team.

Saas (software as a service) must employ a customer success manager (CSM) who bridges the gap between the sales and support teams.

In contrast to this gap, CSM doesn’t necessarily get into the depth of day-to-day product usage but instead optimizes towards the customer goal attainment by focusing on strategic conversation.

More customer-centric team, more frictionless the onboarding program will run. Moreover, having a CSM along with a project manager will allow your onboarding strategy to drift smoothly even if your program needs changes during the initial stages.

You might be steering responsibilities yourself as well, making sure the flow is maintained. You can address such matter into Subject Matter Expert (SME) like your product selling champ.

4. Time for Whiteboard Strategy.

Align Instructional designers with project managers and SMEs to sketch a customer onboarding journey. From the sign-up stage to the learning progress, segment stages into milestones.

It becomes easy to deploy valuable resources & tools while each customer’s progress to their set of milestones, and you can update their progress consistently.

5. Preparing Your Content.

Once done with the strategy, it is time to designate a content designer (graphics designer preferable).

Convert your learning course into graphics (quizzes, challenges, and other content authoring tools).

6. Right LMS Is A Must.

Invest in the right LMS that can upload & support your e-learning courses. Your e-learning courses might contain content in different mediums like video, image, and text.

So, better invest in LMS that integrates with your learning content.

7. Ready For Testing?

Your testing is your way to validate the efforts you have implied in your onboarding program. Use your beta testers such as top customers or create a community and aware of your new training program. Aware customers are likely to engage as it beeps their mind that it is a known ground.

8. Launch It Live.

Bon Voyage! Use your awareness of pre-launch before making your onboarding program live. Bring a seamless onboarding experience amidst existing ones and acquire feedback from trusted users.

Tip 4: Few Examples of Successful Customer Onboarding

Until now, it’s crystal clear that if you don’t steer your onboarding training consistently, it can flow in any direction. So let’s understand through few successful customer onboarding best practices examples:

1. Canva

Canva provides users a freemium feel for designing & sharing where ever they want. Canva is known for its user-friendly dashboard & personalized brand kit. It offers a library of 2 Million photos, images, icons, and different templates.

2. Duolingo

Duolingo allows every new customer to get aware of their platform through their animated walk-through. They even introduced step-by-step guidance for new users to avoid fussy initially.

3. DropBox

DropBox has an intuitive-based welcoming tool where a set of questions are there for new users to understand & plan their personalization according. It also helps them create a more user-friendly & adaptable platform.

Tip 5: Effective Use of Technology for Customer Onboarding.

Before your customer success manager or team, your customer expects ready-to-assist onboarding support available to them.

It is your time to put technology to work! Deploy multi-channel automated support (AI chatbots and supports suits)

Tip 6: 7 Best Practices to Customer Onboarding

 

 

1. Read Your Customer’s Mind

Avoid analyzing through scalable metrics! First, address their behavior, situations, challenges, and personal goals. Customers have to feel successful with their product use.

Over-analysis demands customer participation to provide data that increase customer churn. Be gentle in understanding their needs & set your future strategies accordingly.

2. Show A Clear Picture Of What They Get.

Don’t over-deliver your product value. Customer’s expectations must set as a strategically planned picture. When customers are aware of their end goal with your product, they stay calm witnessing the daily progress & even rely on the advanced features to pace up.

3. Provide Value.

Design your content according to what requires on the customer’s dish. Each customer is having a different outlook of your product. Providing solutions through specifically generated content is valuable.

4. Set Customer-Friendly Goals.

Your Customer Onboarding Strategies must align with progressing customers. Data imports help create an adaptable program ready to re-create, edit and provide customer-centric goals a free hand.

5. Communication Is Your Modern Key.

Use training tools, user-friendly KPI dashboards, and email communication templates to help reduce customer’s churn during onboarding and enable direct communication with your customer
success manager.

6. Fix Setbacks Instantly.

During the initial stage of customer onboarding, there might be various setbacks in communication, the learning process, and even a basic understanding of product use. Train your dedicated support team ready to improvise & enable their system intuitive technology so that they address the issue beforehand.

7. Measure Metrics.

Your saas onboarding best practices is the key benefit to your business goals too. Identify pain points and KPI’s through tracking metrics:

• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
• Churn Rate
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Customer Engagement Rate (CER)

Tip 7: Measure the Impact of Customer Onboarding training!

The moment you exercise these customer training best practices in your onboarding program, you will realize how crucial it gets to measure the impact of detailing you mapped to improve your customer experience.

In the initial stage, in the context of two crucial milestones to measure:

• The moment the new customer signs up for your product.
• And the moment they attain their first success with your product.

This analysis will help your onboarding training program to boost customers’ retention rate. And through a time-to-time update on customer engagement levels.

Conclusion:

Onboarding is a success when you employ customer-centric tools & a seamless onboarding experience for customers.

Friction is likely to happen in every training program. Setbacks are a predictable reality, but re-creating through proper customer-involved strategy will evolve your whole business module.

To address your SMART training goals and help create an intuitive program, we act as a tool to hammer & shape your business strategies. Employ the pioneering in learning technology to retain & delight your customers now.