What is Customer Onboarding?
Customer onboarding refers to the entire process that clients or users go through when they decide to start using a service or product. It is a fundamental aspect for companies, which should focus on providing the best and the most memorable experience for their users.
Think of the last service you purchased and ask yourself if you’re still currently using it. If the answer is “yes”, there’s a big chance your experience was satisfactory and you navigated through a cleverly designed, successful customer onboarding process, one that made you stick to the end, all the way over from the free-trial.
What is the Goal of a Customer Onboarding Strategy?
A well-designed customer onboarding plan should focus on helping the users get accommodated with their newly acquired product or software, getting them started on the basics and helping them stay engaged. The ultimate goal of a customer onboarding strategy should be to gain and retain a customer’s loyalty, which can only be achieved through a carefully planned process.
But ensuring that users have a wonderful experience from the get-go is no easy task, and providing them with the right information from the start can be difficult. So how do you make sure your customers are receiving the right onboarding experience? Here are some tips:
Standardize your process. By understanding your buyers and spending time laying down a roadmap for their needs and expectations, you will not only be saving yourself and your team some time but you will also be contributing to your product’s adoption. Analyze the information that would be the most helpful for your audience, and think about what makes your service or your product unique. Spend time analyzing what were the struggles that led your users sign-up for your product and address those issues from the start.
Establish your actions. Truthfully, onboarding can be a very long process. It’s important to determine and establish the number of actions you will take in order to make a user become comfortable and confident using your product. After the sign-up form is filled, your strategy should include some of the following actions: Verification check, welcome email, welcome call, product documentation, product tour, customer support offering, and product updates or promotions. Define those steps and automate them.
Do not overwhelm your users. Your onboarding strategy should be consistent, and every action you take should feel like a reminder and a clear motivator for your customers to incorporate the use of your product into their routine. In order not to overwhelm your audience, you must focus on relevance rather than quantity, so incorporate the most essential, value-driven features, that solve the most pain points for your clients. As your strategy escalates, add more robust, detailed features. Think basic and simple first, and complex, complicated features later.
Around the clock support. None likes to feel they’re navigating a new process or product on their own. So, make sure your users feel accompanied at all times. How? By always having support teams available through channels like email, chat, or call services.
Can I Use Instagantt to Build my Own Customer Onboarding Strategy?
A cleverly-designed customer onboarding strategy requires many detailed steps, with multiple actions that must be planned and executed. Instagantt can help you schedule and overview the execution of your entire strategy.
Also, it can be very beneficial for your Customer Success team, as they can collaborate in real-time and centralize all processes and information in a single platform. Moreover, if your product includes or only offers a paid plan, your customer onboarding plan should include the entire process from purchase to implementation. This can be a long path, filled with obstacles and detailed information, and working with a project management software can be extremely useful.
Create a step-wise customer onboarding strategy and start managing happy customers. From welcoming to guiding your users towards the use and adoption of your product or service, Instagantt helps you standardize and navigate your process with the best gantt chart tool
Take a Look at our Free Customer Onboarding Template
