5 Steps to Create a Successful Customer Onboarding Framework

Customer onboarding is a critical component of any company’s success. It is the process of guiding new customers through the early stages of their relationship with your company and, ideally, converting them into loyal customers.

Companies who excel at customer onboarding are usually those that understand their customers better and know how to make them feel welcomed. As evidence, research from the Harvard Business Review has shown that companies with good customer onboarding experience have up to 95% retention rates. 

Which means a great customer onboarding process should be tailored to each customer’s needs and be as easy as possible to complete. Conversely, keep in mind that a half-hearted approach to onboarding can be very detrimental.

Customers who have a bad experience with customer onboarding are more likely to churn and never come back to your company again. So it is critical that you provide a good experience for all of your customers, especially new ones.

Step 1: Define what successful customer onboarding looks like

In order to have a successful onboarding process, you need to define what that means for your company. What are your goals? What are the milestones that signify that you're on the right track? How will you measure success?

A successful customer onboarding program can be defined by things like:

• how many customers are retained
• how quickly they become profitable
• the percentage of customers that go on to refer to other customers. 

Each company will be unique in terms of defining what success looks like. It ultimately boils down to aligning your organization's identity to the right success metrics.

Step 2: Gather feedback on current customer onboarding efforts

Customers make or break a company. Therefore, it is important to know what they think about the current customer onboarding process. And the best way to find out what your customers think is by asking them directly!

Luckily for you, there are countless ways to gather feedback – surveys, interviews, etc. But it’s important to ask the right questions and not just ask general questions like "How was your experience?" or "What did you think of our service?"

Instead, it’s better to ask specific questions about what aspects of the company's service they liked or didn't like and why. For example, instead of asking "Do you like our service?" it would be better to ask "What did you think of our customer service?"

Step 3: Provide training videos, tutorials, and tools for self-service 

Customers are becoming more and more tech-savvy. They want to be able to do things on their own without having to call customer service or wait for a technician. This is why companies are starting to provide them with how-to videos and tutorials.

However, before rushing to build a library of instructional content, we recommend conducting a customer needs assessment. The goal is to help you understand what your customers are looking for and how they are looking for it, so you can provide them with exactly that.

Once you have an idea of the most pressing topics to address, you’re free to start creating content. These on-demand content pieces can help customers learn how to use your product or service, and also provide them with a sense of empowerment. On-demand content also saves time for both you and the customer, as well as reduces costs.

Step 4 : Develop a communication plan and schedule follow-up activities 

You need an effective way to track your customer’s journey from initial contact to purchase. There are several customer engagement plan templates you can use for both upselling and retaining customers.

Email is a great way to get the ball rolling with new customers. It helps you set expectations and make sure that they are aware of what you can offer them. An email schedule for follow-ups is critical to stay in touch with your existing customers. It helps you build deeper relationships, which in turn leads to more sales and referrals.

Step 5 : Review performance metrics regularly to fine tune your strategy

This one is pretty obvious. It is important to review performance metrics regularly in order to get the most from your strategy. You can use a customer retention metrics report template and/or product performance reporting templates to track your progress and identify areas for improvement. 

You may also have a number of internal tools at your disposal. Regardless of which report you utilize, it’s critical to track your product performance, identify trends, and make changes in order to improve the quality of your products.

How Guidde helps streamline customer onboarding

As noted above, providing your customers with training videos, tutorials, and tools for self-service is a must if you want them to ramp up quickly. Which means you need a way to create a ton of content in a short amount of time at the most manageable price point. Sounds like a tall order. Well not anymore. 

With Guidde, literally anyone can develop step-by-step videos and documents in just a few clicks. And when you’re done editing, instantly share your tutorials on the most preferred platforms, including Slack, Salesforce, Zendesk, Intercom and more! Pretty cool right? Try Guidde FREE for 14-days by clicking this link and installing our browser extension.

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