No doubt about it, your client onboarding process is one of the most important areas of your customer lifecycle. Customer onboarding is a continuous, ongoing process: extending way beyond the initial “getting started” stage of building a rapport with the customer, and learning the product step-by-step.
In this post, we’ll cover:
- The importance of successful onboarding
- A collaborative onboarding experience
- How EverAfter can help!
- Catering to customers by constructing customized hubs
- Show and tell the world about your customer hub
Why successful onboarding is so important
Whether it’s once the contract has been signed, the free trial has begun, or the credit card has been charged, your onboarding process has been born. Your onboarding impacts customer satisfaction, customer churn, and ultimately — your sales outcomes. Industry-wide, 63% of customers report that onboarding is an important consideration in whether they close a purchase in the first place. (Because why choose a product whose onboarding doesn’t meet your personal needs?).
Effective customer onboarding is one of the most results-oriented methods to sustainably generate SaaS business growth. Thoroughly understanding your customers manifests a relevant and impactful onboarding journey; tracked and monitored key onboarding metrics facilitate an onboarding experience that continuously delights your customers without fail.
The dire need for a collaborative onboarding experience
Transparency with your customers is key to building trust and nurturing a solid, sustainable relationship. This is why timelines, for example, must be realistic and clearly communicated — during every stage of the process. Mapping out your milestones accurately will depend on your product’s value proposition and customer goals, but in any scenario, clearly communicating the steps, progress, and required resources of your journey is undoubtedly essential. Ultimately, a collaborative onboarding experience will help boost your professional image, encourage accountability, and reduce friction within the onboarding process.
How EverAfter makes succinctly personalized onboarding happen
By authentically understanding your customers and their needs, creating a relevant and fruitful onboarding journey, in parallel to tracking the key onboarding metrics at hand, you create an onboarding experience that will resonate with your customers indefinitely. EverAfter makes it possible for you to personalize your onboarding journey that delivers a tailor-made experience for your customers by implementing individual onboarding plans for each customer type and size. And it works whether your customer is a “complete beginner” or an enthusiastic “power user”.
🤔 Did you know? If you follow a similar onboarding process with all of your customers, one huge advantage of EverAfter is the ability to use one onboarding kit and apply it across all of your accounts. You can make any necessary (individual) changes on the account page. Think about all the time you can save!
🏆 Pro-tip Features like Visibility rules, Kit rules, and Series kits automate how hubs are personalized for each customer.
Constructing customized hubs that cater to each customer
Customer hubs are all about the magical ways you can combine widgets and use them your individual use-cases. When you create a new kit, you can get ahead of the game by adding the Onboarding template (with pre-prepared widgets).
Here are some ways I leveraged different widgets in my onboarding kit:
Timeline widget with milestones:
I want to give my new users an easy-to-understand picture of their journey ahead and begin a positive feedback loop as they progress in their onboarding process. So, I include milestones with the Timeline widget to visualize the main goals in the journey forward.
Did you notice how emojis make the milestones in the Timeline widget more presentable and personable?
KPI widget to highlight onboarding metrics:
My onboarding process includes many metrics that I want my customers to be aware of; I want them to be reminded of the date we plan to go live, their status, and tier level.
To-do widget to structure my tasks
Like so many other platforms, my onboarding process includes a variety of tasks that fall under different categories. This is why I structure my tasks with the To-do widget, and list each task under the different sections. And, the To-do widget includes action buttons, lets the customer attach files, and has owners assigned to tasks.
For example, I named the first section 'Introduction' and listed the introductory tasks, such as getting to know the team, sharing budget information, and setting goals for our first quarter together.
Share materials widget
EverAfter published an official document describing our company culture and values that we want our users to be aware of. We also want our users to have easy access to return to our platform to adjust any necessary settings. So, we use the Share materials widget to share these documents and links.
Show and tell the world about your customer hub
This is an example of a beautiful, user-friendly customer hub.
Resources: Where you showcase feature updates and link to feature updates
This is an example of a Resources tab that we use to showcase feature updates and link to our knowledge base.
🪄 Tricks we pulled here:
- We created a navigation tab so our customers can access extra resources whenever they need.
- We used the List widget to share news and attached images to each update.
- We also linked the Search widget to our knowledge base so if our customer needs to find a quick answer they can!
All onboard
Onboarding is a pivotal moment when building a relationship with your new customer. This ‘new beginning’ stage sets the tone for all future journeys, deals, and accomplishments you achieve together.
Building each onboarding experience based on best practices limits churn, improves customer satisfaction, and encourages transparent communication. EverAfter’s onboarding experience solves so many of these pain points, actively streamlining so many processes simultaneously. This is how you and each customer can celebrate the small wins together, keep track of meetings and tasks, organize your resources, and stay on the same page throughout every stage.
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