Customer Onboarding
How can you help customers fall into the flow of success?
What routine checks and balances need to be set up to manage this process optimally?
Customer onboarding is not a disconnected SaaS ritual. It is culture onboarding applied to the customer counterparty. The customer arrives with demand intent. The business must turn that intent into trusted participation.
| Culture loop | Customer instance | Proof |
|---|---|---|
| Learn | Understand the promise, workflow, and first useful action | The customer can name the outcome they hired the product for |
| Run | Complete the first value path without bespoke rescue | The product produces a visible result |
| Improve | Feed friction back into product, success, marketing, or sales | The operation changes because the customer used it |
| Teach | Become referenceable proof for the next customer | Testimonial, referral, case study, or reusable onboarding asset |
The onboarding phase is when you have the opportunity to make a customer happy. You need to have A grade onboarding when you have their attention because it's much harder to get it back if you screw this part up. David Skok
With a complex product, onboarding and ETL processes can work together to simplify the users experience of gaining competence without conscious effort.
Phases on onboarding process:
- Discovery
- Preparation
- Learning
- Completion of goals
During the process extract trigger stories to feedback to marketing and sales.
Benefits
Drive scalable and sustainable growth.
- Customers with better processes generate fewer support issues
- Growth by acquisition generates migration consultancy fees
- Customers that scale operations are more profitable and provide strong social proof
Tactics: Provide a cash-flow forecasting tool for free to build trust and educate Create a salesforce of the professional network customers need to grow their business
Challenges
Grow Relationships
Establish a relationship and build trust by giving something useful away for free.
- Begin relationships by helping not selling
- Learn pain triggers and where to focus product improvement
- We don't waste time trying to make the wrong customer happy
Personalised Experience
- Who what why and when
- Pain trigger to pleasure goals
- What outcomes to measure success
Thoughts
Questions
Obstacles
Opportunties
Decisions
Tools
What are best of breed tools that match jobs to be done?
Context
What are related concepts to master?
- depends-on Culture Onboarding — The source loop this customer flow instantiates
- pairs-with Customer Success — The operating surface that keeps customer progress visible
- applies-to Ecosystem — Customers carry demand intent in the five-counterparty model
- pairs-with Customer Acquisition Cost — Onboarding quality changes payback and retention
Links
What useful education resources are available?
Questions
What happens to your onboarding when the customer who signed up isn't the one who has to use it?
- Which of the four phases (discovery, preparation, learning, completion) loses the most people — and do you measure that?
- If onboarding is when you have their attention, what's the one thing you'd prove in the first 48 hours?