7 Tips for Optimizing Your Customer Onboarding Processes

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Many businesses struggle to secure their clients’ loyalty. One of the major reasons for that is poorly optimized customer onboarding process.

A study by Statista says that the average churn rate across industries is around 24%. Attracting clients does not guarantee they will choose to stay with you. So you must make sure their experience with your company will encourage them to stick with you long-term.

You can build better and lasting relationships with your customers by optimizing your customer onboarding program. Providing them with a satisfying and effective customer onboarding process can help you leave a great first impression on your new customers and provide a positive onboarding experience

With that, here are some tips on how you can improve your customer onboarding process.

1. Get to know your customers

The first step in improving your customer onboarding process is getting to know who your customers are and gathering as much information as possible. Study their behaviors. Identify their needs. Gather customer feedback. And understand their motivation as to why they decided to try out your product in the first place. You can determine how best to approach your customers and implement effective client onboarding process steps through this knowledge base.

You can do this by gathering and analyzing customer data and through customer interactions. This information lets you see common trends and patterns regarding user behavior and usage. You can then use this data to segment your customer and create a client onboarding process that provides a positive experience.

Take this, for example. If the majority of your customers are millennials looking for their own space to live in, it’s easier to introduce more innovative and advanced technology such as Virtual Reality tours and online applications. On the other hand, with older clients, means you might need to use a more traditional approach in onboarding them.

2. Create an onboarding checklist

A good strategy needs extensive planning. Your onboarding process is no exception. To make sure that you can guide your customers through the entire processes and policies in your company, you should consider creating a customer onboarding checklist.

Using a checklist will make sure that you remain organized throughout the entire process. It can contain a list of the needed documents to seal the deal between you and your clients. Real estates and education institutions usually require legal documents before both sides can proceed with the actual transactions. This way, both you and your clients feel secure with the transaction.

Your checklist can also have a step-by-step process on how to enroll in your services. This is especially helpful for businesses in the finance and education sector. You can also use this checklist to monitor the progress of your client onboarding and see what else they need to know about your services.

3. Make help accessible and flexible

New users can have some trouble navigating through your product or service. This shows the importance of customer onboarding in making sure that you avoid such a fate.

Make sure that your customers can easily reach you in case they need help with your services. Thanks to the various technological innovations in communication, there are many ways to go about this. This includes emails, video conferences/calls, instant messaging, and forums.

Having an online client portal can also make help more accessible to your clients. Likewise, you can use it to monitor their progress during their onboarding. It can streamline your interactions with them and make sure that you guide each one accordingly. You can also use a client management solution to guide your customers throughout the process with little to no interference from you. In fact, a study by Statista shows that 42% prefer self-directed and independent learning over a hands-on approach. Hence, you should make sure that your onboarding process is flexible for both types of customers.

4. Automate where you can

The customer onboarding process can get tedious. Aside from preparing the actual guides for your customers, you also have to take note of schedules, requests, emails, and other administrative tasks. With so many tasks to do, your onboarding process might end up suffering from it.

Streamline your customer onboarding by automating repetitive and menial tasks. This way, you are free to focus more on improving your strategies and building better relationships with your customers.

Some tasks you can consider automating are:

  • sending follow-ups via email or SMS;
  • organizing schedules for client appointments;
  • gathering customer requests and feedback;
  • managing clients and customers and the actual step-by-step guide for your customers.

Clustdoc is a solution you can use to onboard your clients with ease. Its customer portal helps you welcome your new clients. It even offers a mobile app for better accessibility.

5. Show why your services are the best

You can use your onboarding process as an opportunity to show why your company is the best choice for your clients. Highlight services that make your brand unique and outstanding compared to your competitors. This way, you can leave a lasting impression on your clients and reinforce their interest in your service.

This goes hand in hand with the first tip in this list. Upon knowing and understanding your customers’ motivation in choosing your brand, you can emphasize the aspects of your services and processes which you think will most likely appeal to them.

You can provide testimonials and case studies to show how your company has helped other people like them. Likewise, you can direct their attention to the various awards, recognition, or achievements that your business currently has. Doing so will remind them why they chose you in the first place and strengthen the ongoing relationship.

Optimize your customer onboarding process

6. Personalize experience

Every customer has their own preferences when it comes to exploring and learning more about a product. If you can tailor-fit your onboarding process to their needs, the easier it will be to secure their loyalty in return. You can do this by offering different options for your client onboarding. You can have a live onboarding process, a self-exploratory one, a welcome email, an in-depth tutorial, or a brief tour.

Personalization also includes how you interact or reach out to your customers. Address them by their names in emails or chats. Acknowledge their concerns (if they ever have one) as soon as possible through live chats.

Likewise, make sure to incorporate your brand’s identity into all materials used during onboarding. This includes emails, videos, documentation, and presentations.

7. Listen to customer feedback

In the end, your customers will be your ultimate guide to customer onboarding. Listening to their feedback will help you identify the bottlenecks in your process and how best to overcome them. It reveals the strengths and weaknesses of your current onboarding strategy so that you will know what to focus on to make it even more effective.

Conduct surveys among your customers to know more about their experiences with your current onboarding process. Likewise, keep communication lines open so that you can entertain customer complaints or queries anytime. You can also encourage your customers to send suggestions or requests in making their experience better.

This also highlights the importance of business process management software. This solution is designed to review your business’ performance and distinguish the best ways to achieve your goals with your onboarding process.

Better onboarding, happier clients

Customer onboarding can help shape your brand’s first impression. An effective one can even help you provide excellent customer onboarding experience and build exceptional customer relationships. So, take the time to prepare a satisfying and memorable experience for your clients. Keep these tips in mind the next time you decide to level up your customer onboarding processes.

Onboard Your Clients in a Flash with Clustdoc

Onboarding is a challenge, but with the right approach and support, you can make it exciting and increase your customer retention rate.

Use Clustdoc‘s onboarding platform to digitally onboard a client and impress them with engaging and hassle-free onboarding.

Now that you’re here

Clustdoc is a client onboarding orchestration platform used by modern teams around the world. With Clustdoc, you can run automated workflows for requesting, reviewing and verifying new customers’ data, documents and contracts – without juggling between tools. 

If your team is managing new customers using emails, spreadsheets and PDFs, you’ll probably love using Clustdoc.

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