Today, the client onboarding experience is a fundamental part of any business, no matter which industry it belongs to. While many understand and accept this, its significance is often taken for granted in the hubbub of everyday tasks and operations.
Nowadays, the onboarding journey is an essential part of your long-term strategy to retain your clients and convert them into loyal fans.
In 2020, in fact, it was recorded that 86% of people were more likely to stay loyal to a business that invested in onboarding content that educated them.
This goes to show that any business that overlooks the importance of this stage of the client relationship, or thinks it’s just a one-and-done experience that ends once a client submits their data, ends up with a…
So, why exactly is the onboarding experience so important?
Businesses are accused of making the fatal error of not thinking enough about the client experience once the dotted line has been signed far too many times.
Today, making this mistake means that you make it difficult for clients to build trust, loyalty and meaningful engagement.
Even if you think about it often enough, you need to have a good understanding of what’s working for you and what’s not. Overestimating your onboarding experience to be one that’s smooth and easy, without the data to back that up, can be equally disastrous.
Your clients’ first real interaction with you sets the tone for their entire experience; missed opportunities to represent your company’s value and commitment can be difficult to recuperate from.
Now, more than ever, it pays to invest in a smooth onboarding process that can streamline tedious and repetitive tasks and one that doesn’t overwhelm your clientele.
It’s not enough to have a great client acquisition strategy in place; you also need strategies that retain them in the long run—and an exceptional client onboarding experience can help with that tremendously.
The problem is often that an onboarding process can feel monotonous and transactional; adding a personal touch can change that and help clients feel like they’re a valued part of your organization.
When you’re more attentive to consumer needs, it’s easier to pinpoint concerns and struggles and address them proactively before they become serious issues.
When you establish systematic processes from the very beginning of your relationship, your clients understand that they’re in good hands. When done well, your onboarding gives them the confidence they need to make high-value decisions, reducing the likelihood of costly turnovers.
Providing clients with the necessary information and insight into your services or products allows them to understand what they can expect from your business. An effective onboarding process can support this, ensuring that clear expectations and objectives are set at the beginning of your relationships.
While this doesn’t sound significant, expectation setting is a critical part of building strong, long-term relationships.
Maintaining this clarity ensures your clients have a sound idea of what you can—and can’t—do, and allows your teams to perform their duties without being caught on the back foot.
A great client experience lays the foundations for successful, long-lasting relationships.
Today, this starts with the client onboarding process. The good news is that given the technology and knowledge available to us, creating a journey that helps clients connect deeper with our businesses is within our reach—we just have to take it.
Onboarding is a challenge, but with the right approach and support, you can make it exciting.
Use Clustdoc‘s onboarding platform to digitally onboard a client and impress them with engaging and hassle-free onboarding.
For more onboarding tips, check out this post on how to improve your onboarding process.
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.
