The Importance of Customer Support During Customer Onboarding

Customer onboarding allows you to guide and educate your customers about how they can use your product or service and how to get the most from it. When done right, customer onboarding will help not only retain your customers but transform them into long-term advocates for your brand.

Many businesses struggle with customer onboarding. And the end result? Newly-acquired customers stop using the product or service only weeks or months after winning them over. This is costing your business in more ways than one…

However, this is where your customer support team comes in. Having a dedicated team to connect with new and loyal customers and offer them help and support all along the way is a tried and true way to ensure your customers are happy with your product or service, and that they stick around.

Here are some reasons why and how a customer support team is a key component of any successful customer onboarding process.

1. Positive Customer Experience

Regardless of customers’ issues, complaints, or situations, it’s important that your customer support team listens and supports them. Maintaining a positive attitude—even while facing adversity—is key for ensuring customers have a positive experience.

Invest time and resources into training your customer support team on how to handle clients, listen to and address their issues, and how to respond appropriately and proactively can go a long way.

2. Shorter Way to Success

A typical onboarding process normally consists of two major milestones: (1) when customers start using your product/service and (2) when they have successfully used it.

Between those two milestones is where your onboarding process takes place, and this is where your customer support team has the most important role. Your customer support team helps bridge the gap between those milestones. This means that the hand-off between sales and your customer support team must also be smooth.

3. Human Interaction

Although we all live and operate in a digital age, and we rely on tools, templates, and technology to streamline processes, the “human” element is still important to customers. As a customer, receiving templatized email or chat responses that don’t really answer the question is frustrating. A well-trained customer support team should be queued up anytime a customer chooses to speak with a real person about an issue or a question. Not only will this help alleviate customers’ concerns, but it also instills trust.

4. Establish Communication

Like any relationship, communication is absolutely essential. How you communicate with your customers during the onboarding process can mean the difference between them staying and leaving. Your customer support team is there to communicate and be empathetic to customers’ needs, and also reduces the risk of losing customers during the onboarding process.

Establishing solid communication with your customers also means choosing your words carefully, especially in delicate or adverse situations. Focus on the facts, getting to the bottom of the story, and providing a solution that helps them and meets their needs—no matter what.

Above all, train your customer support team to never say, “there’s nothing we can do.”

Do You Already Have a Customer Support Team in Place?

Having a solid customer support team is one of the best investments you can make for your business. Customer support can dramatically increase the chances of acquiring and keeping new and loyal customers.

Without a dedicated support team in place, you’ll be missing out on a handful of opportunities. It could also mean missing a lot of new customers who could have been your regular clients just because their issues weren’t promptly or properly addressed.

Want to make your onboarding process a lot easier? Streamline your customer onboarding process and set your customer support team up for success with Rindle. Rindle is an easy-to-use process management system that allows teams to set up, automate, and streamline any process. Check it out here for free.