Process & Workflow
What is Customer Onboarding and Why is it Important?
Many companies struggle with developing the right processes that ensure an easy and streamlined customer onboarding process. For example, in many cases, sales reps focus solely on closing the sale without setting and managing proper expectations about what customers can expect to receive.
Sure, this approach might help you win more sales, but customer retention will suffer, hurting your business in the long run.
In this article, we will dive into what customer onboarding is and why it’s important.
What is Customer Onboarding?
Customer onboarding is often thrown around but isn’t necessarily explained. Customer onboarding is essentially the process of welcoming new customers to your business, showing them your products and/or services, helping them find the product or service that will provide them with the most value and reach their goals, and turn them into loyal, meaningful, and long-term customer relationships.
Implementing a customer onboarding process is different for every business. If you want to build a smooth and efficient onboarding process, the first thing you need to understand is that the process shouldn’t be about providing your new customers the information they need, it’s also about understanding and meeting their needs.
Why is Customer Onboarding Important?
Here are some reasons why customer onboarding is important:
- Show Your Value Early On
Perhaps the most important element in the customer onboarding process is that it allows you to showcase the value of your product/service early in the relationship. Some businesses don’t realize that the early stage is where customers are the most excited, and as such, they failed to capitalize on this with their onboarding process.
During this stage, it’s really important to highlight the particular value of your offer to your customers. Provide them with examples of how your product or service can meet their specific needs or address any of their challenges or pain points. A personalized touch could also come in handy, either in the form of a specialized training, documentation, or a kickoff call.
- Understand Your Clients’ Needs
Client onboarding is a process that involves several different stages. You are responsible for helping your clients to understand their role in the process. However, it’s also your opportunity to learn about what your customers need. You can do this by collecting the following insights:
- Their goals
- What they want from working with you
- Where they see themselves in the future
If your business is about offering tailored products and/or services based on your customers’ needs, then you can surely use such valuable information to further improve your offers and service model.
You’ll need a means of capturing client information to pull this off. Luckily, client intake forms are a great tool for making the process easier.
- Reduce Churn Rate
“Churn rate” refers to the percentage at which customers no longer make transactions with a company for a certain period of time. This metric is often measured monthly, quarterly, or yearly depending on the industry and the products and services offered.
There are four different reasons for this:
- Your customers no longer find your products necessary
- Your products weren’t what they expected
- A better alternative was offered
- They’re struggling to use your product
One way to figure this out is toi ensure that your onboarding process guides your customers accordingly. and teaches them how to properly use your product. This will help reduce any issues that they might encounter, thus reducing your churn rate.
- Manage Client Expectations
Prior to purchasing, your customers should already know what to expect from you. Your customers should feel confident in working with you right after placing an order or signing up. The onboarding process allows you to reiterate the value of your product or service, so customers know they made the right choice in working with you.
Managing and setting client expectations right from the onboarding process allows you to establish an even better relationship with your customers.
- Improve Customer Relationships
It can take months to find a customer, but only seconds to lose one.
With proper onboarding, however, you can make your customers feel that they’re highly valued and appreciated. This can have a huge impact on your business going forward. As mentioned earlier, happy customers are more likely to make repeat purchases.
As you ease your new customers into the onboarding process, you’ll gradually be able to improve your relationship with them. This can end up being a win-win situation for your customers and your company at the same time.
Customer onboarding can seem like a basic process, but the benefits it can bring are massive. Creating a solid onboarding strategy allows you to maximize your company’s earning potential, enjoy better customer retention rates, and most of all, keep you and your customers happy.
Make your customer onboarding process even easier with Rindle. Rindle is designed to help build and streamline proceses like makes your your workflow easier and more organized.