Most sales reps congratulate themselves on a job well done when customers sign on the dotted line, but in reality, that is only the beginning. Customers buy a product with a purpose, and companies need to ensure that the purpose for which they bought the product is well served. But this is not always so. Technology companies often have a way of making customer onboarding complicated and daunting. They put their customers through complex product tutorials, long-form pdf guides, endless how-to videos, and tedious sign-up processes as a way of welcoming them on board. Consider these alarming stats:
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Businesses lose 75 percent of new users within the first week.1
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40 to 60 percent of free trial users will use a product once and never come back.2
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B2B SaaS trial conversion rates are between 3-5%, which means that most businesses lose as many as 95% of their customers in the early trial period.
Businesses cannot afford to have revolving doors where customers enter and exit almost immediately. When customers churn, they incur a loss of time, resources, opportunities, and most of all, revenue. There are many reasons why customers churn. When customers don’t understand the full functionality of your product or service and are unable to derive enough value from it, they tend to churn. Thoughtful and intentional customer onboarding can help resolve this problem by eliminating obstacles and providing an easy, seamless process to set the customer up for success.
Not only does customer onboarding help the customer adapt your product to meet their needs, but it also sets the tone for the relationship that you will have with the customer in the future. A positive customer experience, especially at their first test-drive of the product or service, goes a long way in ensuring that customers remain with the company’s product or services. Given this, it's easy to understand why excellent customer onboarding practices are essential for any business.
“Businesses lose 75% of new users within the first week.1”
Customer Onboarding is a Journey, Not a Destination
When is a customer considered on board—when they've been through a specific number of training modules, or when they’ve learned how to accomplish a particular task using the product? Some onboarding programs focus on helping a customer achieve their first success, while others are instrumental in helping customers grasp the real value of the product or solution. Deciding where the finish line of an onboarding program lies depends on the customer journey and what it will take to convert them into long-term customers.
Technically, customers are never fully onboard. Most products and solutions are continually evolving; therefore, customers are continuously learning. Onboarding is not a destination. It is a process that helps to cement and build strong, lasting relationships between the customer and the company.
Here, then, are five keys to effective customer onboarding that apply to any industry.
“40 to 60% of Free Trial Users Will Use a Product Once and Never Come Back.2”
1. Make the Onboarding Process about the Customer, Not the Product
It is tempting to make the onboarding process all about the product or solution. After all, it wasn’t easy building the product, and now that there is a paying customer, it is exciting to talk about the product’s various features and functionalities, and all that it can do. However, it is important to remember that the customer bought the product for a purpose—to accomplish a certain goal or solve a specific problem.
It is essential that we understand that purpose. In fact, in a study 41% of marketers mention ‘lack of understanding customer needs’ as one of the critical challenges faced by them in managing their customer onboarding activities. For effectively onboarding customers, the onboarding team must have access to all the necessary information about them - their functional role, what they hope to achieve with the product, their level of technical knowledge, and so on. This is possible only if the team is aligned with the other customer-facing teams in the organization, such as sales, marketing, and customer success.
The purpose of onboarding is not just to ensure that users are well-versed in how to use the product, but that they find immediate value from the product or service that they just purchased. Onboarding processes that take into account the customer’s perspective and reasons for making a purchase are highly effective in engaging users, helping them realize their ‘first value delivered’ moment. The ‘I Want To…’ screen, for instance, is incredibly useful when onboarding new users. This helps businesses customize the customer experience and helps the customer successfully realize their goals and objectives.
“B2B SaaS trial conversion rates are between 3 and 5 percent, which means that most businesses lose as many as 95% of their customers in the early trial period.3”
2. Aim for Quick ‘Aha!’ Moments
While customer onboarding may be an ongoing process and not a one-time activity, it shouldn't distract businesses from ensuring that customers reach their ‘aha!’ moment – when they achieve their first success with the product - as soon as possible. Practitioners refer to this as the moment of ‘activation.'
Instead of waiting for customers to complete the entire onboarding process before they derive value from the product or service - which could take weeks if not months - it is better to ensure that customers have winning moments every time they log in and use the application. Consider the following scenario where a customer decides to try out a new project planning tool. They will first have to register for a free trial, then set their project up, add tasks and dates, invite multiple people to collaborate, and so on.
If the customer’s ultimate ‘aha!’ moment is when the project is up and running, and they are able to successfully collaborate using the tool, that's a long way off from Day 1 when the customer registered for a trial period. It is better to break up the entire onboarding process into smaller bite-sized actions. Businesses will need to ensure that multiple milestones are celebrated along the way.
As in the example above, it could be as simple and rewarding as setting up the project with their branded logo. That could be the first win for the customer. And once they get that initial one win, they move onto the next one, and the one after until they are fully and completely integrated with the system.
Adapting quick wins to customer personas and their goals will help companies ensure they’ve got something for every customer.”
3. Personalize the Onboarding Experience
The one-size-fits-all onboarding approach is a myth at best. Customers have shown a distinct preference for sales interactions that are tailored to their likes/dislikes, needs, and journeys. Why should it be any different with their onboarding process? Using data that has been captured through the sign-up process is the easiest way to ensure a basic level of personalization. Mapping the onboarding process to goals or personas provides a more personalized way of moving customers through the onboarding process.
Organizations can choose to deliver content in a form that suits the individual learning styles of their customers. Training docs, live demos, product tutorials, explainer videos, and onboarding playbooks, are some of the assets used widely by marketers in onboarding their customers.5 VMware, which provides cloud computing and platform virtualization software and services, for instance, uses ‘how-to’ videos extensively in its onboarding process.
4. Simplify the Learning Process
Products are becoming increasingly complicated with a plethora of features. Customers can be easily overwhelmed, especially if all the features are simultaneously introduced to them. While onboarding, it should be kept in mind, that customers need to understand the basic functionality of the product before moving on to its more advanced features. Customers can be provided with bite-sized content in an interactive format that is more engaging and comprehensible. Bite-size content is easier to understand and remember.
This concept involves breaking down the information into smaller pieces and then streamlining the delivery of that content in a way that is easy to digest in a short time. This will help customers feel less overwhelmed during the onboarding process and boost knowledge retention. Information can also be delivered on a just-in-time basis wherein the customer will be provided with information about a feature in the product at the time that they decide to use it. The use of video and modern formats like product walkthroughs can simplify and accelerate the learning process.
5. Invest in the Right Enablement Solution
Recent advancements in sales enablement solutions have contributed a great deal toward modern onboarding techniques. An integrated sales enablement and training platform allows organizations to create content in all modern interactive formats, including 3D visualization and product walkthroughs. It provides easy navigation and supports self-directed learning for customers who want to discover the product at their own pace.
Further, an AI-driven enablement solution allows organizations to personalize the onboarding process at scale and structure the documentation around tasks that the user is trying to accomplish with the product. Robust analytics makes it easier for marketers to understand the onboarding process of individual customers, so timely interventions can be made to ensure their early moments of success.
Conclusion
Now is the time to reevaluate your customer onboarding strategy. A smart and thoughtful onboarding program will help your customers achieve what they intended to achieve with your product or service. It begins with understanding the purpose for which the customers bought the product - the key value that they are seeking. Organizations should endeavor to keep the onboarding process uncluttered and simple. They should personalize the onboarding experience for each customer, and ensure that customers have winning ‘Aha!’ moments using their product throughout the onboarding process.
Product and customer success teams should regularly analyze the data and modify their onboarding programs based on the insights revealed. Organizations would benefit from investing in a modern sales enablement solution that allows them enough flexibility to meet the learning needs of each customer during the onboarding process.
To know how Nytro can help you with customer onboarding, schedule a call today.
Reference:
https://www.intercom.com/blog/designing-first-run-experiences-to-delight-users/
