4 Customer Onboarding Fails: Why They Happen and How To Fix Them

It takes an average of eight touchpoints to close a complex sale. A considerable amount of work goes into the process. It involves creating personalized materials, sending them out on schedule, following up and reconnecting. 

Unfortunately, all of that hard work can be for nothing without the proper customer onboarding strategy. If a customer isn’t properly onboarded, it can cause a considerable amount of frustration. It can lead to unnecessary time and money expenses for both teams. In the end, it can ultimately kill the deal. 

So how can you ensure your customer onboarding process goes smoothly so you retain customers? Read on to find out how it can help you grow your business. 

The Problems

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen: It would be ideal if you dealt with just one person during the customer onboarding process. But most companies will need to train a team of 3-5 to get them familiar with their products and services. The team to be onboarded may include the primary decision maker, an IT rep, a marketing team rep, and a sales team rep. It can be difficult to keep everyone on the same page. 

Multiple Stages: Customer onboarding consists of multiple stages. You must get the software ready, train people on the various applications, and offer a testing period to ensure everyone is understanding how the product is used. With a team involved, it’s vital that all members know where they are in the process. 

Failing Expectations: If you use emails, communication will get buried producing a chaotic atmosphere and frustration. Multiple communication platforms can be even more confusing. The need to centralize communication, files, tasks, phases and steps, is a must.

Too Long to Value: The various stages of training, the amount of people involved, and various means of communication adds time to customer onboarding. The real value for the customer is being up and running. And time is money. Both companies may get frustrated when the onboarding process is longer than it needs to be. The customer could decide it’s just not worth it and kill the deal. 

The Solution

Centralized Communication: A centralized environment helps align resources, data, and engagement throughout the customer onboarding process. This is a secure, on-demand environment that is always available for sharing feedback. Communication will not be buried or lost in the fray. 

Collaboration & Process: A centralized workspace allows for the sharing of editable documents that can be updated as needed. These include onboarding checklists, task lists, and instructions. Teams can review them and update them as needed to ensure everyone is on the same page with due dates and goals. 

Consistency: Now that you have a process in place, you can execute the customer onboarding effectively. This consistency of engagement and tasks helps improve all phases of the customer onboarding experience. Not only is the onboarding process improved, but also shortened. This decreases the time it takes to get a customer up and running so the real value can begin.

How Engage Can Help

Customer onboarding is such a risky time for many organizations as the company has invested tons on sales and marketing to get the new customer only to lose them via an unsuccessful onboarding process. Don’t let your sales and marketing efforts go to waste. The good news is, we can take your disjointed onboarding process and make a systematized onboarding experience. Schedule a call with us today to discover our strategies for minimizing the risks and avoid those common onboarding failures.