5 Tips for Successfully On-boarding your Customers
Here at Salesforce, we’re obsessed with the customer experience. Just about every day I’m in a meeting on how we can make onboarding seamless and improve the daily lives of our customers. And over the course of my time here, we’ve found what we consider the best ways to make the onboarding experience pain-free. Then one day it dawned on us: Our customers have their own customers, which means they probably have their own onboarding needs and desires. So to help you skirt a few challenges, we’ll share our top 5 tips for successfully onboarding customers. Enjoy!
1. Walk your current onboarding process as a customer.
Onboarding means different things to different people. Some consider onboarding to be part of the trial phase of a product, while others consider it to be something that happens post sale. However you define it, walk through your onboarding offering as if you’re a brand new customer. See what type of emails, resources, and interactions you receive. Does an account executive or implementation consultant reach out? What’s the cadence of interactions? It everything clear and well communicated? These are all valuable pieces that make the difference between a good and a great customer experience.
2. Understand that people learn in different ways.
Remember in elementary school when teachers taught each skill in a few different ways? Perhaps first they'd read aloud, then show a textbook, and finally explain it using a chalkboard. When it comes to teaching your product, the same methodology comes in handy. We all process information in our own ways. Some learn best from a how-to article or a short video; others learn best through an interactive webinar. For me personally, I learn best when I take them time to go through all of these methods. So when creating resources for your customers, make sure you’re hitting various learning styles and keeping all of your customers in mind.
3. Revamp your knowledge base.
Once you’ve created a library of resources, the next step is to organize it well. Just because you know the best order to consume information, that doesn’t mean your customers will. Make sure customers receive knowledge articles and information in a logical manner that’s not overwhelming. You’ll also want to ensure your knowledge base is searchable so customers can find the answers to their questions right way; this will save your customers time — and save your customer service team an email or phone call.
4. Invest in tools.
The overall idea of onboarding is that it needs to be a repeatable process; not only do you need the right process, but it needs to be repeatable in order to provide consistency for customers and reps alike. Automation is a tremendous way to help with that. Whether it’s an email drip campaign or in-app messaging, automated tools help you reach thousands of customers quickly and easily. Not only can you reach more, you can also track the effectiveness of various campaigns (such as if a customer has opened an email or clicked on a certain call to action). These tools generally have an associated cost, but it’s a solid investment and pays real dividends in terms of efficiency and customer satisfaction.
5. Measure in micros, not macros.
Oftentimes, when onboarding is concerned, we’ll look at the all-important attrition number to determine whether or not our onboarding program is successful. While I agree that attrition is a nice indicator, we also need to measure onboarding milestones at a more granular level. Define your customers’ first value moment. At Salesforce, one of our first value moments is resolving a customer case, so we create milestones to get customers there, too; we even track whether or not they’re reaching micro milestones (such as inviting agents or setting up an email inbox). Measuring in increments will help you help your customers achieve those first a-ha moments.
