One prominent “leader” in CS CRM software stated: “The Point of onboarding is to help users get acquainted with all the features of your product.” If you believe this, please keep reading! For most customers I start to work with, ~92% of the value of the human assisted onboarding process is lost. Onboarding calls are typically focused on training the customer, making sure they are set up correctly, are aware and know how to use the product features or access support (similar to the above misguided statement). Great. Of course that needs to happen, but it is NOT the primary goal of onboarding. The primary goal of onboarding is to understand your client’s business needs for your product so you can provide more value to them throughout the relationship. There is no better time to capture this data. Too often we assume we know the value we provide; many times we don’t. The onboarding process is the first step in preventing customer churn, making the point of onboarding … to prevent Customer Churn!
The point of human assisted onboarding is to prevent Customer Churn!
Below are twelve items you should capture from your customer and have recorded in your CRM before the onboarding process is marked complete:
- Confirm sales information – this check on sales saves time and reduces the blame game. Design a hand off WITH sales so everyone agrees on the information Sales will provide to CS (even if it’s automated) and what will happen if they don’t. Then validate the information with your customer during the onboarding process. It eliminates bad assumptions and keeps everyone honest (including the customer!) Report back to sales how they did passing this info over at the sales agent level.
- Know how your customer makes money. What do they do that is their primary source of revenue, then determine how you fit into that process (don’t guess, make sure your customer confirms your assessment) Directly -can’t make money without, Enhance -you help them make more, Ancillary -it’s nice to have but if they stopped using you, they still operate.
- Understand the “pain”. Why did they choose to buy from YOU and what problem are you solving for them? (related to #2 but not exactly) this helps defend from the competition. They will rarely tell you they are thinking about leaving in advance so it’s important to reinforce value throughout the relationship.
- Can you measure #2 or #3? This is the first step in really understanding value from the customer. If the old way took too long (find out how long is too long), then focus on response time and report that to your customer at agreed upon intervals comparing it to the baseline. If it was price (and you confirmed this with the customer) then focus on the ways you save them money or compare expense to the old way.
- How important is the problem you are solving for them? The best way to do this is to figure out what happens if you are down for a day, a week or a month, does their revenue stop? Is the problem important enough that they have to get it elsewhere, or is it a nice to have that they can do without for a time. As the question: What is this helping you to do better than you did before? (similar to #2 but not always the same)
- Do they have a future tech plan? Additional systems or capabilities? What is their 5 year “Tech Stack” plan? Related to this is the technology they use around your systems. If you are a component of the HR process, you should know which HR system they use and have that documented in the CRM. Is it integrated with everything they use before and after your process?
- Is there anything that the product doesn’t do for them that they would like to have? This is great for identifying risks and product enhancements in a cumulative way – one customer that wants X is no big deal to the broader company, but 100 is a different story. It also uncovers wrong “impressions” from Sales, that CS is left to manage.
- Who is the champion of the product at your customers company, and what are they expecting the product to do once implemented (think strategy not tactics)? If other than your direct client, you need to know this and understand if the contact or the purpose for your product changes.
- Emergency contact and your contact’s boss. Different than the champion, but just as critical. If you speak with the HR director or the CFO, you should probably have another person to speak with and confirm that 6 months or every year.
- Make sure that all of this information is recorded in a CRM or anywhere you store your clients data. Where possible make it a field with standard settings (drop downs). Then you can identify common trends when customers churn and report on incomplete data from your CS associate.
- Onboarding complete date – default this field to “no” in your CRM and force this to be changed when complete along with the date it was completed. DO NOT default to “yes” if the client refused onboarding. If you must, add an additional drop down to identify when the client refused. The date is used to calculate the time to onboard and can be used to identify best practices for your team.
- Train and educate your customers on your product and enhanced features.
Some of these may seem like duplicates, but each can have a specific value to your customer relationship. The data here can be used to guide your customer into deeper product adoption, identify valuable insights into customer’s behavior and guide the product team into developing additional value added enhancements or features. As you look deeper into churn reasons, you will start to see patterns emerge and can develop better customer tactics and even product features to combat future churn. You will need to be sure your agents are crystal clear on the definitions and “the WHY” things are important or they will start entering default answers and the data will not be as valuable.
Onboarding may contain training for your customer, but it is NOT the primary reason. Human assisted onboarding is about creating a deeper relationship with your customer and identifying the value your solution provides. THIS is what will prevent future customer churn.
