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Customer Onboarding: 5 common mistakes that may dent company reputation & revenue
Customer onboarding is an important step as it sets the future expectation and company image for the newly acquired client.
A positive image in the customer mind not only help the company to get cooperation during the project period but goes long after project completion thus improving NPS ( Net Promotor Score) also.
We learned this a hard way, and I decided to write about this for our customers and fellow entrepreneurs and help them avoid mistakes in customer onboarding.
What is Customer Onboarding?
The term Customer Onboarding is like Employee onboarding except for the information for both is different.
Customer onboarding starts when marketing & sales have done their job and converted the deal. The customer is now ready to take service/product from the company.
The process of welcoming the new customer and informing him/her about the company’s process of executing the project is called Customer Onboarding.
5 Common Mistakes in Customer Onboarding
There are several mistakes that companies do in customer onboarding. We learned this with experience and today we have 1000+ clients onboarded including fortune 500 companies, govt agencies and small business owners with our 30 minutes onboarding process.
Let’s learn what are these 5 mistakes in customer onboarding
- Not acknowledging the customer after getting payment and assuming that the customer knows that company has started the work on his project
- Not setting the expectations of the customer. Your client might think in a totally different way than what you have decided to do for him. Trust me I have seen the big wide gap in customer expectation and vendor’s delivery, which becomes the reason for dispute
- Not sharing the process of project execution and whom to reach when customer has the query or complaint
- Not sharing the updates on project development.
- Not sharing the exact date of delivery or important milestones of the project
Client Expectations & Questions during onboarding:
Since the customer is new and he might have several questions & expectations in his mind, it is imperative to answer them promptly and set the client expectations.
Setting expectations during client onboarding through discussion.
Type of Customer Onboarding
There are three ways to onboard a client in the company
1. Automatic Client Onboarding
2.Customer onboarding through Human Resource
3.Hybrid Customer onboarding
Let’s learn all three one by one
1. Automatic Client Onboarding
You may have experienced this kind of onboarding in Banks, Insurance companies and similar big companies.
They have a fully automatic system from calling them through automatic or recorded welcome script to sending username passwords for their accounts and self-generating PIN service to DIY type portal service.
No doubt this saves a huge amount, but it defiantly fails to give a personal touch which humans crave.
2. Customer onboarding through Human Resource
This is one of the most effective ways of onboarding the client but at the same time costly and non-scalable. Many new companies and small companies are greatly benefited from this approach, and this gives the best loyal customer to the company.
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But with the obvious limitation of time, energy, money, and number of clients to be entertained in the day, this is not scalable. If your business is new or small then you may either yourself or through manpower can do this but as the company grows, customer onboarding falls to automatic mode.
3. Hybrid Customer Onboarding
A hybrid approach for customer onboarding is an ideal one especially for new companies or small businesses.
Hybrid is scalable and maintains the human touch as well while onboarding the clients thus developing loyalty & saving the company’s time
We tell our clients at Recherche Digital is to use a combination of human & automation and minimize (not fully eliminate) human interaction.
30 minutes onboarding process
The approach is to welcome the client by office staff or dedicated customer care manager and thereafter shift the client to an automation system with the choice & option of reaching back to the customer care if the client gets struck or have grievances.
We found detailed calls before starting the project and spending 20 to 30 minutes with the client either physically or on zoom call brings the best outcome & customer understanding.
These are the exact steps that we have used for onboarding more than 1000+ clients in our company, we follow a hybrid approach and below is the typical flow of customer onboarding.
Here is each step include
1.Customer Welcome Call
5 Mints
Human
2.Customer Welcome Email
0 Mints
Automation
3.Customer Zoom Call
20 Mints
Human
4.Helping Videos & Support portal
0 Mints
Automation
5.Customer Payment Confirmation
0 Mints
Automation
For most of the automatic work, we have in house software IMS ( Integrated Marketing Software ) that does the heavy lifting for us and do client communication through email, SMS or Whatsapp without involving manpower.
We successfully reduced our customer onboarding time to 30 minutes including human interaction thus maintaining a high onboarding rate & making a system that is scalable and takes ZERO TIME of my team.
Welcome Call matter for Client Onboarding that we use in our company
Hi John,
Good to have you onboard, My name is Harish and I’ll be your project head. I’ll be responsible for the timely & quality delivery of your project. We have sent you a welcome mail which consists of a lot of important information.
I would like you to invite for a zoom meeting where I and my colleagues will discuss your goal for this project and how we will help you achieve the same through our services. You will get an invite soon.
Do you have any questions for me for now?
Thanks for choosing Recherche Digital.
Bye
The call usually lasts for about 5 minutes and is followed by zoom meeting invite mail.
Here is what our welcome mail looks like for customer onboarding
Dear Customer,
Welcome to the Recherche Digital. We’re honoured that you’ve chosen to work with us. It’s our utmost priority to ensure you have an excellent experience with our Presentation Design Service and team from day one, so we’ve compiled this packet of resources to provide a framework and clear path for success.
Inside this mail, you’ll find:
- An introduction to our team and your points of contact at Recherche Digital
- A fully secure cloud folder link with a password for all your data
- A timeline of your project & how we will proceed on that
- Links to help documentation and other resources
Safety of your data
Here is the link to a fully secured password-protected Microsoft Folder with access to you & Recherche Digital team working on your project.
Cloud Folder Link: < link>
Password: *****
From Recherche Digital side, the following members are being authorized to access your data
| Employee ID | Designation | Contact | Permission | |
| RD010 | Project Head | 9999****** | design@recherchedigital.com | Read/Write |
| Read/Write |
TimeLine
Total estimated time for delivery for the whole project: 05 days provided all the approvals, instructions and material is made avail to us as per our requirements.
Help & Support
Your Project head is the POC for most of your queries however if any case you are not getting satisfactory response, you can always reach to Team Leader at tl@recherchedigital.com or +91-9999-800-***
I am a big advocate of automation as it saves time and money, but I have realized that Human’s interaction cannot be fully eliminated especially in customer onboarding.
So if you are small or new company, try using above customer onboarding and develop loyal & customer base.
Author : Harish K. Saini
Publishing Date : 10 January, 2022