Customer On-boarding with Design Thinking

Pallav Das
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

Do you know 30–40% of software users never come back post first login? That’s the reason first 60 days are most crucial for any software product.
Customer on-boarding becomes more critical in B2B SaaS space, where buyers and users are different than B2C. Customer On-boarding is the first phase of customer life-cycle post purchase.Customer On-boarding is not product walk through. It should be the first moment of success for the user.

Users lost their way between stage 1 to 2 and churned due to three main reasons:
1) No Value
2) Less relevant
3) Information overload

A clear On-boarding strategy is must for all organisations to control initial churn. Today we will talk about few key best practices of customer on-boarding by applying Design Thinking principles.

Before we start one thumb rule, we should keep in mind. “Make your User feel Smart in each step.”

1) Discover — Identify the key motivation of the user to use your product

It doesn’t matter how many features you have in your product. Nobody uses 100% features of any product. So never start with the feature list of your product, rather spend more time to understand how your product can make him successful.

For Ex: Understand the Job role, critical KPIs, existing challenges, and expectations

Post user discovery you can adjust your pitch and emphasise on product features and benefits well suited to user’s requirement. Never use scripts, it’s a waste of time.

2) Empathise — Try to gain empathetic understanding to his challenges/pain

Immersion is one of the most efficient ways to learn empathy. Go deep and understand how the user was currently managing his tasks. Why does he like to do his task in that way? Any prior bad experience? Be curious but don’t overdo. Use analogies. Analogies are useful to build empathy. Use extreme situations like “would you like to improve your delivery TAT by 40%?”

3) Experience — Show off the product

By now you have a clear understanding of user’s motivation. Now explain only top features which are essential for him to be successful. Let him explore other secondary features slowly. Avoid Information Overload. On boarding is not about product feature download; It’s the first step to user success. Make it straightforward and relevant.

4) Produce — Let your product do the rest

Let your user discover the product and find the value himself. Provide walk-through decks, Videos, and other support channel information. Keep an eye on usage and reach out to him and ask about his success. It is incredibly critical to know how our customer defines “success.”

“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realise it themselves.” — Steve Jobs

Customer delight comes when the user is satisfied. No matter how you define customer centricity in your vision or mission statement. The key factor is to give a chance to your users to experience it.
Customer On-boarding is a nonlinear process, and smart organisations keep iterating to improve.

I hope this post will help to make you and your user successful.

Pallav Das

Written by

Customer Success | Products | Marketing

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