Changing the onboarding experience: If you’re not doing these things, you’re doing it wrong
When you teach people about your product and help them become familiar with it so they’re set up for success down the road, this is called “onboarding.” It’s the beginning process of guiding your customers through your application for the first time. Before using your product and applying it to their workflows or strategies, most customers go through onboarding so they understand how to best navigate and use your system before actually getting started.
As you can imagine, this is a critical period in your customer’s lifecycle — it’s where they will get their first taste of your product, your customer service, and your effectiveness. As a result, it is imperative that the onboarding experience for your customers is easy, personal, and scalable so they can adopt your product with minimal to no issues.
Here are some things we’ve done at BombBomb to improve the onboarding experience for our customers.
Start onboarding during the sales process.
Customer onboarding is not solely the responsibility of customer success; the reality is that it’s a shared effort among all departments aimed at creating “users” instead of just “customers.” You want your customer to be mentally and physically set up to actually use the product, right? With this in mind, you need to think of the first department that customers make contact with…and that is sales. Sales has the opportunity to set expectations right up front and ensure that the customer is ready and willing to use the product to improve their business.
To take advantage of onboarding early, BombBomb sales representatives start setting up new customers by doing activities that only require a one step set-up, like downloading mobile apps, filling out profiles, and more. They also work with the customer directly by creating action plans to help the customer actually use our product, gamifying the process during the trial period with gift cards based on usage. Additionally, sales reps focus on selling to customers who are the right fit to save time onboarding people who won’t use the product anyway.
Include in-app messaging for a personal feel.
Showing customers around your product with in-app prompts is the way to go. This creates a user-guided experience and has more relevant messaging, as each pop-up is referring to the action that is being done in that moment. There’s also an open opportunity here to include a value proposition with each step, as it helps to remind them of why they purchased your product to begin with. And it encourages them to keep moving through a process that is necessary for their long-term success but is also, at the moment, preventing them from doing the exact thing you want them to do, which is use the app.
BombBomb uses an in-app guide program that shows new users around the application so they can become familiar with where they go for specific tasks. This is how we highlight what’s most important for the customer and ensure their attention is where it needs to be. (Check out how BombBomb uses Pendo for in-app messaging!)
Focus on success milestones to perpetuate high morale.
What tasks should be completed for a customer to be considered “successful” with your product? Whatever they are, these are the tasks you should highlight during onboarding so customers know right away how to carry out these actions. When a customer is able to quickly and easily learn the basics, they can complete the tasks and experience fast “wins,” which will motivate them to keep going and to explore other features. If you’re not sure what should be factored into your ideal customer’s success measurement, spend some time analyzing numbers and usage before deciding on these statistics.
At BombBomb, the first thing we teach all our customers is how to use the “Quick Send” feature because it is the fastest and easiest way to send video email. Right off the bat, the customer has logged into the application, recorded their first video, and learned how to send it to others. These necessary factors are critical to a user’s long-term success with our application.
Move away from the webinar to avoid information overload.
We noted earlier that onboarding helps your customers become familiar with your product. How well do you think you’d familiarize yourself with brand new information provided over a one-hour, maybe even two-hour, time period? Hint: not very well at all. We don’t recommend anyone transfer critical information over an hour-long online seminar because it’s likely that none of the information will be retained. This information includes steps for your customers to take in their onboarding journey that are critical — to their success and to yours. Make this medium a second avenue — especially for those who prefer a classroom learning environment.
In addition to using in-app messaging as stated earlier, BombBomb also maintains various training resources that customers can use to get familiar with the application. Our external support site provides information on how to do small tasks or self-troubleshoot, while others more interested in strategy can enroll in our online academy with educational courses on using the application for business success. Onboarding stats also soared: when we switched from webinars to one-on-one onboarding for one of our real estate products, we saw a 15% increase in new customers being onboarded in just under two months — all during our busiest season!
Keep CSMs and Customer Care as your white glove crew, but scale if possible.
As good as it feels to bend over backward taking care of your customers, it’s not scalable to give everyone the “white glove” experience. Having said this, sometimes the most efficient method is not always the most effective; certain products may require more CSM involvement until viable in-app solutions are developed and successful. Finding this balance might be a hard pill to swallow, especially for companies who pride themselves on offering one-on-one onboarding sessions or complete in-app onboardings. And yet, it’s a necessary realization if you desire growth and a good reputation. If you’re struggling to keep up with manual onboarding, save one-on-one sessions for emergencies or when capacity allows for it. It’s worthwhile to find a scalable solution where customers can feel like they are receiving personal communication, but don’t completely wipe out human interaction.
Above all else, BombBomb CSMs will do what is best for the customer to be successful instead of what is best for the company. If a customer is having extreme difficulty in getting familiar with our application, CSMs will directly reach out to ensure they are properly set up and have the ability to send videos. To save time and maximize available resources, both CSMs and Customer Care will provide customers with support site tutorials, screen recordings, and more.
Many companies tend to overcomplicate onboarding with fancy programs and exhausting webinars, but it doesn’t take much to have a smooth onboarding process that won’t annoy your customers. By keeping your onboarding process self-paced and easy to understand, your customers will learn your product faster and become more likely to adopt your product for the long-term.
What are some unconventional ways you’ve changed or revamped your customer onboarding? What onboarding methods or platforms do you find are most successful?
