What I Iearned from onboarding 150+ customers

Successfully onboarding a SaaS solution creates the necessary foundation for efficient use of the product. Your customers receive tangible value, and it dramatically increases the chances of them renewing the subscription.

Here at Wrike, I’ve had the opportunity to help more than 200 customers with onboarding. Previously, I shared a list of recommendations to make the onboarding process structured and consistent. Now, I’d like to offer a list of insights based on my experience to plan and prepare for onboarding sessions.

1. Onboarding won’t be successful without the dedication from the client’s side

The first and probably most important insight is that any effort from the solution provider’s side is worthless without the necessary dedication from the customer. You can do your job well — conduct industry research to better understand the customer, deliver an amazing training session, come up with a list of motivating factors for the customer’s team to use your product, etc. But in order to benefit, the client must invest the time and effort into learning how to use your solution, building new habits associated with it, and more.

This needs to be clearly communicated to the client’s management team. The next step is getting them to formally commit to an onboarding plan that was developed with their active participation. If any disagreements emerge later during the onboarding process, you can refer to that plan.

2. Don’t expect the customer to be enthusiastic about onboarding

Rolling out a new product or service is interesting and exciting — for some people. Let’s face it: Starting to use a new solution requires change, and most people don’t like change. Learning to use a new product and building new habits requires time. Team members need to put aside that time and deprioritize other tasks or spend extra hours before or after work.

I strongly recommend tailoring the onboarding process to the team’s needs. Brainstorm with the organization’s management to determine specific features of your product the team needs to use. Provide thorough training on these features and make other features optional (but do share the help resources for them). The less overloaded with information the team is, the less they will resist the change. Use the same approach with new routines associated with your solution — only choose the ones that are essential for the efficient use of the product and clearly communicate the importance of each.

3. Be prepared to deliver multiple training sessions

Even though it’s important to plan the onboarding process with the client’s management, you need to be flexible. Something inevitably crops up: crises, PTO, sick leave, etc.. Team members might not be able to attend the training sessions when you plan them, so be ready to deliver additional ones if necessary. Make a conscious decision to invest additional resources as needed to cement a long-term relationship.

But, of course, if you can reduce the workload for yourself, do so. For example, you can split the customer’s team into two groups. Record the two-hour training you deliver to the first group so the second group can watch it. That way, you can spend only 15–30 minutes doing a live Q&A with this group.

4. If any homework is involved, it won’t always be done

The onboarding process often takes more than one day and involves several training sessions. You might ask the team to practice between sessions. Unfortunately, this homework is not a top priority for some employees, so they may be unprepared for the next session. Team members who did spend the time practicing won’t want to listen to the same information again, and those who didn’t prepare won’t be able to proceed without additional explanations.

I recommend building any necessary practice in the training. It may make each training session longer, but at least you’ll be sure that everyone is on the same page.

5. Be prepared to improvise

We tend to think that we know why our customers purchase our product and what they’re planning to achieve. But don’t be so sure! One customer I worked with purchased Wrike to use it as a budgeting tool or CRM even though it’s a project management solution. It’s certainly possible to do so, but this would not be a common use case. In such a situation, keep in mind that the customer decided to purchase your product no matter what, and your main goal is to make sure that they get as much value from it as possible.

So you may have to improvise during the onboarding process. If you have the time, do a little research — ask your fellow CSMs whether they’ve encountered anything similar in their practice and if their customers got tangible value from the solution when it was used in a non-standard way. Then share that information with the customer.

And make sure you know your product well. And I mean really well. Sometimes the tiniest feature can make a difference, and you don’t want to lose the customer simply because you didn’t know about it. A good understanding of your product plus some creativity is a great recipe for interesting and uncommon solutions that can be very helpful for your customers.

6. Anything you don’t explain properly will result in major mistakes later

Every hour you spend with the customer during the onboarding process should result in them understanding a specific area of your product. Your goal is not to just present the material but to make sure that the customer’s team has a clear understanding of what you’re talking about, why it’s important, and how it benefits them.

I always try to regularly confirm that I’m on the same page as the customer during training. If it becomes clear that the employees are having trouble understanding something, I spend additional time on that topic before proceeding. Any confusion about the core components of the product can lead to major problems and could result in a subscription that is not renewed.

7. Provide a clear reason why your product should be used

Motivating your client’s team to use the product is one of the key components of an efficient onboarding process. Employees can have a perfect understanding of how to use the product, but if they don’t have a clear reason to do so, they often won’t, and the whole onboarding basically becomes a long product training.

I recommend taking the “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM) approach. Have a separate meeting with the client’s leadership team to discuss how each team member will personally benefit from your solution. Will it make it easier to perform certain tasks, saving the team member time? Or maybe they’ll get the visibility to avoid some frustrating mistakes. Coming up with concrete benefits for the team member helps convince them to use your product.

8. Success stories about similar companies are great motivation

Everyone loves examples of success. When customers hear about other companies that have achieved amazing results with your product, they understand that if others can do it, they can tooThis works even better when you can share the positive experiences of companies in the same industry or market that will really resonate with the client — you can speak your customer’s language.

When you encounter an interesting use case, make sure that you document it so you can reference it later. Gather a collection of success stories and best practices from various industries that you can share. These stories don’t need to include brand or company names (unless you have official approval from a customer for a case study, of course). Specific information about the business processes that were improved and the pain points that were addressed is usually more important.

9. Asking questions is key

Last, an overall tip — ask questions. All the time. This is the only way to understand how the onboarding process is proceeding, if are there any problems, are there any additional areas that you need to address, and so on. It doesn’t cost anything to ask one more time: “Is everything clear?” and it may be a great opportunity to clarify something and avoid serious problems later.

I hope you found these insights useful and they help facilitate an efficient onboarding process!