Project: Self-Onboarding 1.0 align all stakeholders & deal with pushbacks
- Customer-Centric
- I understand that we want to shield customers from the initial potential configuration errors and frustrations. We call this approach customer-centric. I would argue that this seemingly reasonable “customer-centric” onboarding approach will actually NOT set customers up for long term success. This is initial “protection” will mean only one thing — delayed frustration. If we don’t prepare admin users sufficiently, it means they will have to learn the lessons the harder way in real scenarios. A better-educated champion translates to a better-managed system and process which translated to a happier client who realized the value of the product. That can only mean one thing — a higher chance of retention and expansion.
- No immediate negative side-effects for customers: If this initial onboarding is not successful, we are still jumping in to help and provide learning. The customer does not lose anything. We still can get data expert’s help to get everything set up quickly. Customers don’t have anything to lose.
- Tons of positive sides: On the contrary, they had an opportunity to learn to recognize errors and be more proficient with their administrative tasks.
- I also would argue, during the COVID-19 situation, this approach is even more necessary. What would be the alternative for the admin training if it’s not a hands-on training? They either have to learn this through purely watching the video (which will take much longer; retention is lower and that’s not a preferred way for a lot of people to learn — people prefer to learn by doing); or we won’t provide much admin training at all. Either way, it’s not great.
- A lot of cases, it is just faster and more efficient for customers to do this on their end rather than the team doing it. Why do we not enable their learning but rather blocking it?
2. Status Quo vs. Lead the Change
Shelving problems under the rug is not difficult to do because we can always just hand all the configuration tasks to the data specialist and never get the necessary customer insights we need to help the product team prioritize the fix. I understand that that’s not what the team is consciously thinking to do — to avoid problems — unfortunately, that’s the outcome. By doing things the same way over and over again doesn’t automatically change the outcome.
This is the classic chicken and egg problem. If we don’t take a calculated risk to take on a different approach, we don’t get any customer feedback and it’ll hard to escalate and prioritize this issue in the product team. Without the product team fixing it, it becomes more impossible for us to allow new customers to do configuration on their own. With the same old actions, the problem will only perpetuate itself and takes forever to get resolved.
For me, what’s more difficult and more inspiring to do is to find a way to lead the change. Find a Better Way. Change has to start somewhere. If it means it starts with one PSC and with a few customers, then that’s where it all begins.
