If you can get the first few moments rights then your users are going to stay with you over for years with loyalty.
Customer onboarding is the first interaction for building a good relationship with new customers and retaining them for long period. The main objective of this design is to deliver the value of products or services and help users with decision making.
The onboarding process involves steps from the initial step to the first use of the service. For example, receiving welcome push notifications and emails, chat support for installation, and e-books for the setup process are a few steps in the user onboarding process.
What is Customer Onboarding?
The two main reasons behind customer churn rate in the initial stage are not understanding the product or not obtaining benefits from service. You may have built a great website and service which serve the latter reason. But you need to take care of the former reason to engage customers.
All the activities from introducing the product to their first use fall into the customer onboarding process. It is the process of nurturing new customers and making them comfortable with products or services. A perfect customer onboarding strategy involves an introduction to the product, steps of installation, and client reviews to build trust and celebrate customers success.
Let’s see the components of the customer onboarding process
Introduce Product: Give a walkthrough of the product and how it can help them in resolving their pain points.
Know about users: Understand your users concerns and expectations from your product. This will assist you in customising products or messages to the users.
Support Options: Try to provide every possible customer support service to the users, building user confidence.
Follow Up: Encourage the users to take action and also know about any need for assistance or improvement in the product.
Why Customer Onboarding is important?
Imagine you got new signup, that’s a great thing but what to do next to turn them into loyal customers? Also, there are high chances your users leave your product or service when they are instructed how to use it. To avoid all these you need to have a perfect customer onboarding strategy. Here is the list of reasons why customer onboarding is an important part of the customer journey.
Improve Customer Lifetime Value (CLV):
Customer lifetime value is an important business metric. You may acquire many new customers but it’s not worth it if you can’t retain them. Also, customer acquisition costs more to the company than retention.
Customer onboarding plays an important role in boosting customer lifetime value. Because it is the first phase of the customer with your website. If you can make it perfect, it leads to the next conversion step and builds customer loyalty.
Reduce Customer Churn Rate:
Do you know we can reduce the churn rate by 67% if we can resolve the user issue in the first interaction? Yes, and the first user interaction with the website is a part of the customer onboarding process. Nurture your new customers with an exceptional onboarding experience and turn them into loyal customers.
Boost Mouth Marketing:
Referrals are the most valuable leads you can generate for your business. You can gain long-lasting customers as these leads come from clients who trust your products. A good customer onboarding experience delights your users and encourages them to refer the product to others.
Increase Conversions:
Customer onboarding experience always has an impact on website sales or conversions. For example, you have visited a brand new website and have not received any support from the website for onboarding. This makes you think twice before making a purchase as you have not found any reason to trust.
On the other hand, an effective user onboarding process can build user trust and increase the chances of making an immediate conversion.
How Do You Develop a Customer Onboarding Process?
Will you build a marketing campaign without any strategy? It is because we can’t take any chances of ineffective marketing.
The same applies to the user onboarding process. You need to have a perfect customer onboarding strategy to reach your goals or the right audiences. For that, have a basic objective to build the customer onboarding template. Think about your target customer base, retention goals, and customer usage pattern while determining your goals. Here is the checklist of best practices for creating a customer onboarding strategy.
Create Buyer Persona:
Knowing your customers is the first and crucial step in creating a customer strategy. We know it’s difficult to know more about users without travelling for a particular period of time.
For the initial stages, you can create a buyer persona considering the basic pain points and challenges users face while using your product or service. Of course, you can upgrade your strategy when you learn more about users by focusing on outcomes.
Show Value in Content:
We know that every aspect of online marketing revolves around content. Try to include valuable content in every step of the customer onboarding process. You can include product demos, use cases, upcoming features, and client reviews that emphasize the product value.
For instance, you can’t expect users to take the next step without showing them the value of your product. So, add valuable content in welcome emails, push notifications or demo videos you send to the users. These give a quick idea of the product and build trust in your service.
Constant Communication:
Remain in touch with your customers at every stage of the customer onboarding process. This shows you are always available for the users which built trust and turn them into loyal customers. You can ask for feedback, send guide emails, software updates and more.
For example, you have signup with a push notification service. But you haven’t received any tutorial documents and no response from customer support. In this case, we check for an alternative service with no second thought. So, always be reachable to your users.
Customer Centric Features:
Every customer has unique goals to reach using your product or service. So, know what are your user needs and tailor product features for them. For this, you can ask them to fill out a questionnaire, and choose preferences after their signup.
For example, a music streaming service has new signup. Now, the website asks the users to choose their preference of language, favourite artists, music type and more. So, the user can listen to the preferred music and never look for other options to listen to music.
Set Clear Expectations:
Your customers should know what to expect from your service. Providing clear details will help customers remain loyal and not give up when they face a potential setback in using the product. You can not give false expectations and make them stick around which hits your brand authenticity.
For example, you have visited a website that says to provide all necessary tools free for your digital marketing. But you have access to limited tools while others are at a premium cost. This can break your trust in the service and immediately look out for alternative services.
Impress Customers:
Have a goal to impress your customers at every level of interaction. This will give positive experiences with your product and give reasons to stay for a long time. It also increases the customer’s trust and suggests products to others.
For this, break down everything with personalization at every step of the customer journey. It will make the user onboarding experience better and continue the relationship.
Analyze Results:
Monitor the results of the current customer onboarding process and optimize it regularly. Update the content of your emails, notifications, and demo videos and update them according to the customers. Try to identify the drawbacks of your strategy and always try out new and attractive ways to satisfy your customers.
Conclusion
A better customer onboarding strategy helps you to grow your business. It is a great opportunity to impress your audiences as that is the first user encounter. So, take good time to align with the present marketing trends and always keep the user as the centre of attention.
