What Is Client Onboarding? A Guide to Welcoming New Clients

If you take the time to create and consistently implement a client onboarding process, you and your clients will reap the rewards. We’ve created an extremely comprehensive new client onboarding checklist. Work through it systematically to build an effective new client onboarding experience and nail your customer onboarding process. These onboarding guidelines are not meant to be followed word-for-word.

• So all that’s left for you to do is send it off to the client and then refresh your email over and over while you wait for feedback.
• Download 8 free new customer onboarding templates to get started.
• Customer onboarding is the nurturing process that gets new users comfortable with your product.
• Remember that while you have hundreds or more touchpoints with various prospects, each of your customers only has one impression of you.
• A free onboarding template can help, download the one below for free.

For example, you likely have your own accounting or invoice software to manage, but you might need to work within your client’s payment platform of choice. If you want to streamline your workflow even more, you can automate your client onboarding. As we break down each step of the onboarding process, we’ll offer some tips on how you can put your operation on autopilot. If you’re looking for a way to make sure you hit all these points in your onboarding process, download this checklist to use with new clients. When crafting a proposal or service contract, the terms of the agreement should be clearly defined. The scope and the deliverables should be based on the client’s goals and what your company can realistically achieve.

Free Employee Performance Review Templates (Plus Tips)

The onboarding process should span throughout the beginning of your engagement. It’s important to help your clients feel confident about the next steps at every stage of their journey, starting at the beginning. Arrows prioritize customer onboarding by expanding your assignments and task delegation. This graphic design platform makes content creation simple, and its client onboarding experience is wonderful. Just as the welcome packet/email sets expectations for the rest of onboarding, you’ll want to set expectations for the rest of the engagement during the kick-off call.

This practice should carry into the onboarding process as you reiterate the value that your product provides to your customers and prepare them for potential setbacks or sticky points. Creating a customer onboarding process from scratch is a time-consuming task. Putting it all together, your customer onboarding process should look like the following flowchart. Some of the information that you gather about your customers during the marketing and sales processes will carry over into the initial stages of onboarding. You need a goal and a plan for how you’ll get there before you create anything that your customers will see. How you onboard your new customers sets the tone for your ongoing relationship with them.

Address client blockers

These tools optimize the experience for customers and offer various tactics — including email, live chat, and tutorials — to guide users through the onboarding process. A customer onboarding playbook is a comprehensive guide that outlines the steps companies must take when onboarding new customers. The playbook defines — based on data — the necessary customer journey to retain and nurture customers. As we’ve seen, a premium client onboarding process is key to reducing churn, boosting retention, and increasing profits overall. In our case, we must have ALL login information from our clients immediately”. Similarly, Visitor Queue’s Nick Hollinger thinks understanding your clients should be the first step for a successful client onboarding.

Wait until you have a signed copy in your hands (or your email!) before starting any of their work. You run the danger of squandering valuable time and resources on a pointless project if you move on without this agreement. Once the client signs the contract, the job does not end here. Organizations now must be proactive, especially with client onboarding, and must make an extra effort. Client onboarding process is just as important as employee onboarding which is not a known fact to everybody. If done correctly, it marks the start of a productive and profitable partnership.

The primary user onboarding process checklist template

Creating a dedicated folder, channel, or label for the new client in your inbox or chat software will help you stay organized. And if there are still some things to iron out, set up a conversation for later through this stage. If you want to automate your bookkeeping , connect your payment processor to your accounting software. This way, income tracking is automatic, and you may avoid manually transferring amounts between applications.

Some businesses have preferred style guides or directions for content-creation agencies, others have specific policies around sourcing, procurement, payment, and billing. By asking for these documents, you can start a continually-updated repository that keeps you in the know about key client operations. Use this time to give your client feedback on how the onboarding is going. Ask them any additional questions and address any of the client’s concerns. Take this call seriously as the more genuine you are about hearing and responding, the less likely they are to churn. This is your chance to introduce your client to the team and get everyone excited about the project.

To utilize this tool to its maximum potential, you need to use what you’ve read in this article and apply it appropriately. Information about where new clients may go if they require further assistance should also be included in a client onboarding template. An effective new client onboarding template should outline how you will be following up with them to make sure they are adapting to the new service and how it is helping them. Even the best projects don’t always hit deadlines, but it’s important to understand what your client’s timeline looks like.

That’s why a good onboarding experience that educates and hand-holds your new client is so important. Client onboarding is the process of introducing a new customer to your services and exposing them to every resource they’ll need to achieve their desired outcome. Ideally, you and your client have the same preferred communication channel. If you work across tools, though, you may need to get set up on a client’s chat app or invite them to yours. And you’ll want to have a central location where you log agreed-upon rates for clients (if there’s any variation).

Frictionless signup flow

Most often, your welcome packet will be PDF, but it also might be an email or webpage. It also includes FAQs, resources, or anything else your client needs to access throughout the project. Following client onboarding best practices ensures that clients have a positive experience working with your business from the start. How to set up your client onboarding process for easier projects on repeat.

• So if you need a lot of information from your customers when they sign up, make it feel like less by splitting it across multiple pages.
• Your objective is to empower your customer by providing them with all the resources to onboard autonomously.
• Attracting new consumers is crucial for growth and expansion, while maintaining a strong customer base is critical for the health of your business.
• Once they create a profile, the company uses this information to present a curated list of styles.
• This extends to how often the customer should expect updates, meetings, and other communication.

This includes any administrative needs like creating an account, setting up payment information, or anything else that’s required to start using your products or services. The kickoff call should reinforce expectations set during the contracting and client onboarding process so you start off on the right foot. This creates an opportunity to confirm both teams are aligned on the strategy and service goals before you start digging into projects.

Depending on how large your organization is, you may choose to create the project plan calendar yourself or with the help of a project manager. This phase is your chance to take a deep dive into your client’s world. Happy clients lead to referrals and recommendations, so your lead pipeline remains healthy. Referral and or word-of-mouth marketing are proven, effective ways to find some of your most highly qualified leads. A good client brings good quality potential clients more effectively than any other marketing channel. It’s time to celebrate those weeks or months you spent building a relationship with a prospect that has finally become a customer.

There are two steps to optimizing your onboarding; gathering feedback and collaborating internally to address the feedback. Scheduling regular monthly client meetings as part of your onboarding process will help your team address any concerns upfront as you work together. For example, review the deliverables that will contribute to each part of the strategy. This will help your onboarding process by determining the internal point of contact will be for the account. Also, ask if there is any particular part of the strategy that specific team members are excited about or prefer. For example, your contract lays out an agreement to provide a marketing strategy for a certain price.

The investing activities include provides a basic automated email feature that will send onboarding messages for you. For stronger customer management power, you’ll want to pair GuideCX with a CRM. The tool allows you to create unlimited “userlanes,” or tutorial paths, as well as unlimited plays.