16 Best Tips on How To Improve Customer Onboarding Process

Imagine you just signed up for a new software. You're excited to use it because it has everything you want. But when you open it up, you find a confusing interface without instructions or guidance. You're lost. You abandon your hopes of using the software and close the tab. Unfortunately, this is what happens to many customers during the onboarding process. They get stuck, lose motivation, and end up quitting. Improving your onboarding process makes customers happy and saves you time and money. For instance, creating an educational video to help with onboarding can significantly reduce the number of support tickets you get from confused customers. Educational video production costs are often more affordable than you think. This article will explain how to improve your customer onboarding process, focusing on using videos.

You can use corporate video services to create engaging, customized onboarding videos that will give your customers the information they need and make them feel good about using your product. 

How To Improve Customer Onboarding Process: 16 Best Tips

You can’t create a great onboarding experience without first understanding your users’ goals. Different users have different objectives. For example, a marketing manager may look for automation tools, while a developer might be more interested in API integration. Understanding your customer needs from the very beginning helps personalize their onboarding process. 

How to Understand Customer Goals

• Surveys and Onboarding Forms: Use initial surveys or onboarding forms to gather data about your users’ roles, goals, and expectations.
• Segment by Persona: Create personas based on the data you gather to tailor onboarding steps and resources accordingly.
• Monitor Behavior: Track how users interact with your product during client onboarding to understand their needs and customer journey better.

Create a Clear and Structured Onboarding Plan 

The key to a successful onboarding process is structure. Your onboarding, whether interactive walkthroughs or tutorials, should guide users step-by-step, showing them the essential features and actions to take without overwhelming them with too much information at once. Using an onboarding checklist can make this process more manageable for users. 

Best Practices for Structuring Your Onboarding Plan

• Checklists: Provide a clear list of tasks that must be completed during the client onboarding, such as setting up a profile, exploring key features, or completing a tutorial. 
• Step-by-Step Guides: Break down complex processes into smaller, manageable steps to keep users from feeling overwhelmed. Walkthroughs can also assist users in navigating new features. 
• Deliver Quick Wins: Focus on getting users to experience value immediately. For example, if your product is a CRM, a “quick win” might be helping users import their initial batch of contacts. 

Create Contextual Onboarding Experiences for Different User Types 

Not every user will interact with your product in the same way. Different features will have various levels of appeal depending on the problems your new user needs to solve. Trying to create a generic one-size-fits-all onboarding approach can make building genuine connections difficult. 

Personalized Onboarding Through Context

Contextual onboarding experiences can provide unique prompts, user onboarding checklists, and platform instructions based on user type. Contextual onboarding introduces new products or features as the user engages with the platform. It relies on user behavior analytics and custom events to trigger onboarding prompts to give users the direction they need precisely when needed. 

Send a Welcome Email to Get Users Started 

The welcome email is often the first direct communication with your new customers, setting the stage for the rest of the client onboarding process. A personalized and informative welcome email can:

• Introduce them to key product features
• Link them to resources
• Outline the steps they need to take to get started 

A well-crafted welcome email will help users get started on the right foot and increase the likelihood of keeping your customers engaged throughout the client onboarding process.

What to Include in Your Welcome Email

• Introduction to Features: Highlight the most important features users should explore first. 
• Link to Onboarding Checklist: Provide a link to the onboarding checklist or a tutorial to help them complete essential tasks. 
• Contact Information: Give users a point of contact, such as a customer success manager, for any questions. 

Don’t Overwhelm New Users 

You don’t need to squeeze every bit of information in the first few interactions with your user. While you want them to reach their “aha!” moment quickly, you don’t want to throw too much at them. 

• Avoid overwhelming by pacing your onboarding process to get the basics down first. 
• Guide users through your product’s basic account setup first, then its core features, so they can start driving value early on and feel they’re making progress. 
• Use simple welcome overlays and product tours to give users a taste of what’s to come. Over time, start to introduce your advanced features, but introduce them slowly. This way, they’ll get value fast, and you’ll have the chance to become a power user over time.
• You can set up triggers, like specific user interactions or events, that prompt more advanced tutorials and feature walkthroughs. Once you’ve established value and solved a customer problem, secondary user onboarding allows you to explore more advanced tools and features. 

Provide Personalized Experiences 

Personalization is a powerful tool for increasing engagement and customer retention during client onboarding. By tailoring your onboarding strategy to individual users based on their behavior, goals, or role, you ensure each user receives relevant and meaningful guidance, enhancing the overall customer experience and keeping them engaged. This strategy is vital for maintaining customer success throughout the onboarding journey. 

Ways to Provide Personalization in Onboarding

• User Segmentation: Group users based on criteria like job role, experience level, or goals. For example, first-time users might receive a more detailed product tour, while returning users might skip specific steps. 
• Dynamic Onboarding Paths: Adjust the client onboarding process based on user actions and interactions. If a user has already completed a specific task, skip to the next most relevant action. 
• In-App Messages: Use in-app messaging to offer personalized tips, guidance, or product suggestions based on the user’s behavior. 

Assign Small, Achievable Milestones 

One of the most effective best practices in onboarding is breaking down the user journey into small, manageable goals. When users see immediate progress, it creates a sense of achievement that keeps them engaged and motivated to continue. Small goals help users build confidence in your product, as they can easily accomplish each step without feeling overwhelmed. 

Celebrating Milestones in Client Onboarding

Whether completing the first step of a setup checklist, trying a new feature, or reaching a quick “win” during the client onboarding, celebrating these milestones keeps users excited about what’s next. To incorporate small goals in your client onboarding: 

• Use Checklists: Include a checklist that tracks progress, allowing users to see their accomplishments. 
• Highlight Quick Wins: Guide users to achieve quick results with basic tasks, like completing their profile or trying a core feature. 
• Provide Encouraging Feedback: Use in-app messages or a welcome screen to congratulate users on reaching milestones, reinforcing their progress. 

Track Key Onboarding Metrics 

Measuring the success of your client onboarding process is critical to improving it. By tracking key metrics, you can identify where users are getting stuck, which features are most helpful, and how long it takes to complete the onboarding journey. 

Important Onboarding Metrics to Track

• Onboarding Completion Rate: The percentage of users who complete the onboarding process. A low completion rate may indicate that users are struggling. 
• Time to First Value (TTV): As mentioned above, TTV looks at how long it takes for users to reach their first "aha moment" where they realize the value of your product. 
• Feature Adoption: Track which features users engage with during onboarding. 
• Churn Rate: Monitor whether client onboarding improvements reduce early customer churn. 

Provide Continuous Support After Onboarding 

Onboarding doesn’t end once the user completes the initial steps. Providing ongoing support and guidance ensures that users continue to engage with your product and explore new features over time. 

Best Practices for Continuous Support

• Access to a Help Center: Provide users with easy access to a knowledge base or resources where they can find answers to common questions. 
• Follow-Up Emails: Email users post-onboarding, offering additional tips, product updates, or training resources. 
• Customer Success Check-Ins: For more complex products, offer check-ins with your customer success team to ensure users get the most out of your product. 

Collect Feedback and Continuously Improve 

Customer feedback is a goldmine of insights that can help you improve your client onboarding process. You can better understand what’s working and needs improvement by asking for feedback at various stages. And in turn, acting on user feedback shows customers that you value their input and are committed to improving their experience. 

How to Gather and Act on Feedback

• In-App Surveys: Use brief surveys to ask users about their onboarding experience immediately after they complete it.
• Direct Outreach: Reach out to users via email or through customer success teams to ask for more detailed feedback. 
• Regular Iteration: Use your feedback to refine and improve your onboarding process. 

Incorporate Gamification in Onboarding 

Adding gamification elements can make the client onboarding process more engaging and enjoyable. Gamification keeps users motivated and makes the learning process feel less like work. Gamified onboarding elements include:

• Progress bars
• Rewards for completing milestones
• Badges
• Friendly competitions

Benefits of Gamification

• Increased Engagement: Users are more likely to complete tasks when presented as fun challenges. 
• Faster Learning: Gamification encourages users to explore the product more thoroughly, improving feature adoption. 
• Improved Retention: Users who enjoy the onboarding process are more likely to stick with the product long-term. 

Provide Self-Serve Resources for Users 

While guided walkthroughs for onboarding are critical, offering self-serve resources that users can access independently is equally essential. This includes creating a robust knowledge base, FAQs, video tutorials, and a community forum where users can find answers quickly. 

Benefits of Self-Serve Resources

• Reduces Support Load: Users can find answers without contacting support, freeing up your team’s time. 
• Encourages Exploration: Users accessing self-serve resources are more likely to explore features independently, leading to deeper product adoption.
• Empowers Users: Self-serve resources allow users to control their learning pace, increasing confidence and satisfaction. 

A/B Test Your Onboarding Flows 

Like marketing campaigns, onboarding flows can benefit from A/B testing to determine what works best. Test different onboarding messages, flows, in-product guides, or even the order in which features are introduced to users. 

Benefits of A/B Testing Onboarding Flows

• Data-Driven Optimization: A/B testing allows you to use data to refine the onboarding process, making it more effective. 
• Improved Conversion Rates: By testing different flows, you can identify which drives better conversion rates and retention. 
• Tailored Experiences: Testing helps you understand what resonates best with different user segments, leading to more personalized onboarding experiences. 

Use Tools Like Userflow for Efficient Onboarding

One of the most effective best practices to enhance your client onboarding is to use dedicated tools like:

• Userflow
• Userpilot
• Appcues

These tools simplify creating and managing onboarding experiences without relying on engineering resources. 

Benefits of Using an Onboarding Tool

• Save Development Costs: Tools like Userpilot reduce the need for custom coding, cutting down costs and letting your development team focus on the core product rather than spending time on onboarding.
• Faster Implementation: Pre-made templates and drag-and-drop builders allow you to quickly onboard new users, introduce features, or change the client onboarding experience based on feedback. 
• Data-Driven Insights: These tools often include analytics to monitor user behavior, track feature adoption, and refine the client onboarding process more effectively. 
• Scalability and Consistency: Tools like Userflow ensure a consistent onboarding journey for all users, making it easier to manage customer experiences as your product grows. 
• Personalized Onboarding: They enable you to personalize client onboarding based on roles, actions, or user engagement, increasing user retention. 

Develop a Strategy for Upsells and Cross-sells 

Onboarding isn't just there to welcome new users; it's also essential for upsells and cross-sells. Even if users are familiar with the main product, they still need guidance to effectively understand and adopt the new features or services. That's why another onboarding best practice is to create distinct client onboarding paths for upgrades or add-ons. 

Consider dedicating specific team members to help existing users learn these new features. Benefits of an effective product expansion are: 

• Increase Customer Retention: Users who receive proper guidance with add-ons are likelier to stick around, reducing churn. 
• Maximize Value: Users who understand how to use new features are likelier to see value and continue investing in your product. 
• Leverage Trust: Existing users already trust your brand, making introducing and onboarding additional features easier. 

Create a Coherent Brand Experience Throughout the Onboarding 

A consistent brand experience is critical for attracting and retaining users throughout client onboarding. A strong, recognizable brand helps build:

• Trust
• Familiarity
• Engagement

You should present a consistent brand approach throughout the customer journey, from your intake form template to every part of your walkthroughs. What you should do to keep a consistent brand experience: 

Align Visual Elements

Make sure that all your onboarding elements, including your:

• Sign-up page
• Walkthroughs
• Tooltips
• Help menus

Tooltips match your product’s overall design. Colors, fonts, icons, and imagery should all reflect your brand’s identity. 

Keep the Tone Consistent

Using a friendly, professional, or playful tone, maintain that style across all welcome messages, in-app guidance, and tutorials to reinforce your brand personality. 

Use Branded Templates

Create customizable templates and styling options that you can quickly deploy. These templates allow you to ensure that your onboarding flows reflect your brand’s look and feel.

What Makes a Good Customer Onboarding Process?

The "Aha Moment" is when new users realize the true potential of your product. This "aha moment" is an essential milestone in the customer onboarding process for any business. You'll always want to look out for that "aha moment" that customers experience when they find the proposed value of your product for the first time. 

You'll need to make this "aha moment" as evident and as fast as possible so that customers don't develop regret and cancel their subscription before you can fulfill your promise. 

User Activation: Next Phase of Customer Onboarding 

User activation is similar to the "aha moment," but it happens when users discover the complete set of features inherent in your product for the first time. It's the intended value your product delivers when users move from simply perceiving value to actually experiencing it. 

User Adoption: Making Your Product Indispensable to Customers

User adoption is when the product becomes indispensable to your user's workflows, and the user can't imagine being without your product. User adoption is the final result of successful onboarding, and the user fully engages with your product.

Power Users: The Ultimate Goal of Customer Onboarding

A power user is when the user becomes someone who uses your product all the time, is an evangelist, and is thoroughly familiar with most of your product's features. They could become someone who could sell your product to others. 

Related Reading

• Customer Education
• Customer Education Examples
• Customer Education Strategy
  
• How to Increase Product Adoption

Why Customers Usually Churn During Onboarding

Misaligned Expectations: Why Customers Leave Before They Even Get Started

Misaligned expectations are one of the most common reasons why customers churn. Your sales team might have oversold the product and promised a feature that wasn't ready yet. Or your customer might have misunderstood some key functionality of your product. In any case, having unmet expectations could cause customers to lose interest. 

Defining Success in Client Onboarding

This is why it's essential that you clearly define what success means at both ends. Understanding your customer's needs, setting a realistic roadmap to achieve them, and ensuring everyone knows who's responsible for what is critical. Doing this upfront will ensure nobody's disappointed later on.

Cognitive Overload: Why Too Much Information Can Drive Customers Away

In other words, your customers will leave if they feel overwhelmed by your onboarding process. While your customers need to understand the full range of functionality your product offers, it's equally important to know their use case and only focus on the aspects of your product that cater to this use case. 

Upselling to your customers, talking up features that don't matter to them immediately, or dumping too much information on them could make them stop using your product altogether. Instead, focus on delivering small wins initially. Ease them into your product and build a good working relationship with them. 

Once you build that trust, you'll get plenty of opportunities to showcase all the other things your product can do.

Lack of Engagement: Why Ignoring Customers Post-Sale Can Hurt Your Business

The post-sale period is crucial in establishing or breaking your customer relationship. Yes, they've purchased your product, but they're still not completely sold yet. Regardless of how easy or difficult your product setup is, customers will always require hand-holding and support from your side initially. 

And they'll leave if you're not proactively engaging with them and helping them reap value from your product in the first 90-day period. We're not saying you've to be available 24/7, but having some communication channel that allows for frequent interaction is essential.

Lack of Personalization: Why Customers Want Unique Experiences

Every customer is unique, and so are their reasons for using your product. It is, therefore, vital you understand what your customer is using your product for and tailor the onboarding process according to their needs. 

Let's face it. Your customers want to feel like you care about them more than 100 of your other clients. And the only way to do this is by personalizing their onboarding experience.

Why Your Customer Onboarding Experience is Important

Customer onboarding plays a crucial role in acquisition and retention as it helps create a positive experience from the beginning, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. A well-executed customer onboarding strategy can:

• Increase customer engagement
• Reduce churn rates
• Overall business growth

According to recent stats, businesses with robust user onboarding processes witness a 200%  increase in customer retention.

Customer Onboarding Sets the Tone for the Entire Experience

Customer onboarding sets the tone for the entire customer experience. A smooth and positive onboarding process leaves a lasting impression, making customers feel valued and confident in their choice of product or service. 

Maximize Customer Value With Effective Onboarding

Onboarding helps customers understand how to use the product or service effectively, ensuring they can derive maximum value from it. Customers who experience value early on are more likely to remain engaged and continue using the offering. 

Reduce Churn With Effective Customer Onboarding

Effective onboarding can significantly reduce customer churn rates. Addressing early frustrations and helping customers overcome initial hurdles it decreases the likelihood of customers canceling or discontinuing their relationship with the company. 

Boost Customer Satisfaction With Thorough Onboarding

Customers who receive adequate support and guidance during onboarding are more likely to be satisfied with their purchase. This improves customer loyalty and increases word-of-mouth marketing. 

Accelerate Product Adoption With Customer Onboarding

Onboarding accelerates the adoption of new features or updates, ensuring that customers are aware of and comfortable using the latest capabilities. This can lead to increased usage and potentially higher revenue for the company. 

Create Opportunities for Cross-Selling and Upselling During Onboarding

It provides opportunities to introduce customers to additional features or higher-tier offerings, increasing revenue potential. An effective onboarding process can help identify and promote relevant upsell opportunities.

Related Reading

• Educational Video Marketing
• Animated Educational Videos
• How to Create Training Modules
• How to Create Training Materials
• How to Make Instructional Videos
• How to Make Educational Videos

Why Use Videos for Your Customer Onboarding Process

Video plays a pivotal role in customer onboarding, offering numerous advantages. A study by Forbes says viewers retain 95% of a message from video, compared to just 10% from text. The onboarding videos aim to help employees understand the work culture or help customers understand and use the product or service. These videos help simplify complex UI, reduce customer support tickets, and increase customer retention. 

Video Caters to Visual Learners

Many people these days are visual learners. 56% of customers prefer video over reading. Video helps break down complex software functions into digestible pieces. Videos help new users grasp intricate features quickly and effectively by visually demonstrating how the software works, reducing the learning curve and enhancing user competence. 

This visual approach simplifies understanding and helps users retain information longer, making them more confident and proficient in using the software.

Videos Boost Customer Engagement

Videos have a unique capacity to engage users, making the onboarding process more enjoyable. With compelling content, videos keep users interested and motivated to explore the software deeper, significantly reducing early drop-offs. 

This engagement is crucial in transforming passive viewers into active users, encouraging them to utilize the software's capabilities fully. 

Videos Make Software Accessible to a Global Audience

Video also plays a crucial role in making software accessible to a global audience. As more software companies expand globally, language translation capabilities ensure that users can understand videos worldwide, breaking language barriers and broadening the software’s reach. 

This inclusivity enhances user satisfaction and opens up markets, increasing the potential customer base. 

Videos Promote Self-Service Onboarding 

As companies grow, their customer base diversifies and expands - but expanding humans to serve them gets more brutal. Videos are a scalable solution for onboarding, capable of consistently delivering quality training to increasing users without additional strain on your human or technical resources. 

This scalability ensures that all users, regardless of when they join, receive the same high-quality introduction to your software, maintaining consistency across the board. 

Related Reading

• Instructional Video Examples
• FAQ Videos
• Tools for Making Educational Videos
• eLearning Video Examples
• eLearning Production Companies
• Synthesia Alternatives

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Making educational videos is no easy task, especially if you want to create content that genuinely helps your audience instead of creating another boring video nobody watches. Whether you are trying to improve customer onboarding, training your employees, or educate your prospects, your goal is to make explicit, engaging content that boosts retention and transfers knowledge. 

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