Onboarding for Growth: A Start-Ups Guide to Nurturing Customers From Day One

Are you struggling with losing customers in the early stages of your sales funnel?

You’re not alone. Some 90% of companies lose clients during their digital customer onboarding process. That makes it difficult to demonstrate your product’s worth and cultivate long-lasting relationships.

The early stages are even more critical for start-ups that tend to falter in the early phases. An unstructured, incomplete onboarding process leads to missed opportunities for long-term engagement. When you’re trying to build a reputation and client base, every lost prospect matters. 

Establishing a client onboarding process flow chart can serve as a structured roadmap to guide new customers through the process from their initial interaction. Adopting this process ensures a consistent and engaging onboarding experience that establishes a solid foundation for building lasting relationships and supporting sustainable growth.

What Is Customer Onboarding?

Customer onboarding is simply a welcome and tutorial, but it has deeper implications. A proper onboarding process for startups should focus on engagement and meeting the customer's needs. 

For example, proactively answering questions before the customer asks them can foster trust. Briefly explain what customer onboarding is. You want the customer to feel appreciated and heard while ensuring they know how to maximise your product for their needs.

The Importance of a Strong Onboarding Process for Startups 

You need to nail your customer onboarding experience every time because it has a long-lasting impact.

• Build and Strengthen Customer Relationships: Create a strong first impression with a personal touch that wows your customer. 90% of customers prefer a personalised experience, including the digital marketing onboarding process.
• Educate Customers on Your Product: 70% of customers say that they need to understand how to use products before they commit. If your customers don’t know how to leverage your product, they won’t stick with it or you.
• Increase Value: Craft an efficient onboarding experience that reduces the time from purchase to finding value and support from your product to convert prospects into loyal clients. They will be more likely to tell others about you and draw more qualified leads.

How To Build an Effective Digital Customer Onboarding Process

Crafting an effective client onboarding process requires the right tools. Forward provides sales teams with interactive onboarding plans that initiate smooth collaboration, provide clear structure, and foster a smoother overall customer experience.

Start at Sign-Up

The customer journey begins when they initially sign up, but that doesn’t equate a commitment to your product or service. Missing the mark at this initial touchpoint may result in lost opportunities because it leaves the customer feeling unappreciated.

Did you know 70% of customers abandon sign-up if the process takes over 20 minutes? A streamlined and efficient sign-up process is crucial for retaining potential customers, as attention spans and patience levels in the digital age are increasingly limited.

The key for this phase is simple and concise to encourage the client to follow through. Capture the critical information you need to move forward, like a name and email address. You can capture additional information for the CRM onboarding process later.

It also helps to use familiar platforms, like Google and Facebook. When clients can sign up with a few clicks in a format they’re used to, they’re more likely to proceed.

Write a Warm Welcome

A warm welcome after sign-up makes customers feel appreciated. It’s your opportunity to reinforce the positive first impression.

• It might help to select a customer success manager for the onboarding process and have them serve as the face for your welcome email.
• Include helpful resources, like links to FAQs, a tutorial or walkthrough, and a one-click CTA to your product.
• Be sure to genuinely express your gratitude to them for choosing you.

Personalised welcomes, especially videos or presentations, can go a long way and deliver that human touch customers seek in this digital world. Forward’s personalised onboarding spaces allow your teams to craft content tailored to each customer's needs.

Make a Good First Impression With the Initial Log-In

What does your customer need to do when they log in? Guiding your customer through your process and product ensures they learn what they need to know to use it successfully.

You might be familiar with your product to the point that it seems intuitive, but most customers need support. Forward gives you the power to create paths that make sense for your product and customers. 

• Perhaps a checklist works best for your product and engages the customer by having them check off boxes.
• Tutorials and guided walkthroughs are useful and create a more interactive experience. They are also ideal for demonstrating more complex products.
• Gamification can be a powerful tool encouraging customers to master sections to reach new levels. 

These suggestions represent ways to provide your customers with the information they need, coupled with positive reinforcement. The psychological boost they receive with each achievement enhances their positive impression of your company. 

Forward provides teams with the necessary tools to seamlessly steer customers through the onboarding process. Using the unified platform equipped with all essential information and tools makes the process simple and effective.

Be Timely with Follow-Ups

Rushing to follow up can feel pushy, while waiting too long can come across as indifference, meaning you need to find the sweet spot. You also need to balance the flow of information to avoid overwhelming your customers or confusing them.

Conversion intelligence, using data and analytics to make marketing decisions, will help your team determine the ideal follow-up timeline. It can also help you craft information flow by answering questions based on longitudinal data about what customers have asked.

Forward’s rich analytics help teams fine-tune their follow-ups to ensure every interaction is relevant. It’s easy to track follow-ups, add new ones, and refine your content based on real-time analytics.

Create a Client Onboarding Process Flow Chart

Pre-defined templates work wonders for many stages of the sales funnel, so why not create a customer onboarding process template? It’s an excellent, cost-effective opportunity to build structure and consistency into your process.

Developing a customer onboarding process flow chart allows your team to visualise the entire customer journey and keep everyone on the same page. 

• Ensure all relevant teams have a say in structuring the flow chart.
• Keep the client at the forefront of your mind as you build the chart. Think about what they want and need.
• Test the process to ensure it has the desired impact.

Forward supports your team with an emphasis on collaboration and leveraging data analytics for superior customer success. It’s easy to start with a template and build it out to work for your product and your customers. Plus, everyone on the team can access the same information to make adjustments in real-time.

Make New Customer Onboarding Easier with Forward

Building an effective customer relationship begins with the onboarding process. Standardising the system with a customer onboarding process flow chart ensures consistency and efficiency.

Forward's digital sales room supports teams with creating and maintaining new customer onboarding processes. You can easily set follow-ups so you don’t miss a beat, create an outstanding first impression with personalised content, and use analytics to adjust as needed.