Customer Onboarding: Are You Doing It Right? (4 Common Mistakes)

Numbers tell you how essential it is for businesses to properly onboard their customers after they have purchased one of your products.

63% of customers choose whether to subscribe to a product depending on the onboarding process. In fact, if the onboarding procedure is complex, 74% of potential consumers will move to alternative options. If a good onboarding process and customer education are provided by the business, 86% of the customers claim they will remain faithful to the brand.

The onboarding process is probably the most crucial phase of the customer lifecycle. Although it arrives at the beginning of their journey, it has the potential to establish the tone for their whole interaction with your product and business.

The customer onboarding process significantly influences whether a customer uses your product for a long time or abandons it after a few months. Thus, when done correctly, it enhances the value of your offering and prepares the ground for a lasting relationship with consumers. When done poorly, it makes customers wonder why they even decided to buy your product.

A great client onboarding experience shows that your customers' decision was the right one. In the end, it helps in keeping them loyal to your brand. Customers will switch to your competition if they don't understand your products/services and can't experience their potential. Luckily, you can address these problems by improving your customer onboarding process.

This blog will discuss customer onboarding, common mistakes brands make during the process, and how Layerise can help you provide an exceptional customer onboarding experience.

What is customer onboarding?

Customer onboarding is the initial process that helps your customers to learn how to use the product and all its functionalities in the best possible way. A top-notch customer onboarding program includes clear and detailed instructions, real-time assistance, and celebrations when customers reach milestones in the usage of the product.

It involves helping new users get up to speed in using your products/services. It's crucial for retaining consumers because it ensures that new clients enjoy the experience with your products and are more inclined to return to your brand than chase competitors.

Why is customer onboarding important?

The onboarding procedure provides long-term advantages for both your consumers and your company. In other words, customer onboarding makes life simple for your clients. Through a good onboarding process, they can easily access the expertise and information needed to use your products. It enables them to go through the setup phase without difficulties and thus promotes trust in your company.

How you welcome new clients sets the tone for your connection with them. Additionally, designing a superior onboarding process boosts customer lifetime value (LTV), lowers churn, and converts new users into die-hard ambassadors.

If those reasons aren't enough to convince you that the process is worthwhile, let's look at the benefits of the customer onboarding process.

Maintain consumer interest

They will start using your product successfully if you help them grasp and experience the value they can get from it, but more importantly, you will provide them with a reason to use your product repeatedly and maybe buy more from you.

Boost trial conversion rates

Customer onboarding is the stage where trial users learn about the value of your product in case you provide a free or reduced product trial. You will increase the likelihood that they will become paying clients if you can show them actual value early at the beginning of their trial.

Word-of-mouth marketing

Free marketing happens when customers love your products and want to talk about that experience to their friends and family. It is the best form of marketing that helps increase your revenue without denting your coffers.

Effective customer onboarding positions your customers to benefit from utilizing your product immediately and frequently for as long as they do.

4 Common mistakes companies make in onboarding new customers

If you are having problems turning new leads into long-term customers, one of the following common onboarding mistakes could be the source of the issue:

1. Exaggerating the advantages

It is easy to get carried away when crafting a marketing copy for your product. It is challenging to resist using words like "groundbreaking" and "revolutionary” to delight your new customers.

Avoid falling into this trap, though, as customers who don't receive the value they were promised when they signed up are not going to stick around for very long.

The solution? Be honest about the potential and functionalities of your product. It is always best to surprise your customers with the value your products can provide rather than disappoint them.

2. Provide complex information on the product

Companies often fail in the way they provide information about the product during the onboarding process. They often follow the reasoning "the more the better", but that's not always the best choice.

After the purchase, customers want to start using the product as soon as possible. Provide clear and short instructions on how to set up the product and get started. Use images and videos if possible, to make it even easier and more intuitive to learn more about the functionalities of your product.

3. Delay in returning customer comments

According to a recent study by The Social Habit, 42% of people who use social media to contact businesses with inquiries or complaints anticipate hearing back from them within 60 minutes. Furthermore, 67% expect to hear back the same day.

You risk damaging your brand's reputation and losing potential consumers during the onboarding process if you miss these crucial moments to connect. Don't just state that you provide help by chat, phone, email, or social media; truly abide by your word by promising a response time of under an hour.

4. No follow-up

Communication with customers is important, especially for communications sent out during the onboarding process. You are missing some significant opportunities if all you do is send out a subscription confirmation email and a "trial expiring shortly" message a few weeks later.

Stay in touch with your customers but without suffocating them. Through your communications, provide them with helpful and insightful suggestions that allow them to decide without feeling coerced. Remember, out of sight is out of mind. Constant communication and regular follow-ups are integral to your success.

How to do it right?

Here are some customer onboarding tips and best practices that will help you optimize your customer experience and increase retention rates:

1. Optimize the registration process

Make the registration procedure as quick and efficient as you can. You want to make it as simple as possible for customers to subscribe to your service. How much of the data you want is optional rather than necessary? Request the information you require to get the customer set up and using your product, and then follow up with additional inquiries as required.

Make it simple to register with a service like Google, Slack, or any other social media they already use. This will substantially reduce the signup process friction and enable new consumers to do so with just one click. According to Heap, the signup rates improved by 8.2 percentage points when consumers could sign up with just one click using a service they currently use, like Google or Slack.

2. Welcome email

Sending a welcome email to a new customer once they've purchased your product is the following stage in your onboarding procedure. They should get additional information about your product, and potential discounts on future purchases.

Gratitude is due! Since they took the effort to purchase your product, it's crucial to convey your appreciation to your new consumers.

Share tools that will help them to get started. This could be a video showing a product in action, a link to a help page, or a list of frequently asked questions.

Although including extra information is useful, the main goal of your welcome email should be to thank your customers for the purchase and invite them to start using the product.

3. Interactive and engaging walkthrough

Teaching your customers how to utilize and benefit from your product is the most crucial aspect of the onboarding process. Allowing customers to use the product and learn via experience is the best way to impart knowledge.

Similar to your feature callouts, an interactive walkthrough will be displayed as the user completes one task to demonstrate how to achieve the next one. As a result, be careful to develop contextual hints that show a user how to finish a task.

4. Personalize the onboarding process

Successful relationships depend on the personalization of the interaction. Customizing the onboarding process for every customer makes them feel at ease using your products and services.

Customize the onboarding process to meet your customers' needs. A key component of personalized onboarding is providing a functional, valuable, accessible, and desirable user experience.

You can introduce personal accounts, VIP portals, special offers, and additional resources to engage with your clients and develop a thorough understanding of them. This will help you anticipate their queries and provide answers before they even ask.

5. Regular check-ins

Check-ins should be a part of your onboarding process, even though they are more of a best practice than an essential step.

You want your new clients to believe you are interested in their development. Check-in periodically to find out if they are having trouble and how you can help them get more out of the product they purchased.

For both you and your consumer, random check-ins for quality checks are important and a nice surprise. Ask your clients what they think about the onboarding process, if they have any queries or concerns, and if there is anything you can do to improve it.

6. Celebrate milestones

Do you still have in mind all the customer-focused milestones you produced? You should celebrate these accomplishments with your new customers and encourage them to get one step closer to their objectives.

You can send an in-app notification or a congratulatory email. In either case, the more you support your customers throughout their user journey, the more they will feel that you care about their achievements.

How Layerise can help you create an excellent onboarding experience

Building a seamless onboarding process is crucial if you want to welcome customers and increase brand loyalty. Keep your consumers at the center of your business, and coordinate your marketing and sales initiatives to be effective.

Are you unsure about how to handle the customer onboarding procedure? To forge a solid bond between the customer and the brand, Layerise blends customer experience skills with CRM and marketing.

With Layerise, consumers are welcomed with the fewest steps possible. Once customers have received the product they simply scan a QR code on the packaging or directly on your product and they can quickly register their product ownership. When the customer scans the QR code and registers, all the information provided will automatically personalize the experience, in terms of notifications, language, videos, etc.

If you want to learn more about how Layerise can help your business grow, book a free demo now!