The importance of customer onboarding

Customer onboarding is the journey you take customers through during and following the sale. It encompasses all their interactions and engagements with your business, ideally to enhance the customer experience and influence the ongoing relationship your customer has with your brand. 

Welcoming new customers into your business, addressing their concerns or questions, and ensuring they are aware of and understand the services available to them, are all critical to the success of a robust customer onboarding process. 

Two of the top reasons for customer attrition are that they do not understand either the product provided, or the value that your service and solution has provided. Customer onboarding can help to mitigate both of these factors. 

It’s all about creating a seamless customer experience from the first interaction to the post-purchase stage.

The benefits

A successful onboarding strategy is vital for increasing customer referrals - if they’re happy with the process then they’re more likely to recommend your services; simple. Word-of-mouth marketing can easily be your ally or your enemy - good onboarding helps prevent any negative feedback. 

Marketing is also subject to the Pareto principle, meaning that 20% of your current customers can be responsible for up to 80% of your revenue. Customers, more so than ever, want to have a relationship with the companies they purchase from. They want to feel valued and by engaging with the customer and sharing your company culture with them, they’ll be more likely to stay with you. 

Get onboarding right, and you increase your chances of generating more revenue. Bringing potential customers through the sales process is time and money intensive, all of which could be wasted if they decide to cancel your services soon after obtaining them. It’s important to understand that converting a lead into a customer is not the end of the journey, but the beginning.

Creating a strategy

A great customer onboarding strategy answers two questions. Firstly, have you successfully introduced your new customer to your business, addressing any questions and concerns early on? And secondly, have you gathered data on your customer, providing insight into which ongoing services would benefit them?

How do you answer these questions? Here are five key aspects to help you refine your process:

1. Assess your customer’s needs - as the sales process comes to a close, make it a priority to understand each of your customer’s unique obstacles, pain points and the challenges they face, as well as their ideal solutions and outcomes. All customers are different and when you understand their goals, you’ll be able to develop a robust service that works for them. This could take the form of a new customer survey or introductory pack with the aim of gathering more information about your new customer.
    
2. Turn their needs into measurable goals - once you’ve determined the customer’s needs and outcomes, you’ll need to turn them into measurable milestones, where relevant. The customer’s journey needs to be comprehensive and if you then clearly articulate these milestones, you’ll be able to stay on track to achieve them. But always remember not to promise anything that you can’t deliver and ensure that all parties are involved in the goal-setting process.
   
   
3. Make customers feel welcome - it might be a kick-off phone call or a personalised welcome email. Your customer needs to have a good impression of all those involved with their account, not just their main point of contact. Make sure the customer has a clear understanding of the services you provide and how to access them. For example, an IFA will want to make sure their customer understands how their account is set up and how they can operate it. 
   
   They’ll also need to know who to contact should they have any issues, and the relevant stages involved in the service you’re providing. For mortgage brokers, that might mean sending over a step by step guide on buying a new house. For solicitors, this might be an initial explanation of what documentation may be required from the customer to progress.
   
   
4. Check-ins - your customers should feel like you care about their progress and opinion. Check in often to see how they’re feeling about their situation and your services, and to see whether they have any issues. This might take the form of a follow up call, or a bi-monthly catch up.
   
   Each time a customer achieves something due to your service, it’s a cause for celebration. By exciting your customers about these achievements and events, you’ll be able to show that you’re invested in their success and help them to recognise your value. For mortgage brokers, this could be by offering a gift to the customer on move day. For IFAs, this could take the form of an email or handwritten card celebrating the achievement of a financial milestone.
   
   5. Exchange feedback - it’s worth doing this frequently. Listen to customer feedback and take the chance to ask for it when the right opportunity presents itself. Are your methods of communication working for them? Is there something they feel like they’re missing?
   
   Exchanging feedback works two-fold, as it helps you to clarify expectations on both sides, whilst also allowing you to balance your contact time with each customer you work with. It’s good practice to make the customer feel like they’re the only one you’re working with, but that applies to every other customer as well! 

In the end, customer onboarding takes some trial and error to perfect. It’s a process you’ll want to refine over time by recording data on how customers respond to a particular strategy. Take some time to align your team while always keeping the customer at the heart of your efforts. By developing a robust customer onboarding strategy, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort when it comes to customer retention.

Yorkshire Building Society has worked together with a growth marketing agency, Clients First, to supply this content. We hope it helps you grow your core business and you have found it of interest. Please ensure that if you apply any of these tips to your YBS agency that you comply with the specific marketing guidelines which can be found in the YBS ‘Working Together’ Agency Operations Manual.