Client Onboarding Step-by-Step Guide & Process Checklist

With a solid process for onboarding your new clients, you’ll be able to automate and streamline the task of preparing new clients to work with you in full capacity. This checklist guides you through the process of collecting contracts, arranging meetings, deciding when to review your progress, and covering the legal side of what you do. To scale and get your new clients set up properly, you’ll want to follow a concise and clear-cut process that covers all the bases. Client onboarding process software doesn’t have to break the bank. High client retention means a reduction in acquisition costs. The churn rate will also decrease, and you’ll have to spend less to hit targets.

It also increases customer lifetime value , reduces churn, and turns new users into raving fans. Use this template to keep an eye on changes to your customer churn rate. By following the steps we’ve laid out in this guide, you’ll begin to experience better customer satisfaction, better retention rates, and as a result, a higher customer lifetime value.

How to Onboard New Clients [Easy-to-Follow Guide & Template]

If you can demonstrate real value in the onboarding process — right at the start of their trial — you’ll make it more likely they’ll convert into paid customers. User onboarding is one of the most crucial steps of customer onboarding, and it can impact the client onboarding process entirely. The new client onboarding process begins when your new customer receives the welcome packet, so it needs to be enticing and informative!

A big part of that is picking the right moment to target your customers with upselling opportunities. That’ll give you a solid idea of how far along users are getting, potential barriers along the way, and where you need to focus your efforts. Overall, gamification makes the process of reaching activation significantly smoother. Rather than an empty slate, a personalized, engaging welcome screen – with a clear call to action – is a much better way to greet your customers. Check Miro and their different messaging to talks directly to their users.

 Collecting new client data:

Besides, it is also a good balance sheet example to gently remind your clients about some additional information or documents that they haven’t yet sent over. The concept of client onboarding refers to welcoming new clients into the business and answering all their queries. Providing an excellent onboarding experience should limit the number of questions your clients will have.

An excellent first impression sets the tone for starting your working relationship, so you and your client get off on the right foot. Services require high-touch, tailored, often much more personal interactions. On the other hand, SaaS customer onboarding is generally automated and begins immediately at the end of the sales process. This is where your relationship with the customer becomes very important. If they trust you, they’re more likely to be transparent and communicate their needs.

You can have a significant influence on your bottom line if you get it right. Onboarding is critical in the software as a service industry. Providing consumers with an easy and frictionless entry point to your service keeps them engaged, which will improve their customer lifetime value . Below, we’ve curated a list of the best questions you can ask clients in an onboarding questionnaire. By this time, your plan has been sufficiently tested and your client will have a good feel for your team’s progress.

Automated process:

A good customer onboarding process gets primary onboarding right above all else. Successful primary onboarding should help new customers realize the value of your product as quickly as possible. You can do that by populating blank screens (i.e. a personal message on a welcome page) and using engaging UX patterns like checklists, guides, and gamification.

• You get clients up to speed faster, show off your organizational skills, and save mental space for the work clients hired you to do.
• For this reason, making a great first impression at each client interaction is critical — starting with the client onboarding process.
• They’ve felt it, you’ve felt it, and it’s a bright and shiny new opportunity to endear yourself to them.
• You have probably heard of buyer’s remorse before but have you ever thought about how this applies to your own business?

A client onboarding system is a set of steps you take to get acquainted with a new client. It starts the moment they get in touch with you and ends when their project is delivered. An onboarding process helps to ensure a smooth operational efficiency, effective communication, and customer satisfaction. Client onboarding is the process of welcoming new clients and getting them started with your product or service.

Make it clear where they can go for help, but try to beat them to it by giving them in-app training. Things like gathering client information, answering common questions, and ultimately keeping the momentum going from their initial decision to work with your real estate agency. Even though they may have already watched video tutorials, the first time they log in will be crucial. We want to know what compels our clients to join Process Street. By asking in-depth questions about your organization, we get to understand your specific requirements, which allows us to tailor our approach accordingly.

If you do your due diligence, good onboarding sets clear expectations for both sides and fights future scope creep. Client feedback will tell you where the breakdowns are happening, but now it’s up to your team to come up with a solution. The easiest way to do this is to collect the feedback responses from your new customers on a ClickUp Whiteboard. In these meetings, update clients on strategy developments and report on service outcomes to reinforce the value you are delivering.

Creating a special folder, channel, or label for the new client in your inbox or chat app helps you stay organized. And if there are still some details to sort out, use this step of the client onboarding template to schedule a kickoff call. Getting a new client up to speed shouldn’t feel like reinventing the wheel every time. Here’s a customer onboarding checklist to streamline your to-do list.

This lets you create a series of project milestones that are predicted on specific conditions, such as the client providing you with agreed-upon information. This helps instill client confidence and reduces the risk of potential conflict. This meeting should set a confident tone by making it clear to the client that they put their trust in the right team.

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Failing to follow onboarding best practices will take you down when churn hits you like a gigantic asteroid careening towards your little corporate planet. So, to make your company’s environment inhospitable to the seeds of churn, it’s essential to examine your onboarding practices and improve upon them. Lewis Norwood, head of client relations at Pharmacy Mentor, explained how his team used ClickUp Whiteboards to successfully identify and solve client onboarding gaps. These two forms of feedback will help you uncover what your new client needs and where you’re not meeting the mark in your existing customer success workflow. As companies scale, expect some gaps in the onboarding experience. It’s essential to proactively identify these gaps and optimize accordingly.

Make no mistake — this is a relatively new concept, made popular by customer success. Make sure everyone who will be involved knows the needs, pain points, story, background, and onboarding process of the customer. To that end, read on for evergreen customer onboarding best practices that apply to any industry.

You will also need to offer gentle reminders when clients have not returned their portion of the work or feedback. Checking in with your client to gauge their satisfaction is integral to the health of the relationship, especially if you are not meeting on a regular cadence. Hence, you address problems as they arise before they explode in your face.

Welcome to our featured articles block dedicated to the topic of onboarding! Here, we will dive into the world of onboarding, providing expert insights, practical tips, and real-life examples of successful onboarding programs. There are a few standard steps to take to ensure your client onboarding process goes smoothly and does not waste any of the party’s time. Essentially, it’s settling a new client into your business and establishing a good relationship with them. GET the full copy of the new client onboarding checklist template.

Use them to help your customers discover how to utilize key features . Let’s assume your customers are using most of your key features with no issues. By giving your users an incentive, you help give users a reason to persevere with tasks they might otherwise abandon. Make sure your landing page – the ‘front door’ to your product – is crystal clear. It should be completely obvious to any new client what your SaaS does, your core value proposition, and who it helps.