Onboarding Tips

Hey! I am supporting a startup who is developing a dating app. I am helping them to create their Onboarding and Customer Success plans to they can implement the appropriate processes and systems to support them as they scale. I am curious if anyone has any experience or can recommend any tools they would imagine might be able to support their team!

Hi! One of my customers brought to my attention the confusion of the PM Note of an overview.  I never really thought about it as I craft these each Sunday before they launch on Monday, but I am now seeing that each recipient gets the communication as if I am talking directly to them!  It makes sense, but I don’t think I ever fully put it together until this very moment.I was thinking it might be nice to have a primary and then secondary notifications – meaning the main person you are working with vs the others.  Since you can only assign a task to one person, what if you could designate 1 person for the overview or create a cc for those less involved?Also, I am looking forward to hear any best practices around this effort so that I can improve things.Please let me know.Thanks! Jenny Tracy

 Yesterday we had the pleasure of having @annalise Arvelo join us for a webinar to share how Quantum Metric has scaled to $100M in revenue and created an onboarding process to match the sophistication of their new customers.If your missed it, you can watch “David Onboarding Goliath: Scaling Exponential Growth” here ➡️ https://bit.ly/3XqC9O5During the webinar Anna Lise asked the audience, "What in your village needs to be burned down?".In other words, what is no longer serving you any more? At Quantum Metric they implemented “Meeting Doomsday” - canceling internal meetings for 2 weeks then taking an audit of every internal and external meeting.What is the value? What are the tangible outputs? How are we measuring success?After reviewing feedback and impact, only meetings that were deemed essential were added back to the calendar.What are you doing to make space for your team to determine what should be burned in your village? -----If you want to try “Meeting Doomsday” at your org, check

Q: I would like to have a record of emails being sent to my customers; how do I do that?A: There are several ways to accomplish this:By leveraging WATCHER functionality. By leveraging the GLOBAL BCC functionality. By leveraging the PROJECT LEVEL BCC functionality.You can deploy any combination of the above as needed; please review the help articles linked above for full details! OVERVIEW:Leveraging WATCHER functionality:Whenever you want activity associated with a given task to cc. a certain stakeholder, consider leveraging WATCHERs. You can add yourself as a WATCHER, and/or add additional users as WATCHERs. Increasing visibility will increase accountability by adding team members to mission-critical tasks. Stakeholders can be added as watchers to tasks where they are not contributing directly to ensure there aren't hiccups along the customer onboarding experience! Watchers receive emails whenever something interesting happens to a task - assignee changes, attachments are added, notes

We have a great kickoff call agenda and slide deck, but it does not include a Customer Success Plan which we are contemplating adding.  Does anybody out there have any best practices around the CS Plan or have a template to share?  I’d love to hear your input! 

Curious as to if there are any tips / formats / standard y’all follow will filling out RFPs that ask for a breakdown of implementation services? I provide a high level breakdown of our different phases and a few short sentences as to what is required within each phase. When it comes to time commitments, I struggle to put accurate numbers as I want to be realistic but also don’t want to scare the prospect off as to what will actually be required of them. 

Hi All,I am looking at using Guide CX in a Training Consultant role. Does anyone have a template they created for this role using Guide CX? 

Onboarding people is hard.Onboarding busy people is even harder.The secret to engaging busy people is to communicate more clearly.I’m always on the look out for content that is applicable to customer onboarding. I found this webinar from the Harvard Kennedy School that talks about “The Science of Corresponding with Busy People.”Todd Rogers, a behavioral scientist and professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School shares his take on the five principles for effective communication and how to implement them in your writing (emails, task instructions, meeting recaps, etc).The 5 principles Todd shared are:Use fewer words. Less is more. Get to the point faster to get people to higher engagement. Decrease reading-level. Making it easier to read will increase engagement. Format to direct attention. Formatting can highlight what the writer thinks is most important. Use it judiciously. Make key information obvious. The point of the communication should be obvious. Don’t make it a maze to f

Remember that local pizza shop called “Domino's Pizza”?This is their stock price over the last 20 years.It was worth around $8 back in 2004.Today it’s worth over $400.So what changed?In 2008, Domino's realized that customer uncertainty about 🍕 delivery times was impacting their bottom line.As such, they decided to implement the 'Domino's Pizza Tracker' which provided full transparency to customers throughout the order process.The Lesson? 📖Research has found that it is less psychologically stressful to know something negative is about to happen (i.e. late pizza 🚙) than it is to be left in uncertainty (i.e. no idea where 🍕 is).Bad news is better than no news. Keep your customers updated and you’ll see some serious returns.

If you’re in SAAS you know that one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is change management. That’s because humans are creatures of habit. If we were onboarding computers, all we’d need to do is change a few lines of code - then presto change-o the new solution is rolled out.That’s why I believe that software will never solve the problem.We can’t just spit out facts and expect that to drive organizational change. Change is complex because humans are complex.Take me for example. I’d love to be in tip top shape. I’d love to have healthier workout habits. I know the stats. I know the numbers. I understand WHY I need to change. Heck, I could buy a gym pass to change, but the gym will not change me if I don’t show up and put in the work.That’s the key. Change takes effort. Intentional, consistent effort. So how do we help new clients drive that change?  Please comment below (bonus points for sharing actionable pro-tips)! I’m all ears.

SaaS Customer Onboarding has been my professional focus for the past 10+ years. Two big areas that seem to continue to separate smooth onboardings from rough/extended ones are these: - Client Availability- Client Commitment How has your organization worked to address these or any helpful tips/tricks for addressing these two areas?

We’re just starting to look at formalizing our onboarding process. One full-time CS manager manages active accounts, renewals, training, and sometimes new trials/opportunities. They will be helping with onboarding as well. Can you share your tips for digital/automated onboarding and also how to sell other team members on the importance of it? Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone!We’re looking to streamline a pilot program for our customers and are in the process of writing success criteria that can be fairly general and tweaked to individual customer needs. Setting criteria for successful pilots is kind of tricky in that you want to be sure you’re not digging yourself a hole with success factors that aren’t attainable in that pilot time frame, or could be derailed by tech issues that pop up down the road. Does anyone have any advice, LinkedIn groups to follow, Ted Talks, a friend of a friend, etc. etc. etc. that can help me in writing these as a standard template for our organization to use?Thanks so much!

Happy Onboarding October! This is the second of five (2 of 5) QOTWs for Spooky Season!For this question, I’d love to see what strategies you’ve used currently or in the past to boost customer adoption of new products/features! How can you make adopting new tools or services less scary for customers? Drop your thoughts below!!!

In my personal experience with mismanaging context switching, despite loving to be involved with building and supporting wherever I can, I’ve found that over time (no matter how tough I think I am), I find myself in moments where I’m not showing up to my work the way I want to. Some of the symptoms I start to notice: Mental Fatigue: Adapting to different tasks repeatedly can leave me feeling drained. Efficiency Drop: The mental effort of refocusing makes it difficult to complete tasks in a timely manner. Quality Compromise: frequently switching roles leading to errors. Deep Focus Impediment: Frequent context shifts hinder deep focus.  Workflow Disruption: Constant switching disrupts workflow consistency. Stress and Burnout: Managing multiple roles introduces stress and a feeling of burnout. Communication Hurdles: Collaborating with diverse teams complicates communication. Time Management Struggle: Balancing roles can lead to rushed tasks due to limited time. Learning Cu

Do you? Don’t you? If yes, do they usually show up? If they do show up, then how do you set that expectation for them to show up? 

I just met with a fellow onboarding person and they stumped me - so I’m determined to get to the bottom of this! They offer a self-serve platform (customers buy their software and set it up themselves). From there they get lost/disengage and they never hop on a call.This causes a lot of lost accounts. Does anyone have a solid idea on how to address that?Couple of things to know:They don’t have in-app guidance Their customers are not super tech savvy. The customers are on their feet and on the go a lot Their customers tend to ignore phone calls, blind events, emails, and texts.

Happy Onboarding October! This is the first of five (1 of 5) QOTWs for Spooky Season!For this question, I’d love to explore what retention strategies and tactics have been most effective in keeping customers from disappearing? Nothing is spookier than a customer who churns. What ways have you used that worked to keep them safe? Drop your thoughts below!!!

hi there!I was on the GGR podcast and we went over a subject I am passionate about- https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-dqsgs-14b0d02 enjoy!

Onboarding should be a breeze, right? That’s what we’re all working towards after all. Short time to value, and high customer satisfaction is the name of the game. Unfortunately there are so many things that can get in the way of that - busy schedules, complex data migrations, working with people you don’t manage, just to name a few.Instead of increasing headcount and building custom solutions that can help accelerate that time to value, what are some creative ways you’ve seen TTV get reduced and CSAT increased?Chime in below with your thoughts or challenges and don’t forget to hop on this week’s livestream to discuss in person! RSVP here:  

I like to think of onboarding as if we (the customer and I) are going on a hike. It’s worth the view, but usually requires more effort than going for a leisurely walk.There’s a number of parallels I can draw, but I’ll stick to one for this prompt: Imagine we are hiking up Bell’s Canyon (A local Utah Favorite). At the end there is a beautiful waterfall (pictured below), however right before you get there, there is a STEEP incline. And when I say STEEP, I mean call me a “life flight because I might not make it” steep! For half a mile you’re basically on all fours just scrambling up the route. This is usually where people lose their motivation and give up. The first time I did this hike I had a friend who acted as my guide and they gave me the perfect amount of motivation to finish it. I’m not sure I would’ve made it without them. Check out the comments below for how their tactic of keeping motivated can be used to keep your customers motivated during onboarding!Don’t forget to share your

Part of creating an onboarding experience that delivers value and helps customers get started on the right foot depends a lot on creating an ✨EXPERIENCE✨In order to take a process and turn it into an experience you need to make emotional connections with your customers. I highly recommend checking out the book: The Power of Moments. “But for an individual human being, moments are the thing. Moments are what we remember and what we cherish. Certainly we might celebrate achieving a goal, such as completing a marathon or landing a significant client—but the achievement is embedded in a moment. Every culture has its prescribed set of big moments: birthdays and weddings and graduations, of course, but also holiday celebrations and funeral rites and political traditions. They seem “natural” to us. But notice that every last one of them was invented, dreamed up by anonymous authors who wanted to give shape to time. This is what we mean by “thinking in moments”: to recognize where the prose of