When you are onboarding customers, there can be a lot on the line to determine whether or not it will end up being a long-term relationship. Your first impressions can say a lot about you as a company and whether or not your customers will end up staying with you instead of moving on to a competitor. This is why you should have a strategy in place so when you go to onboard your clients, you can feel positive about the results.
Here are some simple ways to make your onboarding successful.
Address any concerns beforehand
It never suits a company to get involved with a client before they have taken the steps to address all of their concerns. If you haven’t sat down with the customer you are onboarding or you haven’t given them the resources they need in order to have a positive relationship with you, then you want to fix that. Not only should you have a call or meeting to see where they are at and why they are seeking your expertise, but you should also have blog posts and white papers to help them gain more information about how you can help.
Check in during the process
Not all of the process will involve you as a business owner. If you have a team, then they will be partially responsible in making sure that your customer feels comfortable with the proceedings and if there is any confusion. You don’t need to make it a big deal—you can simply shoot them off an email at some point during the process to make sure everything is going okay and ask if they would like to schedule a call.
Talk with your team and managers
Your managers are likely to be able to give you some information on how well the onboarding is going and whether or not there has been a lack of communication. While your customers might think everything is going along fine, there might be a concept they’re not grasping or that a team member is struggling to teach them about the way you run your company. Make sure you talk with your team and see if they have any concerns with a particular clients and whether or not they think it’s a good idea for you to step in.
Follow up
Once the onboarding process is complete, make sure to do one final check-in to make sure you are both ready to begin working together. This might be a call or an in-person meeting, but it should be at least a chunk of time so you can evaluate how you and your team did bringing them on. You should come up with a list of questions that can help you determine whether or not your customer onboarding was successful or if you need to put some new strategies in place in order to help both you and your clients during the process.
In summary
Your onboarding can be the defining experience that your customers will look back to when they think of working with you. In order to make sure it is a success, be sure to check in often in order to see what you can improve.
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