Effective customer onboarding can help you retain customers and reduce churn. You can plan it down to the tiniest details, but executing it will need a good platform that is built for your onboarding needs.
A good customer onboarding tool will help you reduce churn by adding to the customer onboarding experience. It helps smoothen the process and helps both your onboarding team and your customers navigate the onboarding journey with ease. Think of it as a trekking pole: it enables you to navigate uneven trails, helps endurance when you’re moving uphill, supports your knees when going downhill, and supports your spine throughout your trekking journey.
With the customer onboarding tool playing such a crucial role in shaping the onboarding experience for the customer, it is worthwhile to invest time and money in picking the right platform for your team. There are multiple options out there for you to choose from, which is why we put together this guide to help you navigate the process of selecting with ease. We’ve also included this free RFP template that you could use to decide what suits your business needs.
The platform should allow you to templatize your process and keep it flexible
You may have your customer onboarding process down to the t, but enforcing it without a system can prove tough. This is where a customer onboarding platform should help: you can templatize your onboarding playbook or methodology and get your team to use them.
A well-made platform would make this effortless for you—you would need to create templates for your projects and documents only once and reuse them as many times as you want to. You should also be able to edit/modify your templates with ease.
You won’t need a separate tool for your project management needs
You need to project manage the onboarding, after all. Your onboarding platform should therefore help you stay on top of things. Here are onboarding-specific project management options and features to look for in an onboarding platform:
- Quick access to reports
- Reports on planned vs. actual progress
- Option to share status updates using the platform
- Ability to get approvals/signoffs using the app
These are not the only features you should be looking for. For the full list of project management features, check out the free RFP template at the end of this blog.
The platform should support document collaboration extensively
In other words, you shouldn’t want to use a separate platform for your documentation needs. The customer onboarding platform should let you create, share, and collaborate on documents, checklists, agreements, contracts, etc., within the app. You should also have the option to embed documents you’ve created on third party platforms. This way, you’d save a lot of time when you’re not switching tabs or hunting for links in the depths of your inbox and drive folders!
Another feature to look out for is the ability to have discussion threads on any document within the app. This way, you’ll never miss the context.
The platform should help you build transparency and visibility into the customer onboarding process
The platform should help your customers access all the necessary information to work with you during the onboarding process. You should be able to provide them with access only to what is necessary for them and keep the rest accessible to your team. In short, the customer will be able to have a five-star experience without having to witness your mise en place.
Check out our free RFP template for the full list of features to look out for.
The platform should feel like an extension of your brand to your customer
What good is a cake without some great icing and a cherry on top of it? Your onboarding platform should allow you to customize the customer’s view of the platform to match your branding, so it looks like they haven’t really left your product. Extra points if they don’t need to log in to access the project and related files (aka the magnificent Magic Link).
The platform should provide all the necessary insights you will need about the customer onboarding process
One major pain point that the customer onboarding platform should eliminate is the lack of access to insights and reports on your onboarding methodology. Here are some examples of the kind of information you should be able to access:
- Project statuses
- Task statuses
- Effort and time required for projects and tasks
- CSAT reports
For the full list of features to check for, use the RFP template below.
The Customer Onboarding Platform RFP [Free Download]
We’ve put together an RFP for you to use if you are evaluating your options for customer onboarding software. Check it out here.
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