This blog is a part of the 666 series of our Halloween Heist Contest.

Imagine your business is growing, and you've reached a point where you're good at acquiring new customers but are struggling to retain them. You have all processes in place to avoid churn, and your team is performing at its best. Yet, something is missing.

This is one scary nightmare for every business. Streamlining your customer onboarding process can help with customer retention and allow your customer to understand what your product can do for them.

However, as your company scales in terms of staffing and revenue, it becomes impossible to function without the right set of tools. 

In this blog, we'll take a look at the signs of whether your company needs a customer onboarding tool and the steps to invest in a good one. 

Why do you need a tool for customer onboarding? 

According to Wyzowl, over 90% of the customers feel that companies can provide a better onboarding experience to new customers, and 55% stop using a product because they don't fully understand how to use it. 

So how can a tool help in making your customer onboarding experience better?

A good customer onboarding tool can help you:

1. Reduce churn
2. Improve product adoption
3. Keep your customers engaged
4. Get higher customer satisfaction
5. Provide a better customer experience
6. Increase revenue
   

It can help your customers:

1. Learn more about your product
2. Derive value faster
3. Have complete visibility over their journey
4. Easily access all data and documents in one place
   

Before investing huge amounts of money and time in a customer onboarding tool, check if your company is ready to use the product and derive ROI.

Seven signs your organization needs a customer onboarding tool

1. Your team is overusing spreadsheets to onboard customers
2. You've got the processes in place, but they don't seem to work
3. Your CS team has too much on their plate
4. You’ve been receiving unfavorable feedback from your customers about your onboarding experience
5. There’s high customer churn
6. There are too many items that need the customers' attention
7. You're using two or more tools to provide a good customer journey  

Steps to invest in a customer onboarding tool 

We ran a poll to understand when people think it's the right time to invest in a customer onboarding tool. 44.2% of the voters said they'd choose a tool right after identifying CS-related processes. But that's just the first step.

Here's how you should go on to choose the right customer onboarding tool:

First, identify all customer-related processes, and determine what type of onboarding (high-touch or low-touch) your organization will provide. Specify your goals, map the types of activities that need to be performed, and create a checklist.

Second, if you have a dedicated onboarding team, assign roles based on the activities/tasks that need to be done in an onboarding process. Define your onboarding and implementation goals and KPIs.

Then, depending on the needs of your customers and team, prepare to buy a customer onboarding tool. 

Preflight Community member, Richard Benavides, shares his experience on when to buy a tool:

"I think it would be once you've built the team. As the first CS hire at a startup, I feel a customer onboarding tool wouldn't do much for me, as I've got visibility and organization buttoned up pretty well and about 100 hats to wear. Plus, we haven't learned which processes work best for our customers yet, and part of that process is seeing if your work is replicable by the people you add to your team.

However, once you've proven it with your core team of 3-5, I'd say it's time to look into something like this. Previous companies used tools like Asana, Trello, and Wrike, but they were all lacking in certain areas." 

Next steps

Creating a successful onboarding process and providing a great customer experience takes practice and the right set of tools. To avoid tool overload and keep the costs low, look for tools that can create a unified and unique experience.

Learn how Rocketlane can improve your customer onboarding experience.

More resources

1. 4 Ways Rocketlane Makes Customer Onboarding Smoother, Simpler, Smarter 
2. The Right Time to Invest in Customer Onboarding Software 
3. How to Pick the Right Customer Onboarding Software [Free RFP]