Winning a new client is a great achievement. But what about keeping them?
In business, a big sale can be an unparalleled rush. But after the confetti has been swept into the dustbin, the next steps are equally important. For the customer, all too often their shiny welcome mat leads to a lonely and confusing corridor. That’s because many companies spend far more money on winning the sale than they do on keeping the existing client engaged and comfortable, says the CommerceNext Benchmark report. This can lead to confusion, disengagement and reduced customer retention. The issue is twofold, because according to the Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer is five to 25 times more expensive than keeping an existing one.
Enter the onboarding specialist. In addition to ensuring that customers are educated and eventually self-sufficient, a quality onboarding specialist boosts customer retention and earns long-term loyalty. Even though every customer cannot be retained forever, Bain & Company reports that increasing customer retention rates by just five percent can lead to an increase in profits of 25 to 95 percent.
We sat down with two Austin tech companies who explained that the key to great customer onboarding is making the customer feel quite literally at home. By adopting the style of a friend and ally, as well as parceling out the onboarding process into easily digestible stages, customers can be rightly convinced that they’ve bought into a company that has their best interests in mind for the long haul.
At Subsplash, a leader in church engagement technology, Onboarding Specialist Alexandra Ramirez knows that guiding the customer through the initial onboarding stages is critical. That’s why she pieces together the process the way some would build a house. The result: a friendly yet thorough onboarding that creates just as much product familiarity as it does long-term loyalty and engagement.
First, walk us through a typical day for you as an onboarding specialist at your company. What are some of the key tasks on your to-do list?
Every good day starts with a full cup of coffee, especially Madalyn’s Backyard Pecan, with a little extra vanilla oat milk creamer for good measure. Then I’m ready to tackle the day! After that, I load up all my systems: Slack, Zoom, Outreach, Salesforce, Gmail, and so on. The first task to tackle is my inbox. Next I’ll take a glimpse at my calendar: I usually have a client meeting coming up shortly after. I’ll pull up the client’s account, notes and other resources depending on where they are in the onboarding process. Typically, onboarding meetings range from 25-30 minutes. After each meeting, I promptly send a follow-up email to the client to simplify and summarize everything we spoke of and make sure they are clear about the next steps in taking the process to a finished product. Most of my day is filled with these types of client meetings and during the in-between times, I’ll answer emails and prepare to work on my other tasks.
Tell us a bit about your onboarding process. What are some of the most important touch points along the way?
I liken the onboarding process to moving into a new house. First, we need the actual house, this would be the Google and Apple developer accounts and all account set up (tax information, app store info, branding). Secondly, we need to figure out how each room will be used; the rooms represent the navigation tabs on the bottom of the app. Once we identify the room’s purpose, we are ready to add in all of the belongings and furniture: this represents the app content. Lastly, we organize the room and decorate it (my favorite part!). This step is what’s required for the design of the app and adding in various graphics! Once the hard work of unpacking and organizing everything is complete, we are ready for the client’s housewarming party, also known as their app going live in the app stores! It’s much easier said than done but that’s why clients have a designated helper, like me, throughout their entire onboarding process!
I liken the onboarding process to moving into a new house.”
What’s one thing you do to establish strong relationships with your customers from the start?
From the beginning of a client conversation, I simply ask “How are you?”, and everyone is usually honest with me. I’ve had people share why they've had great days and why they’ve had tough days. From one simple question, you can build a strong relationship. Treating my clients as real people has been the best way for me to connect with them and allow an open space for honesty and productivity. Also, I do my best to make note of important events or information from my clients; for example, if a client said they had a wedding to attend over the weekend then I make sure to start our Monday morning meeting by asking them about the wedding. It’s the little intentional touch points that matter.
Customer communication and inter-departmental collaboration is critical to onboarding at Imprivata, a platform for secure remote access software. Carly Abraham, a senior onboarding specialist, ensures that customers know they have her support not only through go-live, but far into the future as a dedicated and multifaceted resource.
First, walk us through a typical day for you as an onboarding specialist at your company. What are some of the key tasks on your to-do list?
A typical day for me includes a lot of emails and meetings with both customers and vendors. I have onboarding project calls with my customers where we discuss anything from vendor onboardings in progress, the best way to set up a new vendor, unique vendor use cases, and any Imprivata product questions. Having a standing meeting helps keep both sides accountable and ensures the onboarding project is moving along smoothly.
Vendor onboarding calls are trainings that I set up with my customer’s vendors. We walk through the registration and connection process in Imprivata to make sure the vendor can successfully, and comfortably, use Imprivata for remote access moving forward. If we run into any connectivity issues, I’ll work with both parties to resolve the issue.
There’s also basic troubleshooting and general product questions that we handle throughout the day. We are constantly collaborating with other teams at Imprivata like customer success, technical operations and professional services, to name a few.
Tell us a bit about your onboarding process. What are some of the most important touch points along the way?
The process starts during the implementation kickoff where we align on expectations and communicate what we will need to have a successful onboarding project. During this time, we will help the customer catalog their vendors if they haven't already done so. We then hold a discovery call to do an onboarding deep dive to determine workflow and strategize the best process to onboard their vendors based on our expertise and the needs of their organization. When the customer is comfortable with Imprivata and we have gathered all the necessary information needed, we’re ready to onboard the first vendor. The onboarding team will schedule a call with the vendor to walk them through Imprivata and ensure they can successfully connect to the customer. Our onboarding efforts don’t stop at go-live — we’ll continue to work with the customer and onboard every vendor they’ve identified.
Our onboarding efforts don’t stop at go-live — we’ll continue to work with the customer and onboard every vendor they’ve identified.”
What’s one thing you do to establish strong relationships with your customers from the start?
We make it known that we are a dedicated resource and product expert to not just our customer, but also to their vendors as well. We understand that a lot of organizations have been relying on a myriad of remote access methods for years. We’re here to make this as smooth of a process as possible for both our customer and their vendor. It doesn’t matter if our customers are onboarding a vendor one month from now or five years from now, they’ll always have assistance from the Imprivata onboarding team.
