Elevating your onboarding experience

This article is based on a presentation given by Mike at our Customer Success Festival in Las Vegas, 2024.

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Empowering your customer success team through effective onboarding is crucial for driving customer satisfaction and reducing churn.

My experiences at companies like Oracle, Mitek, and others have provided me with valuable insights into the transformative power of a robust customer onboarding program.

In this article, I'll share my proven strategies and practical steps for elevating your onboarding process. From engaging executive sponsors and journey mapping to defining success metrics and leveraging data analysts, you'll learn how to create a seamless and efficient onboarding experience.

By the end, you'll understand how to reduce churn, enhance operational efficiency, and foster stronger customer relationships through a well-executed onboarding strategy.

Understanding customer onboarding

So, what is customer onboarding? To me, customer onboarding is distinct from implementation. In many companies I've been a part of, the focus is primarily on implementation without considering the broader picture.

Implementation often involves connecting the technical aspects —talking to the development teams and getting the systems up and running. However, other crucial components are frequently overlooked.

These components include training, enablement, and executive alignment. Additionally, expectation setting is typically left to the Customer Success Manager (CSM). The process usually follows a pre-sales cycle: you sign the contract, implement the solution, and suddenly, there are wild expectations.

It then falls on the CSM to manage these expectations and explain that things might not work exactly as anticipated. This part of the job can be particularly challenging.

Defining verified outcome scorecards and change management are also critical aspects. Change management, in particular, is becoming, if it isn't already, one of the most significant roles a CSM plays. Working with customers to navigate and embrace these changes is essential for their success.

The customer journey: From contract signing to achieving value

I’ve outlined a timeline that illustrates the customer journey, starting a little before contract signing and extending through the go-live phase to the point where value is achieved. Defining both "time to live" and "time to value" is crucial.

Many companies I've worked with track the time to live and treat it as the finish line. They celebrate prematurely, thinking that getting one production transaction through signifies success. They then hand the process over to the CSM, which often leads to problems requiring reimplementation.

It's vital to view customer onboarding as encompassing not just those small milestones within the larger process but continuing until real value is achieved. This could mean first value or ongoing value tracking, but it certainly extends beyond the go-live date. One common mistake companies make is treating the go-live date as the end of customer onboarding.

Various teams and roles are involved in this journey:

Sales team: The sales team is engaged up to the contract signing. Afterward, their role becomes more secondary, stepping in when necessary, such as for contractual matters or upselling opportunities.
Customer onboarding manager: This is a specialized role distinct from the CSM. Not every CSM makes a good onboarding manager —I know I wouldn’t have. Once you find the right individual for this role, their sole focus should be on onboarding customers. They ensure that the transition from signing to achieving value is smooth and effective.
CSM: The CSM steps in after the customer starts realizing value. Their job is to maintain and grow this value over time.
Implementation manager: Also known as a solutions architect or similar titles, this role is more technical, working closely with development teams to ensure the implementation is successful.

Understanding these roles and their contributions at different stages is essential for a seamless customer onboarding experience. Each role has its unique responsibilities, and their coordinated efforts ensure that the customer not only goes live but also achieves sustained value from the product.

Why focus on customer onboarding?

We've established that customer onboarding is much more than just implementation. So why should we focus on it? Consider this: $138 billion is lost each year due to avoidable customer churn, and 23% of that churn is attributed to bad onboarding.

There’s also an operational efficiency component to consider. Over the past year, customer success teams have been under increasing pressure to be more operationally efficient, and this trend is expected to continue.

We have to manage more customers, often doubling our customer load. Effective onboarding can make this possible. When customers are onboarded correctly, they are handed over to CSMs in great shape, with standardized processes and clear expectations. This allows CSMs to manage their increased load more effectively, taking over after the customer has achieved value.

Leading causes of customer churn include poor onboarding, weak customer relationships, poor customer service, and difficult user experiences. A proper onboarding program can address, mitigate, or even fix all of these issues.

From my experience as a CSM, I dealt with these challenges firsthand. As I moved into leadership roles, these were the same issues I heard from the field. Proper customer onboarding can transform these pain points into strengths, ensuring a smoother journey for both the customer and the team managing them.

By focusing on customer onboarding, we can reduce churn, improve operational efficiency, and build stronger customer relationships. This investment pays off in more manageable workloads for CSMs and better outcomes for our customers.

Identifying key stakeholders in customer onboarding

One of the main reasons I wanted to focus on customer onboarding stems from my experience at a company called Mitek. I joined MyTech as a director in 2017 with the aspiration of becoming a VP.

To achieve this, I needed to demonstrate my ability to add value not just to the CS functional leaders but to the broader leadership team as well. This led me to focus on onboarding.

There are numerous significant stakeholders who care about onboarding. Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and accounting teams are particularly interested because they need to know when they can recognize revenue.

Typically, these teams have little visibility into customer progress during onboarding. They might ask informally, but there’s no centralized dashboard showing all onboarding customers, tracking their progress to go live and achieve value within expected timelines.

Stakeholders who care about onboarding:

FP&A and accounting: These teams want visibility into customer progress to accurately forecast and recognize revenue. Without a proper onboarding program, they often lack this insight.
Sales: The sales team is deeply invested in the success of onboarding because it directly affects customer satisfaction and future upsell opportunities.
Executive leadership team (ELT): The ELT, especially the CFO, cares a great deal about onboarding. Over the past year, CFOs have become increasingly pivotal in leading companies. Solving onboarding challenges for the CFO and the CEO can significantly enhance your career prospects.

Every company I’ve worked with has struggled with onboarding. Despite the many activities and individuals involved, it remains an area fraught with inefficiencies and high costs. However, by focusing on onboarding, we can streamline these processes, reduce costs, and ensure a smoother, more effective customer journey.

Focusing on customer onboarding is not just about improving the customer experience. It’s about aligning with key stakeholders across the organization, from finance and sales to the executive team.

The customer onboarding playbook

Step 1: Journey mapping

The first step I take in any new role is journey mapping. This has been my practice in all three of my previous positions. My key tip here is to avoid journey mapping in-house. Instead, bring in a third party.

I've used ESG twice and highly recommend them. They spend about two months on the process, conducting 15 meetings with 25 people across different functions to map out the entire customer journey, from pre-sales to renewal or churn.

Confirming the journey map with customers is crucial —having a third party interview the customers to validate your assumptions is invaluable.

Step 2: Pre- to post-sales handoff

This step is critical and often not executed well. It’s essential to have a smooth transition from sales to customer success. Ensure that the salesperson and sales engineer participate in the handoff meeting. Leadership support is vital to ensure this step is done correctly.

Step 3: Define success metrics

Define success metrics and create a verified outcomes scorecard. Ideally, this starts during the pre-sales phase with value discovery and continues post-sales with regular check-ins.

Customers need to confirm their desired outcomes, which should be measured in every business review with a scorecard that clearly defines green, yellow, and red customers.

Step 4: Health scoring

Create a system to define green, yellow, and red customers during onboarding. At MyTech, we used a data analyst to track customers’ phases, expected go-live dates, and progress toward value. This health score should be based on objective metrics rather than subjective assessments.

Step 5: Time to live and time to value

Clearly define and track both time to live and time to value. This helps in setting accurate expectations and measuring progress.

Step 6: Invest in an onboarding solution

Investing in a customer onboarding solution is crucial, though it can be a hard sell. I recommend GuideCX and Rocketlane. These tools provide valuable health dashboards, internal communication aids, and automation features, including escalations to ensure accountability.

Step 7: Develop agenda and content

Work with your marketing or customer education team to develop onboarding content. This is particularly important if your customers are new to your domain. Providing them with the necessary context and education helps them understand what they’re trying to achieve with your product.

Step 8: Identify expectation gaps

Identify and address expectation gaps between successful and unsuccessful customers. For example, at MyTech, we discovered that customers expected 99% accuracy in identity verification, while we were delivering about 50%. Such discrepancies need to be clarified during onboarding.

Step 9: Specialized onboarding managers

Hire specialized onboarding managers. Not all CSMs are suited for onboarding, and having dedicated experts can make a significant difference. Jay Nathan, a well-known customer success expert, advocates for specialized roles within customer success, including onboarding managers and data analysts.

Step 10: Simplify customer interaction

Ensure that customers do not need to understand your internal org chart to get things done. They should have a single point of contact and experience a seamless, low-effort process. Regularly check in with customers to confirm that this is the case.

By following this playbook, you can create a robust customer onboarding process that sets the stage for long-term success. Proper onboarding not only improves customer satisfaction and retention but also enhances operational efficiency and aligns with the needs of various stakeholders within the organization.

Maintaining executive contact post-onboarding

Once you get past the onboarding phase, reconnecting with the customer's executive sponsor becomes incredibly challenging, if not impossible. However, during the pre-sales phase, executives are highly engaged, so I take advantage of this early period.

I get introduced to the executive sponsor right away and have a direct, upfront conversation with them. For instance, at Mitek, I had such a conversation with Goldman Sachs. We established mutual accountability: I held them accountable for following best practices, and they held me accountable for delivering results.

When Goldman Sachs wasn't adhering to our best practices, I made a call to their vice president. I informed her that her team was not following the recommended practices and that, as a result, their go-live results would not be optimal.

She appreciated the heads-up and was already prepared to allocate resources for phase two when the initial results were subpar. This level of communication is crucial during onboarding, as it sets the stage for ongoing collaboration and problem-solving.

Internal communication is another critical aspect. I believe everyone in the company should know how our customers are doing, especially during onboarding.

To facilitate this, I implemented a weekly customer meeting open to all employees. We used systems like Gainsight and Catalyst to manage these meetings. A pre-read was sent out ahead of time, and the CEO’s participation encouraged broad attendance.

These weekly meetings served as a valuable platform for CSMs to communicate the status of onboarding customers. The consistent internal communication ensured that everyone was on the same page and aware of any issues or successes. This transparency helped foster a company-wide understanding and commitment to customer success.

Lastly, securing your own data analyst is crucial. In my experience, relying on shared resources can be frustrating and inefficient. Having a dedicated data analyst on the team allows for better tracking and analysis of customer onboarding progress, providing the necessary insights to make data-driven decisions.

Engaging with executive sponsors early, maintaining open and consistent internal communication, and leveraging dedicated data analysts are all critical components of a successful customer onboarding process. These practices ensure that both your team and the customer’s team are aligned, accountable, and prepared for long-term success.

First impressions matter: Elevating your onboarding experience