Customer onboarding – how do you do it right? So, you’ve done months of careful development and planning. Now, it is exciting to put the finishing touches on your product. You want to see your vision come alive. But this excitement is often a trap. Spending all the time on polishing and honing a product can leave the owners unprepared. Unprepared for what you might ask. Unprepared for the most important factor in a product’s success which is the process of customer onboarding.
Customer onboarding is the process of giving your new subscribers the requisite knowledge and skills that they need to become effective users. If you encounter trouble in converting the new leads into customers, the problem might lie in these common customer onboarding mistakes:
Over-promising the benefits
Many companies tend to get carried away while writing their marketing copy. Don’t fall prey to this mistake. Users who don’t get what they signed up for do not stay for long. Make sure you have an acquaintance who does not have anything at stake read the copy and describe the benefits he hopes to get. If they don’t match up with what you have to offer, there is a problem with the copy.
Slow loading time
Even a two-second delay in loading time can lead people to abandon your page. Users will be frustrated if it is slow to load and that is not good for the growth of your business. Invest the necessary resources to bring up your product’s performance to an acceptable level.
Making assumptions during customer onboarding
Do not mistake your passion with the needs of the customer. Even companies that have invested time and money on buyer research can get excited without stopping to think whether customers need these features in the first place. Engage with your customers regularly via phone, emails and social media to solicit their input. Take it back with you when you are making changes.
Making the user work for rewards
Users tend to have a limited attention span. You should get them signed up for the product and experience its benefits as quickly as possible. Onboarding is not about training them on all the features of the user interface from the start. It’s about demonstrating your value as fast as you can.
Failing to follow-up
Communication with the customer is essential It is os especially for messages that you send out during the onboarding process. If you just send out messages for confirming the subscription and to remind them of the trial expiry, you are missing out on valuable opportunities. Create autoresponder messages that help the customers move towards the action you want. Then send them a congratulatory mail on their achievements.
Show consistent commitment to your customer. Collecting actionable insights from the very beginning will help you develop a customer onboarding process that surpasses their expectations.